Do we still know how to stand and stare?

REFLECTION

Do we still know how to stand and stare?

On the growing interest in holistic wellbeing, and what it might be responding to.

By Izzy · September 2026 · 6 min read

Perhaps the growing interest in holistic wellbeing isn’t about people becoming more alternative.

Perhaps some of it is simply a response to lives that leave increasingly little room to pause, feel and reconnect.

I was talking to someone recently about whether there is a greater need for holistic therapies now than there used to be. I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

I’m not sure the need itself is new.

There is a poem by W. H. Davies, written more than a hundred years ago, that begins:

What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare.

So clearly, we’ve been struggling with being too busy for quite some time.

But I do wonder whether something about the way we live now has intensified it.

Life can feel incredibly squished

Work follows us home. Our phones fill the little gaps that used to be empty. We consume information almost constantly. We can sit beside someone we love while both looking at separate screens.

There are fewer natural pauses. And I sometimes wonder where, amongst all of that, we actually get to feel ourselves.

Not think about ourselves. Actually feel.

From the outside in

For a long time, I fixed myself from the outside in.

Regular haircuts. Nice clothes. Skincare routines. Trying to arrange life so that everything looked well from the outside, and genuinely enjoying it. Caring about how we look is part of being human, and looking after ourselves is a form of self-respect.

But what I noticed, gradually, is that no amount of outside attention seemed to actually change how I felt inside. I could arrive at a hair appointment tired and leave with better hair but the same tiredness. The exterior was maintained. The interior wasn’t really being touched.

What’s interesting is how easily we spend on the outside without questioning it, and how easily we hesitate when it comes to wellbeing. Wellbeing can feel frivolous, or self-indulgent, or unnecessary, in a way that a haircut somehow doesn’t. So we tend to reach for external substitutes. The next holiday. The next weekend away. The next thing that promises to reset us. The next moment worth posting about.

There’s nothing wrong with any of it. I love a good holiday. But some of us start to notice, over time, that no external thing quite delivers what an actual hour of quiet does.

I think that’s a very common experience, and one I meet often with clients. Not because there is anything wrong with looking after the outside, but because the two seem to run on separate tracks. External care shows up in the mirror. Internal care shows up in how we feel when we lie down at the end of the day.

And what I’ve noticed is that when we start to tend to the inside as well, the outside quietly benefits too. The face relaxes. The shoulders drop. The whole way we occupy a space seems to shift.

It isn’t outside versus inside. It’s just that most of us have been trained to work in one direction, and there is another one available.

As within, so without

There is an old principle at the heart of many holistic traditions, including Reiki. As above, so below. As within, so without.

The idea is quite simple. Our inner state and our outer world are not really separate. What is unattended on the inside eventually shows up on the outside. The tightness in the shoulders. The tiredness in the face. The impatience with people we love. The vague sense that something is off, even when everything on paper looks right.

The two are talking to each other, whether we know it or not.

What I’ve come to understand is that wellbeing, when it lasts, tends to move in both directions. Outside in, and inside out. And for me, and I think for a lot of us, the inside-out direction is the one we’ve had less practice with.

This all takes place in a world that keeps moving faster. A world that throws more and more demands at us, more things to buy, more versions of ourselves to become. Inside-out work isn’t one more item to add to the list. It is closer to the thing that shapes how we meet everything else on it. It is what makes a grounded life possible in a world that isn’t slowing down.

Maybe that’s part of what is drawing more people towards holistic work.

What the pull is towards

Perhaps that’s partly why there seems to be such a pull towards things that bring us back into the body and into the present.

Touch. Breath. Nature. Movement. Meditation. Energy work. Making something with our hands. Sitting around a table. Being outside. Spending time with another person without needing to do very much at all.

Things that are slower. More sensory. More human.

Perhaps we’re not searching for something new at all. Perhaps we’re trying to find our way back to things we’ve gradually made less room for.

Something quieter

I don’t think holistic therapies have all the answers. I don’t think anything does.

But what I do think is that the growing pull towards this kind of work isn’t really about escape. It isn’t about disappearing on a retreat, or fixing ourselves once and for all, or trading one external solution for another. It’s about a different kind of relationship with the days we are actually living. A quieter one. A more present one. A more grounded one.

Not thinking about ourselves. Actually feeling ourselves.

Which is why, a hundred years after W. H. Davies asked his question, it still feels rather relevant.

Do we still know how to stand and stare?