Can You Optimize Gentleness? A Somatic Poem

This is not a motivational poem. It is a somatic provocation. Eight questions. Each one takes the language of hustle culture — optimize, grind, hack, hustle, invest, scale, dominate, launch — and turns it toward the most neglected territory in your life: your inner world, your body, your emotional depth, and your presence.
In this episode, Ana Mael — somatic trauma therapist, war survivor, and founder of the Somatic Trauma Recovery Center — reads an original poem that stops you before your mind catches up.
It asks what happens when the same relentless energy you give to your career, your productivity, and your financial portfolio is finally — deliberately, even aggressively — turned toward gentleness, rest, kindness, and wonder.

Transcript

Can you optimize gentleness? Toward the stranger inside of you. Can you grind softness toward the inner judgment glued inside your mind? Can you hark a rust? Toward the fear that drives you to maximize. Can you hustle kindness? Toward the enduring body. Can you invest in your emotional portfolio as you did in your financial one? Can you scale curiosity? Toward your abandoned presence. Can you dominate wonder? Over apathy. Can you launch nourishment? Toward the planet. Let's pause here. And let it sink in. I will reread the poem at the end of this podcast as well. I want to sit with you inside what it's asking and what is asking us is to observe our culture and what I'm observing is another craze and this is couple years ago we had and we still have self-help craze where we are seeing how we are raising nations of narcissistic people with the aim to get better and getting better turns into self-absorbed nation where we are lacking our neighbor to die There he lost the sense of helping others. And this is the new craze, The craze to need to optimize. How you breathe, How you walk, How you talk, How you not only work but how you heal. So I really want us to reflect here and to ask ourselves, What kind of culture? They're just people. To optimize everything. Accept their humanity. And we need to bring up more and more. Of cultural critique. Civilization Critique Because what's happening, We have developed extraordinary sophistication around external achievement. While remaining underdeveloped. In our relationship with Being. And I'm not referring to self-help craze and building generations of narcissists. No. I'm talking about relationships. With our own humanness. Because what's happening, Just look around. What's our political climate? What's our environmental climate? Where is our moral climate? We are building the nations and cultures. Who knows how to optimize, Scale, Maximize, Dominate, Invest, Launch, Disrupt, Accelerate, And yet. . . They are struggling and forgetting how to cultivate gentleness, Rest, Kindness, Curiosity, Presence, Nourishment. Wonder. All what brings our authenticity into our living that doesn't mean This is not. For plans, For achievements, For ambitions, For projects. But then we only see one side. Pandemic. Urgency to optimize. Here's the question I really would like you to ask yourself. Why is every human capacity expected to justify itself through productivity. If you as a human don't have capacity to produce, To monetize. To constantly improve, To constantly optimize. Means you're not good human enough, You don't have any human value, And what you're teaching Young adults. Teenagers. Who are living under enormous amount of expectation and pressure. Because if you're looking around us, Everything is a tool, Everything has a means. And yet… Nothing remained sacred in itself. In being. Because look how you're living now and what's happening on social media with influencers. I really would love to know. All the influencers who are promoting and preaching Constant optimization of tools lessens this. Because what they are teaching right now is Rest becomes recovery for productivity. Nature becomes a resource. Relationships become networking. Learning becomes career advancement. Movement becomes fitness metrics. And presence becomes performance enhancement. And then even meditation becomes optimization. Now when we meditate, We need to optimize. Even now people who are coming to therapist office. They feel like they need to optimize. Their trauma healing. Go on social media. See the main buzzwords. See the headlines. It's you need to transform, You need to optimize, You need to grind, You need to hack, You need to hustle, You need to invest, You need to scale, You need to dominate, And then you need to launch. And then you need to repeat everything again and again, Every week, Every month, Every day. And the language we are feeding ourselves, Our psyche. Is the language of startups, Capitalism. Social media, Productivity culture, Personal branding. And then what happens? And then what happens with this human, You? Who becomes a project. A life that becomes a business, A self that becomes a performance. A body that becomes an ascent. What you need to optimize a relationship that becomes a through section. We are connecting with people through the lens. Of seeing instant benefit. Now your soul, Your heart becomes a productivity problem. So we need to ask ourselves, What in the capacities we use to build a world? Were directed toward cultivating being. Not success, Being. Not performance being. Not achieve might, Be. Being we are losing the quality and sense of being and then from that place Let's perform. Let's create. Let's achieve. AND is missing. There is no balance anymore. There is no this being, Because if you think, Being means. Going to the retreat. To optimize your spirituality. Really? That's not being. So we need to make a distinction between having and being, Or doing and being. Because there is a big sense of something is missing. I'm doing everything so hard. I'm doing everything what's in my capacities, Plus more. I know how to optimize my calendar. I know how to optimize my portfolio. I know how to optimize my body. I know how to optimize the business. But I don't know how to sit quietly. With myself, With my feelings. There is a pandemic of restlessness and pandemic of apathy and this is what I can see in the office over and over again. So there is a deep imbalance. In our culture nowadays, In the planet. It's not only here. I'm in Canada or U. S. Where most of my listeners are. It's a global issue. We need to critique. There is an episode about critical thinking. We need to start to develop more and more critical thinking. Because we need to ask ourselves, We need to start asking the questions. We've live here seeing now productivity as identity. Achievement is a word. Growth is the highest value. Efficiency is wisdom. Those young adults. In the early 20s. There is so much pressure there at the breaking point. They're the breaking point and that's very serious. And what if you are not and you don't want to? To produce, To achieve, To grow, To be efficient. 24-7, All the time or ever? What that means, You're not a valuable human being? And then we need to ask ourselves, How can our life be organized around presence? Relationship. Relationship means I can relate, Not compare, But I can relate to this human next to me. How can we organize our healing? Of our nourishment. How can we organize? Or life business around curiosity. And not because those things produce results, But because they're innately good for us. They keep us balanced. They keep us in prefrontal cortex. They keep our nervous system regulated. In balance, There is a fluidity and buoyancy in our body when we are achieving those places. We completely dismissed. Because of cultural craze around optimization. And again, I'm not saying don't do that. Doing only this, Only optimizing. Is the quickest way to become sick. To live a life isolated and lonely. To start having panic attacks. To start feeling depressed. I can see this over and over and I'm talking this what I'm seeing. In the therapist's office with the clients. Case consults, Workshops, Every therapist that confirmed this. And we have this scale to cultivate the world around us. While neglecting the condition required to fully live to rehab it. This world. We know how to build a life. But we are forgetting how to live one. And this is not anti-ambition. It is asking a bishop. To turn around. And face what has been running from being. Being humanness, Rest. Curiosity. Presence. Relationship. Gentleness, Nourishment. And as you move through your week, I invite you to notice where your energy naturally goes. Toward urgency to achieve push forward. Optimize, And then gently ask yourself, What would happen? If I directed some of that same attention. Toward Presence. Kindness. Pause. Rest. Not because they make you more productive. And not because with this you will become now more productive and more optimized. Not because they improve your performance, But because they are part of what makes a life worth living. I will read poem one more time. And little quills. Until next time, Be gentle with yourself. Can you optimize gentleness toward the stranger inside of you? Can you grind softness? Toward the inner judgment, Good inside your mind. Can you hark her voice? Toward the fear that drives you to maximize. Can you hassle kindness? Join the enduring body. Can you invest in your emotional portfolio as you did in your financial one? Can you scale curiosity? Toward your abandoned presence. Can you dominate wonder? Over apathy. Can you launch nourishment toward the planet?

Reviews

This is not only the most important message on Insight Timer. It's the most important message on the internet, for the planet.