Why can’t we rest?

Inspiration for this blog comes from the book:  Big Magic, written by Elizabeth Gilbert

For SO much of my life I’ve felt or intuited or been told explicitly what I am supposed to do to keep myself on the roster of the “good girl” club.

Push, study, drive, grind. 

Our culture promotes hard work over most all things. 

Many things in Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic affirmed that for me, more degrees and more studying is NOT the way to move forward in my creative life. SO much of my energy as a woman has been directed consciously and non consciously toward being accepted and affirmed by a system that values the masculine.

Even in my caretaking as a wife and mother - it was about the product not about the process.  I was working rather than being. The message I heard implicitly and explicitly after building a family was  - you’re smart, you have so many great ideas, you should build a business, make a big impact.  

Translation:  keep working until you are even more exhausted. 

My connection to and practice of yoga nidra might literally have saved my life. 

After training as a Daring to Rest facilitator, I now know I will move in the direction of ease and flow while valuing my inner ideas and creativity. 

Is writing what is true and needs to be written by me a good enough place to start? 

It’s actually the ONLY place to start and the PERFECT place to start. 

To be in the middle and be with myself and all of my feelings and ideas seems wrong in the world’s ways - and yet in the way of rest - it seems so powerful and loving both to myself and to those I want to serve. 

So what does rest have to do with all of this? 

Well, until I saw clearly and took away some of my physical exhaustion and made a connection to the real me - the calm and sensible me - I just didn’t feel right sharing all that I felt and thought and dreamed about.

Now - after rest - I feel I’ve been brought to the core of myself and this awareness allows me to take Liz Gilbert’s advice and, “Just say what you want to say, then, and say it with all your heart.”