I love working with coaches. For about 20 years, mostly on/sometimes off, I've had a coach helping navigate some area of life or work--from physical training to overall health to art to business to making the life of my dreams. Coaches have been an active part of my sorting out a lot of different habits, ways of thinking, and challenges. Given my affinity for coaches, it's not all that surprising that I've become one as well. I love taking what I've learned in growing my business as an artist and sharing it with other artists (more on that in an upcoming post).
As I've been reflecting on these years of work with coaches, I noticed that one note that I get consistently from my coaches is that I need to rest. For someone who loves her job and who struggles to manage workaholic tendencies, learning how to rest has turned out to be a bigger challenge.
Resting is essential to and often the source of joy
Resting isn't just about getting sleep, I've come to learn. It's about those moments of taking a deep breath and exhaling, away from the television, away from the phone, away from the computer. It's lying down for a few minutes in a quieter room of the house or in the garden on a sunny, warm day. It's doing slow, gentle stretches. It's moving to your favorite music. It's ambling around the block with your senior dog. It's walking by the lake or in the woods. It's curling up with a favorite book or poem. It's writing a letter with pen and paper to a dear friend.
Resting is about connecting with our physical selves and unhooking from the stressing vibrations that can come from the real and digital world. Energetically, it feels more like floating like birds in the air or skilled swimmers in water.
An invitation to rest
I invite you to join with me in taking a little rest this weekend. How can you move more slowly, breathe more deeply, and feel the air around you and the Earth beneath you? If rest isn't part of your daily life practice, maybe start with 5-10 minutes or if you have a half hour or hour for rest, all the better. Let's check in next week to see how that went.