Conscious Rest And Regeneration - Slow Talk

Listen to this when you are tired, overwhelmed or need do relax deeply, melt into your support and contemplate your ideas and patterns around rest. There are a few gentle tips on how to create healthier rhythm of recreation in your life. Get cozy and relaxed, make notes and share your experience in the comments.

P.S. Thanks to Sara Kurfeß for making this picture available.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to this talk about conscious rest in its different forms,

Retreat,

Regeneration,

Recreation.

We are going to talk about how and when we enter the state of rest,

Which motions of energy we observe during this state,

Do we look back at our life or do we look forward in anticipation and also the transcendent effect of rest when approached consciously.

So let us start with this question.

How do I enter the state of rest?

Let's reflect.

Think about the patterns and ideas around rest in your life.

Do you rest when you are completely exhausted and there is no power left in you for anything but to crash and wait until you have some more energy to go on?

Or do you rest consciously,

Proactively even?

Do you have kind of predictive maintenance of your energy system in place?

Yeah,

It is all fine as it is,

But the awareness is key.

So let's maybe recalibrate ourselves by an affirmation.

I respect my natural rhythms.

I respect my needs to refill the energy.

I nurture my system.

We can take a breath in and out.

And from a non-judgmental place,

Let's warm up into this contemplative conversation by just recapping,

Categorizing the ways that we rest from the smallest to the largest.

So the smallest rest is not even our daily sleep.

It's a moment of a break during our day when we just stop for a while,

Look out of the window,

Have a cup of some refreshing drink.

These moments are droplets of rest that can reset your system and prepare you to be more enduring within your day so that you don't feel completely exhausted in the evening.

You can take such little breaks and they're very pleasant and they can be sociable or a social occasion to have a coffee together with your colleague or just smile and hug your partner or your close person when having a home office together,

Any type of little pleasures of life.

And then a larger form of rest is a nap or a short sleep and other forms of daily activities that are restful.

So it can be yoga when it is relaxing,

It can be a walk,

It can be sitting down and reading a book,

Journaling,

All those practices that we do and savor and we come into them as into an oasis,

A harbor,

A shelter to regain our strength to come back to ourselves.

And these practices don't take up a lot of time.

They can be a 15-minute practice in the morning,

In the afternoon.

And then of course we have a good night's sleep.

Hopefully,

I wish that upon all of you and this is the backbone of our resting system that we all should work on and we need to observe it and when we have trouble sleeping we need to calibrate,

Regulate,

Try,

Don't give up on your sleep.

And of course we have a cycle of our weeks,

Months,

Years when we take days off from our working regime.

We may have weekends if we live cyclically in accordance to our biological clock,

Especially for women.

We may have a monthly rest and reset and of course we have some festivities during the year when we step back from our activities and allow ourselves to be joyful and unproductive.

This is a healthy pattern of rest in our lives and when we are conscious about that,

This alone,

Just a normal rhythm of life of an average person can sustain us and help us avoid burnout.

But sometimes we are tired somehow in a larger way,

On a larger scale,

Almost existentially.

We are tired of our way of life and then we need a larger rest and it can be a retreat,

A pilgrimage,

A sabbatical.

And this is another point of reflection for you.

Have you ever taken any activity like this?

Maybe even a vacation that felt so very special that you could say that it was a retreat or a pilgrimage for you.

Have you ever taken a larger break from your work?

Was it voluntary or was it due to circumstances?

And this is how it works just practically.

But what about energetically?

The state in which we enter any of those types of activities is very important.

A healthy way to enter the state of rest would be to identify that some certain cycle is coming to an end and you need to unpack it.

You need to step back.

That's why retreat has this name,

This word.

When we retreat,

We make a backward motion.

So we have been going forward.

We have been productive.

The light within us has been growing and shining and we have been giving.

And now we understand that the cycle has reached its peak and gone past its peak and it's already the evening hours,

The autumn vibes.

So instead of pushing on and on,

We stop and we allow our energy to go down and we look back.

We make a downwards and backwards motion.

If you look at a circle,

Let's say a clock,

If you find there is the number three on this very right part,

That's where the arrow of the clock stops going kind of forward and starts going kind of backwards.

So it stops going left to right.

It starts going right to left.

Backward motion.

And this is where I visually put the state of wizard,

The state of autumn in the wheel model and on the cycle of life,

You can check up the wheel model in my other materials.

And I use it as a compass to identify that I have come to the end of the cycle and I need to prepare for the new one.

And that's what I do when I rest.

When I have all those items of rest,

I first look back on what has been done,

Kind of a recap.

And then I allow myself to be free from it.

It has been done.

It has been good.

And now I'm here and I don't have to do this at this moment.

So I'm disconnecting my identity from it.

In this way,

I'm becoming free.

I'm becoming light as a feather,

Light as a particle of light,

Magical,

Transcendent,

Ready to go into the next cycle,

Ready for unbecoming so that I can be reborn.

And sometimes it happens even naturally and very lightly.

Sleep,

Falling asleep is this little act of transcendence.

When you trust that you are going to wake up the next day.

