The Great Allowing

The Liberation of Doing Less and Trusting More

By Patty Nagle, LMHC, Grof Breathwork Facilitator

 

 

Dedicated to my dear mother, Joan Louise Nagle, who navigated the Greatest of The Great Allowing, passing on July 8, 2025, just after I completed this writing.

Mom, you were my inspiration, my anchor, and most of all, my beloved mother.

I love you to the moon and back.

 

 

MY STORY

 

What Is Healing?

 

Did you ever stop to ask yourself, “What is healing?”

 

As I considered writing this chapter, I asked myself, “How would I define healing?” The answer came quickly and clearly: Healing is any step I take that moves me toward wholeness. It’s anything that restores balance, increases my awareness of the aspects of myself that reside in the unconscious, and makes me a better human being.

 

The healing process can take many forms. It can be sudden and dramatic—a lightning bolt sparked by a life-threatening diagnosis, the death of a loved one, or the collapse of a cherished relationship. But healing can also unfold slowly, subtly, almost imperceptibly.

 

My healing is a long, spiraling journey toward wholeness. Only when I pause and look back do I realize how far I’ve come. I have healed; I’ve changed; I’m a different person; I’m more whole.

 

Persistent curiosity fuels my journey—an inner questioning about whether there might be more to life, more to being human, than what I was taught to believe. A thirst to learn and challenge limitations drove me, whether they were imposed by others or self-inflicted. Time and again, healing invited me to step beyond my comfort zone. After all, most transformation begins outside one’s comfort zone.

 

 

 

The Culture of Doing

 

To understand my path, you need to know a bit about how I was raised: I was encouraged to be a "doing machine." In my family of origin, doing more was rewarded, and stillness was frowned upon. Productivity equaled love. My mother, a woman whose approval I craved, was happiest when I was doing. It didn’t matter what I was doing, so long as I was doing something. And so, I became someone who tried harder, did more, and never paused to question if there was any other way.

 

Nothing illustrates my upbringing around the pressure to always be doing quite like this funny story.

 

During one of my mother’s visits to see me in Santa Fe, she drove me to work and picked me up later that day. On our ride home, in an attempt to make conversation, I asked her, “How was your day?”

 

She responded by listing all the things she did for me since we parted ways that morning.

 

Then I asked her, “How were the girls?” referring to my two dogs who stayed home with her.

 

“They’re good, but all they do is lie around.” It took me a moment to let what she just said sink in as she continued with her report. “So, I finally went over to them and told them to go outside and find something to do!”

 

Again, I had to let what she said sink in. After a few moments and in disbelief, I said, “You what?”

 

She replied, “I told them to get outside and find something to do because it’s not healthy for them to be lying around all day.”

 

By this time, I had started to feel a bit defensive. “Mom, that’s what dogs do!” I countered. “They have big fur coats, so they lie around especially when it’s hot out!”

 

It evoked a familiar feeling in my body of what I experienced growing up. That is what she constantly said to me and my three siblings: “Go out and find something to do, or I’ll find something for you to do!”

 

It hit me like a ton of bricks!

 

To this day, that story saves me years of trying to explain my mother to a therapist! I can now laugh at that story, and it always gets a good laugh when I tell it.

 

As the oldest of four, I took on the unofficial role of Mom’s best overachiever. I found a powerful channel for my energy in sports. I loved them, and I excelled. It also pleased my mother and garnered her attention because she was very athletic for a woman of her time.

 

As a young adult, I funneled my drive into running road races, which led to triathlons. By my early 30s, I completed six Ironman triathlons and ran marathons as “training runs.” I lived by the belief that “where there’s a will, there’s a way,” and with enough will, anything was possible. And it was, for a time.

 

Don’t get me wrong, this period was transformative. I learned that most limitations are illusions. I experienced firsthand the human potential to achieve, to endure, to grow. But over time, the constant striving left me drained. I was out of balance. I began to question the compulsion to push and prove. I longed for a change, though I didn’t yet know what form it would take.

 

I share my story because I suspect many people reach a similar point in their lives, feeling exhausted and out of balance. Let’s face it, our American culture values doing, knowing, controlling, and managing. My obsession was physical, but for someone else, it might have been their career, their body, or their children. 

 

Whatever it might be, we’re often left believing we need to make things happen, do more, and try harder. We need to manage other people, our bodies, our children, our own emotions, and perhaps even other people’s emotions. Often, feeling overwhelmed, we reach a tipping point.

 

A Tipping Point in the Desert

 

My tipping point came in the mid-1990s, when I participated in a modern-day vision quest: a four-day solo fast in the desert, hosted by Upaya, a Buddhist retreat center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. True to form, I approached it with grit and determination, intent on enduring and overcoming.

 

But something unexpected happened. The facilitators encouraged me to slow down, to relinquish the pursuit.

This opportunity wasn’t about doing more and pushing; in fact, that approach could be dangerous in such a context and make me a liability.

