At the end of the summer, while I was away on retreat, my husband rebuilt our front deck. The front deck is smaller than our back deck, but I like it more because it sits high in the canopy of a few trees, so it feels like a treehouse - like an escape.
If I’m at home around 3pm, you can probably find me sitting in my “treehouse” sipping a cup of tea. And while I do, I try not to do anything else - no planning, no fidgeting, no looking at my phone.
Sometimes I find myself lapsing into a meditation on the breath or meditation on sound. But even that seems to defeat the purpose of these afternoon pauses. My purpose is to cultivate boredom. To release control of the moment. To simply sit and do nothing.
Being bored is a luxury.
It's a surprisingly radical idea, and it’s not easy. But I've noticed myself increasingly drawn to doing less. I'm less interested in filling every available hour and more interested in experiencing the hours I have.
So this is my practice. Sitting on the deck, up high in the trees, doing nothing.
When was the last time you were bored?
In our modern culture, we have very few opportunities to experience boredom without immediately trying to escape it. Waiting for an appointment? Scroll social media. Stopped in traffic? Check phone messages. A quiet moment before bed? Watch one more reel.
We've become remarkably skilled at filling the open spaces in our lives. We rarely have to sit with the discomfort of having nothing to do.
And I wonder what we might be missing.
What happens when we never allow ourselves to be unoccupied? When every pause is filled, every quiet moment interrupted, every flicker of restlessness answered with stimulation?
We lose the opportunity to discover what emerges when we stop trying to control our experience.
And we become less comfortable with ourselves.
Which brings me to savasana.
For a few precious minutes, at the end of an asana practice, we are asked to lie still and do nothing.
As a yoga teacher, I’m aware of how unsettling this can be for many of us. Over the years, I’ve tried to alleviate that with music, with a guided meditation, with hands-on assists.
But now I wonder whether I’ve been doing more harm than good.
What if I stopped trying to direct the experience of savasana? What if I just left everyone alone in silence to experience whatever they’ll experience?
What if I told my students:
We don't have to force the mind to become quiet.
We don't have to eliminate every thought or manufacture a feeling of peace.
We don't even have to feel particularly relaxed.
The invitation of savasana is to simply BE.
Perhaps there is tension in the shoulders. Perhaps the mind is busy. Perhaps we feel peaceful for a moment, followed by a wave of restlessness.
All of it belongs.
In this way, savasana becomes more than a pose at the end of class. It becomes an opportunity to explore our relationship with stillness, boredom, and letting go of control.
So I ask . . .
Are you brave enough to be bored?