Moving From Devotion

let go of "the work"

Recently, someone asked me, “Does healing have to feel like work?”

My answer: No…it can be gentle…

In many wellness spaces it’s common to hear, “you have to do the work” or “I’m working on myself.” The language we use matters. It solidifies ideas in the mind, but even more importantly, it holds an energy, which has an associated feeling.

For me, “work” carries a tone of striving; of needing to improve or correct. It feels like a push in my body. It’s built on a subtle assumption that something is wrong. Even the phrase, “you have to do the work” centers something outside of oneself: a goal or standard pulling us out of our own center of gravity. Consider that maybe we’re already working (holding jobs, families, homes). Staying in overdrive and centering productivity for extended periods of time is what’s often leaving us feeling dysregulated and disconnected from ourselves. Perhaps what we really need is to slow down, soften, and consider…

What if healing isn’t something we do so much as something we allow?

What if it's not about efforting, but about listening?

What if it’s not about improvement, but about inquiry and growth?

What if it’s about pausing and putting down the grasping and external perception maintenance, and simply being oneself?

What if transformation isn't about working on yourself, but rather being in relationship with yourself?

Moving From Devotion

I’m more interested in moving from devotion, a soft vow from the heart…a source point that offers far more energy for action than the mind and its ideas of what “the work” is. To move from the heart we have to have a relationship with that dimension of ourselves, which points to the nature of healing itself.

Devotion isn’t about striving or achieving. It’s a way of being. A quiet, steady orientation toward something you care deeply about. It’s a love that expresses itself in presence, attention, and continuity. To be devoted is to build a deep relationship with what matters most. Whether it's to a practice, a path, a person, a garden, a place, an animal, or your own being. It’s less about discipline, and more about intimacy.

To be devoted to yourself is to know yourself well enough to understand what nourishes you, what regulates you, what re-centers you. It’s the kind of relationship where you listen, attune, and respond. Here’s the beauty: when your devotion to yourself deepens, your care for others and the world becomes less extractive and more regenerative. Because you’re not (re)acting from depletion. You’re moved by something deeper, something resourced and rooted in care. As you tend to yourself, you tend to the world, and that care loops back, nourishing you in return.

It’s Beyond Discipline

People often reflect that I’m very disciplined. The truth is, I’m not. I don’t follow a specific workout routine. I’ve let go of a specific morning sequence in exchange for something more intuitive and dynamic, yet still rooted in an intention to care for my body and spirit. Disciplining myself like a militant teacher into action has historically led to burnout. At some point after a seemingly powerful start, I become exhausted and unmotivated, dropping the goal or practice entirely.

It’s easy to confuse devotion with discipline. Both imply consistency, a form of commitment. But the energy behind them are fundamentally different. Discipline is often born of willpower and control. It’s an attempt to force or override; to shape oneself into something “better.” Devotion arises from love. It’s a soft and steady returning, not because you have to, but because you desire to. Because something in you longs to be close and connected to something beyond yourself; something in you wants to feel love.

Discipline can burn us out when it’s disconnected from care. Devotion, even when it requires effort, replenishes. It has space for wobble and imperfection. Ebbs and flows of energy. Pauses and rest. When we move from devotion, healing becomes less about fixing what’s broken, and more about honoring what’s true.

What You’re Devoted To Shapes You

We are always in devotion to something. Whether consciously or not, our time, energy, and attention are oriented toward something: particular values, desires, or fears, which take shape through things we accumulate, relationships, jobs, homes. Some people are devoted to performance, productivity, or approval. Others to control, security, comfort, or escape. And still others to truth, beauty, freedom, or love. The object of our devotion shapes our experience of life.

For me, it’s truth and beauty. Being honest with myself about the true desires of my heart meant going through a very uncomfortable process of letting go of control and security. The way I moved through the discomfort was to find beauty in the unraveling. The more I let go, the more I ultimately experienced what I value and desire most. Today, I find myself on the other end of the spectrum of burn-out: vitality. I wake up rested. I move with an abundance of energy. Because I’m sourced from my heart, which is connected to a vast reservoir of energy much beyond “me.”

When we bring awareness to what we are currently devoted to and ask ourselves whether it truly nourishes us, we reclaim the ability to choose and move towards our deepest desires. We get to reorient our attention, our care, and our commitments toward what is life-giving. Toward what we want to shape and be shaped by.

An Invitation

Living devotionally is an act of reclamation. It’s a return to what’s alive, present, and real. In a world that constantly reflects and rewards speed, separation, and striving, devotional living invites us back into rhythm; into relationship. It slows us down enough to feel our bodies, our breath, the earth beneath our feet. Healing naturally emerges as a byproduct of being in right relationship with self, with others, and the natural world. Practices like prayer, breath, nature connection, creativity, ritual, and rest center attunement over achievement.

I’m not saying that the path of healing won’t have moments of discomfort that require endurance. I’m offering a reframe: when we’re moved by devotion rather than driven by pressure, we’re more resourced to stay with the discomfort and approach it as something to be with, rather than conquer. Devotion allows us to meet what’s hard with softness. Endurance comes by deepening our capacity for presence, rather than bracing. Within this approach, healing becomes less about surviving the pain, and more about expanding the inner space through which these experiences can move.

What if you stopped trying to work on yourself and instead, turned toward yourself with devotion?

What if healing didn’t require fixing, but simply contacting yourself and listening?

What if you didn’t need to become someone better, but to remember someone; someone that already lives deep inside?

You don’t need to push harder. You can simply return, gently. Return to make space to hear the quiet heartbeat that synchronizes your life into wholeness.

And with each beat, begin again, and again.

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