Pause Rest Be

Nourishing Ourselves Through Rest

I enjoyed a relaxing hour with Octavia Raheem, author of Pause Rest Be, talking about rest. She wasn't talking about the kind of rest you schedule for a vacation. She was talking about the kind that lives inside an ordinary day. This week I want to share three pieces of that conversation with you, because they speak directly to the work we do together around our nervous system and our current focus on Nourishing Ourselves.

Our Relationship With The Pause

Octavia said something that has stayed with me. There is already a pause between every word we speak, between every movement we make, and between every breath. Rest is already built into the rhythm of our life, and most of us just move too fast to notice it.

Her suggestion is simple. Start noticing the pauses that already exist. When you are talking with someone, let there be a little more space between your words or take a breath between sentences. When you drink your tea or coffee in the morning, do only that. Leave the phone down and pause everything else.

With multi-tasking, nothing gets our full attention, and we do not even know what our own tea tastes like. Noticing is the practice as is noticing when we have stopped noticing is the practice too.

What Am I Running From?

Octavia was asked this question by a nurse while she was recovering from burnout in the hospital, and it changed the direction of her life. She realized she was running from her own creativity, her own softness, and dreams she had not let herself want out loud. Being busy meant she did not have to feel any of that. If she kept moving, none of it could surface.

She was running from herself. This is familiar to me as I am sure it is for many of us. Here is where she connects rest to something deeper than tiredness.

Rest does not ask us for anything. It just says, come here and let me hold you.

Once we are still, it asks us one question. Who are you now? Who are you when you are not doing anything?

That question can feel uncomfortable. Many of us were raised to focus on what we do, not who we are. Rest gives us the chance to sit with that question.

Building Capacity To Rest

Octavia did not go from a life of constant motion to a life of stillness overnight. She started with three minutes of stillness in her yoga classes and over time it grew.

It takes focus to build the capacity to be still, the same way it takes work to build any other capacity in our body. Going from a thousand miles an hour to zero is jarring. Our system needs time to adjust to a slower pace and we do that through the practice of rest.

This week, you might notice a pause that already exists in your day and let it be a little longer. Drink your tea and do nothing else while you drink it. Building capacity for rest takes practice.

We rest together 7 days a week in our daily online practice. We explore together in our Sunday free community class. Come join us.