#135: Elena Brower
How to Hold Less
Hi! New here? I've spent the last 20 years at the intersection of behavior change research and coaching. On The Uplifters Podcast, we share diverse stories of trailblazing, change-making women who are doing big, brave things in the second half of their lives, and showing us how we can too!
Listen to This If...
You’re exhausted from the pace of your life
You’re in midlife and feeling the pull toward something slower, simpler, more true
You parent or partner with someone and want to learn how to stop making their moods your responsibility
You’re curious about Nonviolent Communication
You feel like you’re holding more than you can carry
This Week’s Featured Uplifter:
“Never before had a mind come to a more majestic halt.”
Early in our conversation, Elena Brower read these words from the 18th-century German philosopher, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg.
A majestic halt. Not a crash, not a breakdown, not even a pause. A halt so profound it deserves the word majestic. It made me think of the Grand Canyon.
Elena found her majestic halt in Santa Fe five and a half years ago, after decades of keeping pace with New York City’s relentless rhythm (an energy still pumps through her veins, she admits). She’s the yoga teacher you might know from her legendary classes on Glo, or as the best-selling author of Art of Attention and the poetry collection Softening Time. But now, in this chapter, she’s painting on larger canvases, studying Zen and training for chaplaincy, and launching her latest book, Hold Nothing, about the radical act of letting go.
Her story will feel familiar to so many of us in midlife: getting older slows us down, not because we’re losing capacity, but because we become more intentional about how we use and value time.
“I feel like I have longer days when I move more slowly.”
Her Courage Practice
Elena’s courage is rooted in Nonviolent Communication (NVC), which has taught her to give empathy to herself before asking for it from anyone else.
Here’s how it works: When her teenage son Jonah would ignore her or act obnoxious during car rides to school, Elena used to take his behavior personally. She needed him to acknowledge her, be kind to her, and take care of her emotional state. Through studying NVC with Judith Hanson Lasater, she learned a four-step internal process:
Observation (facts only, like a snapshot): “Jonah was silent in the car”
Feelings (name 3-5 specific emotions): “I felt sad, frustrated, and lonely”
Needs (identify what wasn’t met): “My needs for connection, respect, and kindness weren’t met”
Self-empathy (the crucial shift): “How human of me to feel this way”
This entire dialogue happens internally, silently. Before any external communication. Suddenly, what she thought she needed from her son becomes something she can give herself. When we stop needing others to take care of our emotional state, we paradoxically receive more care. Fewer plates for everyone to juggle. More space for genuine connection.
3 Ways She Shows Us How to Build Our Courage Capital
1. Let the tear in your eye be your truth meter. Elena’s writing process is simple but uncompromising: nothing is done until there’s a tear forming in the corner of her eye. Not the comfortable truth, not the impressive truth, not even the helpful truth. The truth. The one that makes you vulnerable, that reveals the story you’d rather keep hidden (like how her family would say they loved each other at the dinner table and then treat each other like garbage, creating cognitive dissonance that she had to compartmentalize for years). This standard meant her book took twice as long to finish, but it also meant every section carries real weight. What would change if you made truth, the kind that brings tears, your measure of what’s ready to share?
2. Practice the art of taking things off your plate, not adding more. Elena’s goal isn’t to do more, achieve more, or even help more people. It’s to keep removing commitments that don’t serve her space of genius. She’s becoming ruthless about filtering out people who encourage her to do more and surrounding herself with those who celebrate her doing less. Who are those people for you?
3. Write down the stories that shaped you, then let them go. Elena’s book Hold Nothing required her to mine personal stories. Writing them down wasn’t about steeping in the difficulty (she’s clear about that). It was about retroactive processing. The courage isn’t in the remembering alone, but in the willingness to look back, honor what happened, and then let go. What stories are you ready to release?
Resources & References
Elena’s Website with links to her books, tour schedule, and so much more
The Waste Books by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Lift Her Up
Support Elena’s Work:
Attend one of her book tour events. Let me know it you’ll attend the event at The Strand. I’ll be there with
Purchase Hold Nothing and share it with women in your life who are juggling too many plates
Follow her work on Substack for intimate reflections and poetry
Listen to the Practice You podcast
Elena Nominates:
, Co-Founder of The Twenty Six, facilitator, mentor, creator, and author of The Quiet Teachers.XO,
Aransas
Listen to my full conversation with Elena on The Uplifters Podcast.
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