When Strength Stops Being About Effort
I’m writing this from a wooden lodge, surrounded by tall trees.
I’m on my own.
Quiet.
Taking space.
Not as a retreat or an escape — but because something in me needed room to breathe.
Over the past week I’ve been teaching, experimenting with technology, and learning how to work from different places. There’s a strange mix of freedom and fear in that. Will the WiFi hold? Is the lighting good enough? Will this actually work?
Practical questions — yes.
But also deeper ones.
What happens when you step into something before it’s fully formed?
For years, I held a very clear intention: to build a business and a life that felt supportive rather than draining.
That intention hasn’t changed.
What has changed is my awareness of the container I was trying to build it in.
There are only so many hours in a day.
Only so many people you can fit into one room.
Only so many evenings you can give away before something starts to tighten.
For a long time, I tried to stretch those limits instead of questioning them. I tried to be more available, more flexible, more accommodating.
It looked like dedication.
It felt like contraction.
The field was too small — and I didn’t want to admit it.
Letting Go Isn’t Always Gentle
We often talk about “letting go” as if it’s a soft process.
Sometimes it isn’t.
Sometimes the old structure simply stops working. Not as punishment — but as information.
That’s been my experience this past year. Things that once felt solid began to feel heavy. Identities I’d built with care started to feel restrictive. I realised I’d been holding onto something that had already done its job.
Not because it was wrong.
But because I’d outgrown it.
Rethinking Strength
This has made me rethink what strength actually is.
Strength isn’t always about pushing forward or holding everything together. Sometimes it’s about noticing when effort has turned into bracing.
Sometimes strength is choosing space.
Choosing honesty.
Choosing to feel, even when feeling slows things down.
I realised I hadn’t been feeling my future for a while. I’d been managing it. Planning it. Containing it.
But feeling — inconvenient as it is in a productivity-driven world — is often what tells us where we need to go next.
Making Room for What Wants to Arrive
I don’t have all the answers yet.
What I do know is this: when you create space, things start to reorganise themselves. Insight arrives from unexpected places. Old problems lose their urgency. New possibilities begin to feel less abstract.
Nothing has to be forced.
Sometimes the most meaningful shifts happen not because we tried harder — but because we stopped gripping.
If you’re in a season where things feel tight, effortful, or overly managed, it might not be a sign to push more.
It might be a sign to let the field get bigger.
A Quiet Question to Leave You With
You don’t need to respond to this anywhere.
Just notice:
Where in your life has strength become effort instead of support?
That noticing alone can change a lot.
If any of this resonates, know that this way of working with space, strength, and steadiness isn’t something I only write about.
It’s the foundation of the practice community I’ve been building — FireWoven — where yoga is approached as a way of living rather than something to optimise or perform.
There’s no rush to arrive anywhere.
Just a place to practise, return, and let things unfold in their own time.