 

For the first time, I encountered the stillness of simply being. Alone in the wilderness, free of tasks and expectations, I began to listen. To notice. To breathe. To soften. By the end of my four-day solo, I didn’t want to come back; it felt like I had truly “come home.”

 

This experience was a turning point. Upon reflection, I can say it was my first experience of what I eventually referred to as, “The Great Allowing.”

 

I connected with my feminine essence—rooted in receptivity, openness, and presence—which felt like stepping into a more whole version of myself. The natural world, vast and quiet, mirrored back the presence I ignored in myself.

 

I started to realize that doing more and trying harder wasn’t the only way forward.

 

 

Rewiring from Within: Healing Through Expanded States of Consciousness (ESC) 

 

The sheer vastness and beauty of the Southwest tugged at something deep in me, and I felt compelled to move west. After leaving New England, the environment that shaped me, I questioned the "try harder" mentality at a deeper level. Seeking a new way of being, I was introduced to expanded states of consciousness (ESC) work through psychedelics and Holotropic (Grof) breathwork. These tools became essential to my healing.

 

In the field of psychedelic healing, there’s a concept known as the Default Mode Network (DMN). This refers to the deeply ingrained neural pathways that govern our beliefs, thoughts, relational patterns, and behaviors. These patterns often form early on in our lives as a way of adapting to the environment we’re in. Until we become aware of our DMNs, we usually stay stuck in those neurobiological ruts, making change difficult. This is the potential of ESC work: it can reveal what has been unconscious, and invites us into new ways of being.

 

Through ESC work, I became aware of my DMN: the compulsive doing, the self-management, the striving. My first taste of stillness, I experienced during my time in nature, awakened something in me.

 

ESC work invited me further into this space—to feel, to allow, to witness without needing to fix. I began to see the consequences of my lifelong need to control, manage, and push. I experienced those consequences in my body as tightness and a subtle hypervigilance.

 

The ESC work brought me to explore the concept of surrender and what that meant. My associations were strong; surrender implied failure, giving up, and losing.

 

But I was on to something. I began to sense a deeper intelligence guiding me—one that didn’t come from my mind or brain, but from a deeper place: the psyche. This knowing led me to the concept and practice of allowing.

 

Allowing carried none of the resistance that surrender evoked. It felt softer, more accepting to me.

 

As my awareness grew, so did my capacity to choose differently. I formed new neural pathways grounded more in trust, spaciousness, and presence. This shift opened a door to profound healing. Through allowing, I created space for those shifts. I permitted myself to rewire from the inside out.

 

 

The Practice of Allowing

 

In ESC work, I learned that healing arises when we remain open and receptive to whatever shows up. This was the exact medicine for my goal-oriented, driven personality. In allowing, I found balance.

 

Over time, the practice of allowing became central to my path. It emerged again and again in expanded states and during integration.

 

The more I allowed, the more I trusted. I experienced a freedom I never knew. I didn’t always have to be in control. I didn’t need to know everything. I could rest in something larger than myself.

 

Allowing showed me that presence is powerful. It taught me to meet each moment without forcing outcomes. It reminded me that healing doesn’t come from effort alone, but from surrendering to life’s natural unfolding.

 

As this healing process deepened, the name for what I experienced became clear: The Great Allowing.

 

The Practice of Allowing in Daily Life

 

You don’t need to engage in ESC work, such as psychedelics or breathwork, to begin allowing. Opportunities exist every day.

 

Perhaps it's at work, where you resist the urge to manage a situation and let it unfold instead. Maybe it's at home, where you give space to a partner or child to step into a new role. Perhaps it's with yourself, choosing to pause rather than push. 

 

These acts can empower you and others to step up in different ways of responding to a given situation. 

 

Allowing isn’t passive. It’s an active, conscious choice. It asks us to slow down, stay awake to our patterned way of being, and trust. It invites us to listen deeply, to stay awake and curious, and to befriend the unknown or unfamiliar.

 

This isn’t easy work. Most of us were taught that control is strength and productivity is virtue. But true strength often lies in restraint. And true freedom can come from surrender, or just allowing.

 

Living The Great Allowing

 

The Great Allowing isn’t a destination. It’s a practice, a return, a breath-by-breath commitment to presence. It challenges the deeply rooted belief that we must do more, manage outcomes, or know everything in advance.

 

When we allow, we enter the field of possibility. We discover the magic that emerges when we release control and open to what wants to unfold. In a culture that idolizes doing, allowing is a radical act.

 

So no, allowing doesn’t mean "doing nothing." It means recognizing the moments when doing less creates space for more. It means choosing trust over control, curiosity over certainty, and presence over performance.

 

For me, learning to allow is a powerful part of my healing, guiding me closer to a sense of wholeness. For you, it may be the first step into unknown terrain, full of mystery and possibility.

 

I invite you to join me in the unfolding, in the discomfort, in the grace—in the profound, life-changing practice of The Great Allowing.

 

 

Here’s to The Great Allowing and our capacity to trust in something greater than ourselves to support our individual and collective healing.