Today at Momscape.com: Are you an Earth Mother or a Creative Rainbow Mother? Find out.
Coupons | Product Reviews | Contests | Articles | Forums | Search | Subscribe
Family Fun | Parenting Tips | Romance | Health & Fitness | Organic Living | Weight Loss | WAHMs
Welcome Momscapers!
Momscape.com is an award winning online magazine delivering
uplifting personal essays
from real parents - plus
practical guidance on parenting,
family fun,
romance,
travel,
health & fitness,
weight loss,
and more.
We invite you to share your
MamaWisdom and to help us
spotlight
products that make your life as a mom easier or better while you
enjoy our money-saving
online coupons and
family travel
discounts.
We want to help you enjoy the
simple (and fine) things life has to offer.
Subscribe to Momscape >
or
Get Our Daily Coupon Updates by Email
Bookmark and share Momscape with your friends:
Online Coupons
Today's
Favorite Coupons
All Online
Coupons by Store
All Online Coupons by
Category
Printable
Grocery Coupons
Product Reviews
Momscape's
Favorite Things (Blog)
Top-Rated
Mom Product Reviews
Family Fun
Activities & Crafts
Family Travel
Deals
Free Scrapbooking Ideas
Parenting Articles
Baby Tips
Toddler Tips
All Parenting Articles
Inspiration/Essays
Relationships
Marriage
Romance
Friendships
Health
and Fitness
Fitness Tips
Natural Living
Nurturing Your Spirit
Weight Loss
Professional
Family Manager Tips
Home-Based Business
Community
MamaWisdom Forums
About Momscape
Subscribe
Site Map
Links
Link to Us
Privacy Policy
Terms of Service
About us
Contact Us
The Art of Rest
by Jennifer Louden
I recently spent four days alone in a rustic cabin on a bluff on the
wild Washington coast. I worked on my novel, read, napped, did yoga, ate
huge salads, sat in the sunshine, and watched eagles eat crab scavenged
from the ocean’s edge. It was one of the most truly restful retreats
I’ve ever savored.
It wasn’t so long ago, however, that I would have taken this time to
rest but instead stayed in a bound-up, edge-of-frantic mood. At the end
of my stay, despite my good intentions, I would have driven away feeling
cheated, shallow, even more scooped out. Why? Because it’s taken me
years to realize, in my body and mind, that genuine rest, the kind that
recharges us so deeply that the furrows between our eyebrows disappear
(well, at least soften), is connected first to wholeheartedness, and
then to a silken collage made up of listening, pleasure, and freedom.
You may wonder what rest has to do with living wholeheartedly. Maybe
everything. I’ve begun to think that our epidemic exhaustion and chronic
complaints of “I’m too busy to ever really rest” have as much to do with
a disconnect from purpose as with the pressures of modern life. Rest is
not sincerely recharging if it is always an escape or retreat from
engagement or action. I love a chick flick and a tub of buttery popcorn
as much as the next gal, but if that’s all I ever did for rest, I’d
quickly become brittle and burned-out. Genuine rest—not just vegging
out—requires integrity and commitment to something bigger than ourselves
in daily life if we are to recharge in the deep way that many of us are
so fiercely hungry for.
This leads to a scary, exhilarating thought: What if when we can’t get
the rest we crave, when we can’t get to that territory where our minds
slow and our shoulders drop away from our ears, it’s because we aren’t
authentically spending our precious gifts, we aren’t making noble
choices, we aren’t living by what we treasure? In Nora Gallagher’s
beautiful memoir, Practicing Resurrection, she relates how social
activist and Episcopal bishop Dan Corrigan, then in his eighties,
responded to one of his parishioners when she casually says, “Take care
of yourself, Dan.” “No, I don’t think so,” he replies. “I don’t take
care of myself. I spend myself.”
What if to access genuine rest we must be spending ourselves in life,
giving the most we are capable of giving—not in a martyr-like way, but
in a way that genuinely fits us? What if genuine living and genuine rest
are intimately entwined?
Of course, living a genuine life is far from a straight and clear path.