Actually,

Every day an average person lets go of this grip of control over reality and drifts into unconsciousness of sleep.

So we all have this ability and integral need to let go so that we can be restored by the natural processes inside us.

But when our controlling mechanisms and instincts and traumas and patterns are too strong,

We don't allow ourselves to step into this stage of unpacking and preparing for rest.

So this preparing for rest,

This is important so that we can enter rest in a healthy way.

Like a ritual before bed,

Turning off bright lights,

Turning off your phone.

In the same way,

We can prepare for larger rests,

For vacation when we clear our to-do list and for a larger retreat or sabbatical when we understand that we really need a break from things in our life.

So how do we feel when we do that?

In a healthy way,

We feel good,

We feel accomplished,

Complete.

We look back at the cycle and recap it and then we let go and create some space for ourselves to just be,

To recreate,

Regenerate.

A kind of repetitive motion,

If we are used to it,

We trust our rest.

But when there is some pain,

Maybe some unresolved issues that we haven't been able to accomplish or this cycle has ended abruptly for us or we have a trauma around the idea of rest,

Passivity or around the idea of loss,

Of the opportunity or around the idea of the ending of the cycle.

If we have trauma around any of that,

We may experience painful and negative entry into the state of rest,

Into the state of regeneration or the state that is supposed to be our state of rest.

But of course,

When we are stormed by emotion from within,

We don't experience it as a rest,

We experience it as falling apart.

And this characterizes the energy that we have in this end of any kind of cycle.

And when I'm saying end,

I don't mean the forever end,

It is just wrapping up of some phase,

Some stage.

If it is your business,

It's not that you're closing it down or breaking up your relationship,

It is just when you identify that you need to take the step back to retreat from it because you need to be replenished,

You need to fill your own cup before you can go on.

And this is a healthy,

Healthy process,

Like trees shedding their leaves,

Not because they're about to die,

But because they just need to stop being all present and beautiful for a moment,

For a few months,

So that they can do the root work.

Yeah,

So that's what the rest is about.

But for us psychologically,

It can be very challenging and we can step into our shadow,

Shadow of regret or sadness for the end of the cycle and a little bit of melancholy even before rest,

Before vacation.

You know when this rush effect,

The drive,

It stops and the hormones associated with it,

With being active,

With ticking the boxes,

They also stop and you can feel a little bit of yearning or maybe even some withdrawal effect from your working routine.

But this is normal and when we are conscious about it,

We understand that this is part of letting go.

And letting go is our main task.

When we rest,

We need to just let go.

Because when you keep holding on to the ideas,

The to-do lists that you're going to complete after you rest,

You're not resting.

Mentally,

You're still in the work.

So this is the crucial capacity,

Crucial ability for resting is to let go,

Let it be and let yourself just be.

Let it fall apart a little bit.

Yeah,

Completely,

Completely release this grip.

So this can feel uncomfortable but we are able to do it.

We can be conscious,

Intentional about it.

We can do practices.

It can be physical practices of putting ourselves in a very supported position when we can really melt into our support such as child pose or maybe some floating exercises.

If you have access to a pleasant pool or a floating studio,

These can be very helpful through our body.

And when coupled with this idea of letting go,

Of passivity,

Of floating,

Maybe you can do even some humming,

Some breaths out.

This can really help you release.

And on our mental level,

We can also do such exercises as for example,

The meditation of neti neti,

Which is a yogic meditation of releasing your identities and attachment to your identities,

To your roles.

It translates roughly as I am not this,

I'm not that.

The process is that you sit in meditation and you let your ideas come to you and you tell them I'm not this,

I'm not that,

Until they stop coming and bothering you or until you can be completely unattached to them.

And this is for freedom.

This is for coming back to your essence,

To the eternal light of your soul within you.

This is not so that you completely detach and dissociate from your life.

This is a healthy check in or rather a healthy check out of what you have been clinging too much to.

And for some of us,

Myself included,

It can be hurtful to do this because I do cling to certain things in my life.

And while I can let go of some things,

Other things are very challenging for me when they start going away or when I need to release them,

Some identities,

Some attachments,

I really cannot let go without the experience of grief around it.

And of course,

It is normal in some ways when something is really ending big time,

There is no healthier way to process it than to grieve.

And even if something small is ending,

I don't know,

Your vacation itself is ending or maybe you're moving towns and you have to say goodbye to some friends or even some project at work,

Anything,

If it creates this emotion of grief within you,

The emotion is never out of place because the emotion is only a messenger.

It delivers a signal to you about what's going on there inside when you are able to feel it.

Yeah,

To feel is to heal.

So those emotions of loss,

Of sadness,

Regret,

Anything that essentially is our looking back at the cycle and trying to hold on to it even though it's already past,

Anything like that,

When expressed healthily,

Expressed in a way that is not blameful to life,

But it's just kind of a poem,

A celebration of the good that has been and your affection towards it that in turn creates this sadness for you to let it go.

This is healthy and this belongs to this wizard stage,

To the stage that precedes the complete emptiness and reset of conscious rest.

