How to Stop Forcing and Start Flowing — A Lesson From Spinner Dolphins
Do you ever feel like you're always pushing?
Like if you just try harder, plan better, show up more, things will finally fall into place? Like being still feels dangerous, or lazy, or like giving up?
I know that feeling well. I live with it more than I'd like to admit.
But there was a season of my life when I didn't feel that way. When I moved through the world with an ease I've been trying to find my way back to ever since.
And the day I understood what that ease actually felt like, really felt it in my body, I was in the ocean off the northwest coast of O'ahu, with about 20-30 spinner dolphins swimming around me, underneath me, clicking their songs through the water and into my bones.
Let me tell you about that day.
The Last Week
It was fall of 2001. My last week in Hawaii.
I had spent six years there, four years studying Marine Science at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, then two more years working, living, breathing that island life. Hawaii wasn't just where I went to school. It was where I became myself.
And now I was leaving. Heading back to the U.S. mainland. My mom had flown out to help me make the trip home, which tells you something about how big this transition felt.
My friend suggested we spend one of those last days snorkeling on the northwest side of O'ahu. An area known for spinner dolphins.
I didn't need to be asked twice.
A Year of Watching From the Shore
Here's what you need to know about me and spinner dolphins.
For my senior thesis I had spent an entire year observing them — making land observations at two locations on the Big Island where they were known to come in and rest during the day.
A whole year. Watching them from the shore.
I had studied their behavior, their patterns, their movements. I had watched them spin and leap and move through the water in ways that made my chest ache with something I couldn't name. I had notebooks full of observations. Hours of watching.
But I had never been in the water with them.
So when my friend suggested this trip, I knew. This was the moment. My last week in Hawaii and I was finally going to meet them in their world, not just observe them from mine.
We Didn't Find Them
We drove up the coast. No dolphins.
We kept going. Still nothing.
Eventually we picked a spot, parked the car and made a decision. We were getting in the water anyway. The waves were rough getting out and my mom decided to stay on shore. Smart woman.
My friend and I swam out, found a spot to hang, took pictures of each other, enjoyed the view.
No dolphins.
We weren't searching. We weren't scanning the horizon or swimming in patterns or trying to make something happen. We were just — there. In the water. Present. Two people on one of their last days in a place they loved, choosing to be in it fully rather than spend it packing boxes.
And then.
They Just Arrived
All of a sudden … the dolphins showed up.
It felt like magic. Because it was.
About 20 to 30 of them, a few babies in the pod, coming in from the south side of the island. Moving as a unit. So connected to each other, so completely at home in the water and yet completely open to the fact that two humans were floating right there in their space.
Time stood still.
I remember feeling two things at exactly the same moment — completely calm and completely electric. Awe so full it left no room for anything else. No fear. No self consciousness. No wondering if I was doing it right or if they would stay or if I should move closer or hold still.
I was just there. Completely there.
They swam around us. Under us. In front of us. Their energy was embracing. That's the only word for it. Like being held by something ancient and alive and completely unbothered by the things that usually feel so urgent on land.
I felt their vibrations in my body. I heard their clicks through the water.
And then a mother swam close with her baby.
I cannot tell you what that did to me. That she trusted us enough to bring her baby near. That we had somehow, without trying, without forcing, without doing anything other than simply showing up and being present, earned that.
What I Understand Now That I Didn't Then
I've thought about that day many times since.
About the fact that we drove up the coast and didn't find them. That we could have turned around. That we got in the water anyway, with no guarantee of anything, and just — existed there.
And they came.
Not because we searched hard enough. Not because we planned the right route or arrived at the right time or did everything correctly. But because we stopped trying to make it happen and just showed up fully to what was already there.
That is flow.
Not passivity. Not giving up. Not sitting on the shore hoping something good drifts by.
Flow is showing up completely and then releasing the grip on how it has to look or when it has to arrive. It's the difference between swimming toward something and swimming with something. Between forcing the current and trusting it.
The dolphins didn't work to find us. They just moved, the way they always move and we happened to be there, still enough to receive them.
I think about that when I feel myself forcing again. When I'm pushing and planning and trying to make things happen through sheer effort and will.
The dolphins weren't forcing anything. They were just completely, fully, joyfully themselves. Moving through the water in exactly the way they were designed to move.
And in that ease, that naturalness, that complete absence of effort — they were magnetic.
What would it look like to move through your life that way?
The Magic Didn't End There
As we swam back to shore, huge smiles on our faces, cameras full of pictures. We spotted something else.
A Hawaiian monk seal. Swimming past with its head above the water, completely unbothered, completely sovereign in its world.
As if the ocean wanted to make sure we knew, this is what it looks like to be exactly what you are, exactly where you are, without apology or effort or performance.
I have carried that day with me ever since.
The dolphins. The mom and her baby. The monk seal. My mom standing on the shore watching from the land, mirroring exactly what I had done for a whole year, while I finally got to be in the water.
Full circle. All of it.
The Dolphin's Medicine
In my work with the Ocean Wisdom Keepers, the dolphin carries the medicine of flow.
Not because dolphins are just joyful and free, though they are. But because of what I witnessed that day. The way they moved as a unit, completely connected to each other and to the current, without a single moment of fighting the water.
They reminded me that ease is not the absence of movement. It's movement without resistance.
And for women who feel everything deeply — who have been carrying so much, holding so much, working so hard to manage a world that can feel overwhelming — the dolphin's medicine is permission.
Permission to stop fighting. Permission to move with what is already flowing. Permission to show up fully and trust that what is meant to find you, will.
A Practice for You
The next time you notice yourself forcing: pushing, planning, trying to control how something unfolds.
Stop. Take one breath.
Ask: what would it look like to move with this instead of against it?
You don't have to have the answer. Just asking the question creates a small opening. And sometimes a small opening is all flow needs to find you.
If the dolphin's medicine is calling to you, she is one of seven ocean guides waiting inside the Ocean Wisdom Keepers. A guided audio journey where she meets you in the water and takes you for a ride.
And if you're not sure where to begin, the Shoreline Release is free. A few minutes at the water's edge to set down what you've been carrying.
Stacy Stehle | Ocean Energy Guide & Founder of Ocean Energy Wellness
Stacy helps women release what they've been carrying and find their way back to themselves — guided by the wisdom of the ocean.
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