We all feel hounded by our unmet obligations, our false promises to
ourselves and others, our struggles to live with purpose. True rest
requires us to be in tune with ourselves, but if something is amiss
inside, our tendency is to run the other way. In other words, rest is
blocked when we get a little out of sync with ourselves—either because
life has been crazy lately or we’ve done something we aren’t proud of or
because we are judging ourselves for getting out of balance.
But there’s something that can bring us back, time and again, to the
place where real rest is accessible, the place where wholeheartedness
begins—that triumvirate of listening, pleasure, and freedom, which is
the basis for one style of retreat I defined in The Woman’s Retreat Book
as “springing from and guided by your inner knowing.” When we grant
ourselves the time to listen for what would give us pleasure, what we
really want right now, in this moment—versus what we think we should do
or what we have always done in the past—and then grant ourselves the
freedom to act on what we hear, we strike gold. This combination
untangles the twin tyrannies of habit and identity, allowing us to
stretch into a more organic, more open sense of ourselves. So one day
rest might look like painting and then a bath and then dancing to salsa
music, and another day it might look like cleaning your closet and
giving clothes to the battered women’s shelter, chatting with a friend,
then taking a nap between fresh sheets.
By following our inner knowing, we find ourselves naturally reconnecting
back to wholeheartedness—doing what gives us the most joy and allows us
to most effectively offer our gifts to the world, and this continues to
unfold and expand as we grow and develop. Think about it: When you truly
rest, after a certain period of time—minutes, hours, days, depending on
how long you have and how long it has been since you really rested—that
raggedy feeling of need begins to fade away; gradually, tantalizing
flashes of ideas about how to extend yourself into the world begin to
shimmer by, teasing you, making your mouth water and your heart expand
with possibility.
The truth is that the more we are truly living with purpose and
integrity, the more rest and self-nurturing and relaxation become a mood
we live in more of the time—a satisfying texture of action and calm,
expansion and contraction, giving and replenishing, spirit and matter.
Genuine rest becomes part of our lives not because we have to make time
for it or force ourselves to do it in some prescribed way, but because
we are spending ourselves with verve and integrity, are replenished by
that…and know when to cease doing and lie in a hammock. Life, in other
words, has become indistinguishable from genuine rest.
Return to Center
What gets in the way of genuine rest?
Getting out of sync with ourselves—the whirring voices in the back of
our minds, the voices of guilt and haste saying “I should be answering
e-mail, I should be weeding the garden, I should be making that hard
phone call.” Try this step-by-step process for centering yourself and
getting back in sync.
1. Take a moment to review what you are proud of in your life, from
drinking enough water yesterday to not yelling at your coworker.
2. Breathe deeply, releasing your belly fully, and then ask “What is
standing between me and peace in this moment?”
3. Keep breathing and asking, without expecting an answer but trusting
that one will come.
4. If the din of self-criticism or denial is particularly clamorous,
write down what is roaming through your mind, keeping your hand moving
until the babble exhausts itself (which actually doesn’t take long, as
it is boringly repetitive babble).
5. Investigate any twinges that arise about what is not right in your
life and name the action it would take to make the situation right. If
you can’t name what is amiss or bugging you, just sit with that feeling
of not knowing, without pushing it away and without wallowing in it.
Beating yourself up or resisting what is is never conducive to rest—or
anything else for that matter.
About
the author:
Jennifer Louden is a best-selling author of five books, including the
classic The Woman’s Comfort Book and her newest Comfort Secrets for Busy
Women. She has appeared on numerous TV and radio programs, including
Oprah. She’s also a certified coach, creator of learning events and
unique life balance products. Her upcoming retreat with Master Coach
Molly Gordon is on how to “do” change with grace and confidence. Visit
www.comfortqueen.com/retreats
Here are all of Jennifer Louden's books on Amazon:
Subscribe to Momscape >
or
Get Our Daily Coupon Updates by Email
Moms are Raving About
> Tae Bo Kicks Billy Blanks Workout for Kids
> Collectopia Wacktivity and A Friendship Scraptacular
> Micro Spy Kit X2 Toy
> Bugaboo Chameleon Stroller
> Burt's Bees Baby Bee Skin reme
> Perego Primo Viaggio Infant Car Seat
> Ina May's Guide to Childbirth, by Ina May Gaskins
> Rocket Spanish
> NordicTrack 740 Stepper
> More Product Reviews