we can rest our way through things
rest is required
Did you know that in every 1 second of a heartbeat, the heart is at rest for 0.7 of those seconds? The myth of a ceaseless heartbeat is a myth made for industry. The heart rests, always.
Did you know there are cells in your body that wait, that rest, for decades? Then, when the time is right, they change. But meanwhile, they rest.
Did you know that in the first hours following conception, the zygote rests for 20-22 hours? The story that fertilization sets off an instantaneous reaction and rapid growth is not the right story. The truth is: stillness is at the very core of us.
Maybe, then, you don’t need to go out and do anything to get through this. Maybe you can rest through this.
These thoughts are inspired by an Anchor session where we practiced the deep pleasure possible when we truly rest in these amazing bodies by welcoming the relationship between body, earth, and gravity. One participant described it as a burbling brook of pleasure throughout her body. Another said she realized she could rest through the issues she (we all) are navigating. And I think that’s very true and very wise.
Rest isn’t a luxury and it isn’t even imperative- both of those concepts place rest as something outside of us.
Rest
is
us.
The stories we have been told that tell us otherwise just simply aren’t true.
The stories that tell us we are machines (the heart is a pump, the body is a collection of systems) are stories built for and by industry. If the heart is always working, and never needs to rest, then why should we? But these stories aren’t true. Neither are the stories of a capitalist meritocracy that says we have to earn our rest, and that we rest to reward ourselves for work well done, and prepare ourselves for the next task.
When we remember how to listen to the truth of the body and the whole of the natural world, then we can see: everything in nature rests, everything in nature contains rest at its very core. Not because it was earned, but because rest, in some way or another, is central to what it means to be alive.
The desire to put our heads down and work our way through a problem (through all these various, overlapping problems) is understandable. And a healing future requires effort - I don’t mean to imply that we can or should just lean back and expect the world to hand us everything we wish for. But rest, being so central to our very physiology, doesn’t have to be this longed for goal, an achievement (now, finally, I can rest).
Rest is as natural to you as your own heartbeat. Rest is as inevitable as gravity.
So rest.
If you want more delicious ideas about how and why we rest, I recommend The Nap Ministry: a manifesto by Tricia Hershey