And the instruments to do that are to journal about what has been,

To let yourself maybe even compose some poetry or paint something,

Something that allows you to memorize what you have experienced and then just let it go.

So when there is any pain in it,

Creativity is a really great vehicle to process this because you can put it into the art and then you step out of your art and the emotion is left there.

So when you put it on paper or into color,

Into form,

You are giving,

Projecting your emotion on something else and this else,

This something else,

This work,

It helps because it takes part of your emotion with it.

So this idea of letting go is omnipresent in this stage and the tools of letting go are many through the body practices,

Through your conscious effort and through art and then you can process this emotion and what do you reach when you process it?

Hopefully you reach the state of freedom.

Freedom from your identity,

From your work.

I am not my work.

It is the affirmation,

Completely go-to affirmation for all of us who are passionate about what we do and sometimes we forget to rest so we need to repeat to ourselves I am not my work and if I disconnect from my work for a while,

The world isn't going to end.

Only this cycle is going to end.

And yeah,

Some things may fall apart,

Yeah?

Some things may be forgotten,

You may lose some opportunities but the thing is that when you reach the state of freedom,

You are becoming so light,

So empty of any attachment and the weight of your assumptions,

Hopes,

Dreams and regrets as well.

So you kind of let go of the whole cycle,

Everything that has been and everything that is to come and you return completely into the present moment and you become very,

Very light.

And this lightness and the spaciousness that you have created through this conscious release,

It allows you to float into the new cycle,

Transcending the boundaries of those two cycles.

It is this magical transformational moment like,

You know,

A new year,

New cycle.

So this is how we hopefully can emerge from the state of rest,

How we can come out of it,

You know,

This pleasant feeling that sadly not many of us experience.

But when you wake up in the morning and you open your eyes and you feel light and ready to get up and face the world and happy about the coming of a new day,

Maybe you experienced that in childhood,

Maybe you can remember how you were excited to get out of bed immediately after opening your eyes.

And that's the feeling that we're aiming for after we have freed ourselves and after we immersed ourselves into this night rest,

Retreat,

Emptiness.

We then re-emerge on the other side,

Completely reborn and the next cycle begins for us.

And that's the art of rest,

To create the setting for yourself,

To experience that optimal setting where you can,

First of all,

Recap,

Analyze,

Keep all the good stuff,

All the thoughts that you need from the previous cycle,

Keep them noted and categorized well so that you can let go of them and everything that is not precious enough to be kept will just die out,

Will be kind of a fertilizer for new ideas.

You're making space in your head,

In your schedule and then you make a leap of faith,

Completely letting go even of your identity,

Even of identifying with this work,

With even this relationship,

With this role,

With this personality.

You make a leap of faith and you trust that your core essence is going to be there always and that you will re-emerge,

Completely refreshed,

Regenerated on the other side of this space of rest.

During this rest,

The deep rest,

We don't want to be always adjusting our comforts and our circumstances.

So the art of rest here is to create this container that will allow us to go all through this transition.

Yeah,

So if we are speaking about weekend,

Maybe shop before the weekend and close all your chores on a Saturday,

Then create some empty space for your Sunday so that you don't need to do anything,

So that you can let go,

Turn off your phone and your fridge is full and your mind is empty.

That's the ideal kind of weekly rest and conscious refreshing of your energy for the next week.

And of course,

Planning of some larger retreat is more challenging,

That's why retreats exist as a service,

So that you can go into a retreat with someone,

Allow them to facilitate this experience for you.

But it is,

Of course,

Up to you to go there with that intention and this awareness,

This purposefulness of rest.

Yeah,

Not just to have fun,

But to let go,

To create the empty space that will later be filled with new ideas and new energy.

So after this is done,

You're hopefully going to look forward into a new cycle.

In the wheel model,

It will be the state of a child,

The archetype of winter,

And we hope to get inspired for new things.

But this is another story.

So let's recap a little bit what we have discussed about rest.

We have discussed that we need to identify the need for rest well ahead of the state of burnout and depletion.

And it's always good to study your biorhythms and just observe,

Maybe using the wheel model or another compass that allows you to understand the larger scale of things,

Where you are at in your life,

When the next cycle is going to approach,

When you need to let go of the current cycle.

Prepare for rest,

Set a setting where you can calmly analyze and organize your thoughts,

And then let go completely.

Use body tools and exercises such as child pose and floating.

Use meditations such as neti neti.

Use journaling and use the conscious effort of freedom,

Creating the idea of freedom to be just you,

Free of obligations and identities.

I wish for you to be able to afford this with clear conscience,

With all your items ticked.

And before you burn out,

I wish for you to have both this awareness and this luxury to anticipate and address your needs for rest.

Thank you for joining me in this talk and reflective process.

I will be grateful if you leave comments and tell me how you approach rest in your life.

Tell me about your retreat experiences or maybe some wish lists for next retreats.

If you are somewhere in Europe,

I have already organized,

Published one retreat here on Insight Timer,

And I hope to be able to host experiences like this in the future.

And I also hope that you can host that for yourself whenever you need.

Be well,

And until next time.