Less Is More - A Yearlong Reflection

by Shanti Pollacek

Slowing down and tending to my body with presence, love, and softness feels like the most nourishing balm. Growing up in a very masculine spiritual and cultural tradition that emphasized transcending the body, self-discipline, avoidance of pleasure, finding the fastest path to enlightenment, and the encouragement always to be giving and serving had accentuated some innate tendencies I held. I appreciate many of the gifts I received, and am grateful to be listening to the strong inner call to lean into a slower pace with greater softness, self-love, and enjoyment of the journey of life. 

Life truly is the best teacher. While it has been three years since I finished my master's program, the genius that is the universe has carefully curated experiences, readings, conversations, inner experiences, and aha moments to form the perfect curriculum. While the themes of rest, softness, and cyclical living have been present for the past five years, they came to the forefront these past six months. And sure to her word, life brought me the greatest teachers; namely, The Holy Well online learning space, a retreat at Sierra Hot Springs, the book Rest Is Resistance by Tricia Hersey, Ph.D., and the Rosen Method Bodywork training. During a day of rest and slowness, I sat down in a reclining chair with a hot cup of decaf coffee and began to extract the key takeaways from these experiences and reveal their underlying themes. The following reflection is the summary of this process. 

The Holy Well (formerly known as the Womb Room) is an online learning space for women to explore ancient wisdom, anatomy and female health, whole-person healing, and to find greater liberation, health, and community. I found this space in 2021 during COVID when learning and community began finding a presence online. After a few years of dabbling and completing a handful of self-paced courses, I dove into a yearlong training called Sovereign Cycles, which went deep into female health. While the practical content around menstruation, fertility, nutrition, and anatomy were profoundly empowering, the deeper takeaways rested in a new way of being. The instructors spoke about the importance of the ‘how’ over the ‘what. I do a lot of meaningful things in life (the ‘what), though they are often imbued with urgency, worry, and stress (the ‘how’). As Maya Angelou shared in one of her famous quotes, “At the end of the day, people won't remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel” (Goodreads). I reflected deeply on my impact on others as well as the state in which I tended to myself: cooking, eating, bathing, exercising, and taking supplements. I lived a very healthy life but the undertone of stress tainted it all and had the last word. 

We have a running joke in our household that whenever one of us adds the phrase “real quick”, we exchange it for “real slow”. Similarly, I have been mindful to be slow and present in the transitions: driving to work, eating meals, brushing my teeth, and waiting in line at the grocery store. It is in these little moments where old patterns of rushing and stress reveal themselves and can be shifted into new patterns of calmness and presence. Through the course, I also discovered a newfound awe for the miracle that is the body: the intelligence, the billions or possibly trillions of little things happening every second that I am unaware of. The knowledge I gained also invited a sense of sovereignty and the reclamation of what our ancient ancestors once knew before knowledge of the body was externalized to only medical professionals.

This theme of slowing down continued at a weekend retreat that the members of The Spiral Collective held at Sierra Hostprings in Sierraville, California. Upon envisioning the creation of the organization, all of us had spoken to the strong need to slow down and live life with greater presence and balance. It felt fitting that our first official meeting of the year took place in a place imbued with these qualities. Instead of discussing our ideas and projects in a conference room, we sat around the fireplace to envision what is possible through our individual and collective explorations. Just as spring emerges from the quiet of winter, big initiatives arise out of dreaming and a full inner well.

I was recently exposed to a revised metaphor that has changed the way I view giving and receiving. Instead of emptying and refilling our cups, the excess is what gets shared with others. In this sense, it is our responsibility to keep our cups full as a service to ourselves and our ability to show up fully for others and the world. Similarly, I have changed the notion of what it means to do one’s best. For me now, it is not what I can do at the expense of my well-being, but what I can achieve while also caring for myself. Practically, I now block out time on my calendar for the practices that support my well-being; namely, meditation, exercise, dance, reading, time alone, and time with loved ones. Instead of activities that get squeezed in after work is accomplished, they become as important as the meetings and responsibilities. 

These takeaways and new ways of being emerged from the tangible experience of slowing down at the hot springs. The drastic contrast between how I felt before versus after highlighted how much stress I hold in my body on a daily basis. This experience became a reference point for what it feels like to be in homeostasis, and a compass to help me correct when I am led down the stressful path again. With years of being programmed into the productivity and ‘eternal spring’ mindset that is ingrained in capitalism, it has been challenging to shift my fundamental habits to honor the value of rest in the cycle of life. I picked up a book during the hot springs retreat that took the meaning of rest to another level. 

