Rest: Is Re-membering

Musing….
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

--Albert Camus

Winter is the season of rest – for the earth, for hibernating animals, for humans as well. Nature teaches us to slow down, be quiet, and invites us to enter a stillness as of softly falling snow and a silent star-studded sky.  Allowing yourself to go to that deeply profound area of calm within you fosters a remembrance of who you are at your deepest core.  Pulling inward, like curling up in front of a fireplace, gives you a reprieve from the fragmenting of busy lives in order to re-member your deepest, truest self.

Kate’s Turn:
Summer and autumn are high-energy seasons; much is produced and harvested. In the creative cycle, this is an exciting time, full of activity and production. And it can also leave us exhausted and depleted at times. Having moved almost 4 months ago, I am gladly enjoying the winter’s rest. I’ve dedicated twilight as a meditation time to enter this stillness,  to gradually release outward activity for inward nurturance of who I am…..values, passions, longings that direct my living. I re-member that my expression of creativity in watercolors feeds my spirit, and so I must factor that in now that I am more settled. In this winter’s depth of silence, I can connect to that innate creative wellspring within me.

Get Fired Up:
Give yourself presents (presence) this season in re-membering your lovely self…Blessings!

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing. . .
     — Galway Kinnell from the poem Saint Francis and the Sow in Three Books

Rest: Is Constructive

Musing…

If rest were about stopping, or quitting, or being passive, I would have left this post blank to demonstrate this. Instead, let’s entertain the idea that rest is active. Rest is active because life has a fullness of presence within you no matter what you are doing, or not doing.  

Charise’s Turn:

Have you heard of constructive rest? This is a technique I learned in the early 1980s as part of my education for a master’s degree in dance/movement therapy. What we did is lie on the floor with our feet planted and knees bent and arms crossed over each other at our chests, even allowing the knees to rest against each other so that the least amount of effort was employed to support the body (described further in Human Movement Potential by Lulu Sweigard, PhD). 

Our instructor, Andre Bernard, led us through a visualization of being a suit of clothes, allowing for more slackness of muscles and emptying of holding patterns. This was a way of coming to neutral, of inhibiting habits of tension. He told us that stress is necessary in life, that a stress free body is a dead body, that eliminating stress is not a goal, that greater ease in the body and more efficiency of movement can be accomplished with constructive rest.  

Get Fired Up:

Get on the floor!  Place the soles of your feet onto the surface you are lying on so that your knees are bent, and allow your arms to drape across your chest or at your sides. Close your eyes and follow your breathing, rest.

Do it again another day. Get on the floor!