'Doing nothing' isn’t 'no thing doing'

I’m realising how I tend to concretise ‘things’, for example my ‘self’; and how freeing it is to see ‘things’, including, my ‘self’, as processes. This really clicked with me when reading Loch Kelly where he explained ego-identification as a ‘selfing process’¹. For a long time, I’ve been pondering how easily I turn processes into ‘entities’ (things); a process I’ve nicknamed ‘entitifying’.

A particular area where I continue to do this is when I'm practicing a ‘doing nothing’ meditation. I realise I have been conceptually seeing ‘doing nothing’ as an empty state, and almost trying to make it such – ‘doing something’, in order to ‘do nothing’.

This ‘doing something’, in order to ‘do nothing’ is something I came across in my work as teacher of the Alexander Technique. In order to encourage students not to reinforce what was unhelpful, we’d ask them to ‘do nothing - as they understood doing’.  Commonly, like me before them, they would ‘do something’ to try to ‘do nothing’. The something was either a ‘tightening’ or a ‘collapsing’. They were doing their idea of ‘doing nothing’.

Returning to the ‘doing nothing’ meditation: I realise that I have been doing something similar – subtly trying to stop ‘things’ from happening, to produce ‘no ‘thing’ doing’, a sort of frozen absence. When I manage to refrain from this thoughts, sounds, sensations etcetera carry on because they are not blocked – I’m not interfering; I’m doing nothing – that is to say, not latching onto whatever is emerging in awareness. However, ‘doing nothing’ isn’t ‘no ‘thing’ doing’. Things are happening, but I am out of the way. I experience glimpses of this, but I sense it’s a bit easier written about than reliably allowed in practice!

Jane Saunderson 2 December 2025

¹Loch Kelly (2015) SHIFT INTO FREEDOM Pub. Sounds True. page 156.