I was acquainted with the work of the scholar Tricia Hersey, but had not had a formal introduction until reading her book Rest Is Resistance. Rooted in a social justice framework, her work draws from the experiences of the author's ancestors who were enslaved in the early United States. With no option for them to rest, Hersey reconciles this past by reclaiming her right to rest and dream. To her, rest is not just sleep, but a time to dream, enjoy simply ‘being’, and care for our souls. Hersey (2022) shares that, “rest is radical because it disrupts the lie that we are not doing enough. It shouts: ‘No, that is a lie. I am enough. I am worthy now and always because I am here’” (p.8). Her words speak to a core limiting belief of not being enough, and to compensate, working hard to prove oneself. As many of us have discovered, the underlying feeling of unworthiness does not disappear and instead requires a deeper approach. Tied into this unworthiness has been the tendency to rush, worry, and live life from an exhausted state. Hersey poses the wonderings of “the possibilities waiting for us on the other side of exhaustion”, that “urgency is a myth that preys upon your fears about the future”, and that “rest is soul care because rest deliberately pays close attention to the deepest parts of you”. The programming of capitalism goes deep, but even from one weekend of slowing down, I can feel the truth in Hersey’s statements, and yearn to fully know them from experience.

One of the core aspects of The Spiral Collective is the idea that true change in the world begins with oneself. I have a dream of offering workshops and programs for young woman, supporting them to slow down, follow their inner compass, honor their innate worth, be their own friends, know their bodies, and live life with balance. While I have the training and curriculum, I have yet to truly embody these qualities myself, and I know that one’s example is the greatest teacher for others. Our first-person narrative research begins with the self but the possible implications down the line are huge. How might changing ourselves impact our offerings to the planet? Tricia Hersey speaks to this in her argument that the act of resting disrupts harmful systems of capitalism and is in itself, an act of liberation. Taking time to pause in the middle of a busy day may seem insignificant in the moment, but over time and across cultures and generations, it is an act that claims a brighter, more balanced, and loving future for ourselves, each other, and the planet.

The final tool that I will share along this theme of rest, slowing down, and balance, is the Rosen Bodywork Method created by Marion Rosen in 1982. At the core of Rosen is presence, awareness, curiosity, relationship, and cooperation with the process. In a way, it is simple, yet sometimes the most profound things are innately simple (not necessarily easy, though). This past year, I participated in a three-day Rosen training. We explored anatomy, the principles of Rosen, and took turns giving and receiving sessions using massage tables. The touch is light but effective. I received a session from one of the instructors, Kate Oshea, in which I felt energy moving in my throat, sacrum, and head. I felt both ends of my spine clearly and was aware of my body collaborating with Kate’s hands to release old emotions and tension. At the end, lyrics from a song floated into my mind, “I will be gentle with myself and hold myself like a newborn baby child”, and my eyes filled with tears in both the loving homecoming to myself and the grief of spending so many years being my own critic. 

My biggest takeaway from Rosen is that working with the intelligence of life is so much more effective (and easy) than trying to control our way through healing and living. It is the paradox that doing less can actually have a greater effect. I am carrying this insight into my work as well. What if I could do less but have a greater impact? What if taking time to rest and be allowed my offering to the world to have greater potency and require less time? What if I could heal my body through the power of presence, love, and listening instead of rigid protocols? Bringing in one more nugget of wisdom from Tricia Hersey (2022), let’s “let our bodies be their own GPS devices leading us to our natural state” (p. 123), which highlights the body’s innate ability to heal.

I graduated from my master’s almost four years ago with a ten-point plan, but have since become enchanted by the unknown. While I am not where I thought I’d be, I am led by the question, ‘How good can it be?’. My years of chronic health conditions and burnout have become my greatest teachers and without which I may never have discovered The Holy Well, The Rosen Method, Tricia Hersey, and the incredible power of slowing down. Honoring my innate worth through tending to my body and being gentle with myself is one of my new spiritual practices and something I want to be passed down through the generations. I have numerous big ambitions, but in the meantime, dreaming calls, and I am excited to discover all that awaits on the other side of exhaustion. May life be sweet.

References

Ashé, Qiddist. “The Holy/Well: For Women’s inside-out Liberation.” The Holy/Well: For
          Women’s Inside-Out Liberation, theholywell.mykajabi.com/. Accessed 25 Jan. 2026. 

Hersey, Tricia. Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto. Hachette Audio / Blackstone, 2022. 

Rosen, Marion. “Rosen Method.” Berkeley Center,
          www.rosenmethod.com/rosen-method/marion-rosen. Accessed 18 Dec. 2025.