Resting is something many of us have difficulty with and yet it is so essential. Our lives and bodies get very messed up when we don’t do enough it. There is resting with a book, resting while listening to music or resting by looking at a movie. But rest that is simple rest without anything added is rest for its own sake. It is something important to develop as we age. To rest in simple being is supreme.
Phrases posted on Facebook, March 2018
There are so many ways to rest, anything from the few moments when we close our eyes and take a deep breath to a 16 hour sleep marathon that was a long time in coming and very much needed. When we watch animals we see how smart they are about taking a rest. I am going to study how ducks rest so I can learn to tuck my head under a wing and just float.
The body is always at least three seconds behind the mind, so in a sense we are always catching up unless we learn to pause between things and take mini rests so that we can move on to the next thing feeling more all of a piece. Learning to do the mini rests in our speed society is no small task!! We will, however, last longer and also be much kinder to each other.
We’ve all heard the phrase I rest my case. That is said when all the argument and evidence about an issue have been presented. Maybe we don’t rest our cases until we have done what we could from our point of view. Isn’t it then that outcome is not up to us? Isn’t it then we must let go and rest?
At any moment things are the way they are whether we like it or not. If we feel restless we are fighting with time. One small, conscious move whether mental, emotional or physical in the right direction for us makes time a friend again.
From primitive times our awareness was hard wired to watch out for what might threaten our survival. That instinct is still in us. It makes us restless at a deep level. To daily embrace whatever is right in our world even the tiniest of things helps give that instinctive fear a little respite.
There are unflappable people who seem, at least on the surface, to be rested as they deal with one thing after the other. Perhaps their secret is not worrying about what is next, but allowing themselves instead to be carried by the unknown.
It’s important to push when we care about an issue or a project, but continual pushing doesn’t get us all the results we want. It is a paradox that giving things a rest opens new insights, creativity and new ways of doing things.
The transition from winter to spring is one of the hardest transitions on our bodies, more so than from fall to winter. We don’t realize how much we need extra rest. A snow day can be an opportunity for that.
Here’s a good R E S T formula:
Remember to be grateful as much of the time as you can.
Eat well.
Sleep when tired.
Think well of yourself and others.
We are thinking all the time whether we know it or not. If we could imagine a place of ease, of heart-welcome and learn to dwell there in thought, we would know soul rest, which is the very best kind.
Maybe we all need little signs on our daily travels that say “Rest Stop . . .1/4 mile.”
We whiz by and skip the lovely invitation to do nothing, be nothing, go nowhere and so enter the haven of being.
Blood pressure. What is our resting pulse? What is it to live heart-fully, to breathe, eat, work, and sleep in right measure? Do we hold our lives dear, love them the rest they need?
