Part 1: Understanding Our Resistance To Rest

When we prioritize ourselves, by giving ourselves time to rest, replenish, and nourish, we sink deeper into relationship with our true self and with our inner truth.

Rest is the medicine built into our world that enables life to continue on endlessly.

What would spring be like without winter? The dawn without the night?

Rest is Sacred Medicine, accessible to us all. Though our systems would like us to believe that statement is a lie.

We live in a society that scorns rest, views it as an afterthought. Rest is something for the weak or lazy, something you only need if you are not strong, or capable or powerful.

So why is rest so hard to access?

Why do 50 million – 70 million people in the U.S. have ongoing sleep disorders?^(citation)

Profiting Off & Controlling The Exhausted

We are lead to believe that rest a threat to our power and success.

In some cases, rest is unsafe, it can loose us our jobs, our livelihoods. Rest can loose us communal belonging or respect because we are seen as “lazy” and “free-loading off others”. Our need for rest, if we voice it, is seen as a burden to the collective. Our wish for more time to rest is seen as a foolish wish.

Many people desperately avoid rest, scrolling late into the night, watching show after show, consuming content and stories long after we are full and at capacity.

“We’ll rest when we’re dead” is the saying some cling to.

When our bodies start to ask us for a very basic need: a break, we override and use caffeine to jump start our system and avoid rest.

There is a weird feeling of pride when we can function off little to no sleep. We brag and boast about how we’ve gotten no sleep, as if exhaustion is a badge of honor.

SIDE NOTE: If rest is celebrated by these systems of power, it is often performative rest or rest that can be profited off. Like expensive vacations that leave us more tired, or drinking with friends only to wake feeling like shit, or taking a personal day then using the whole day to task, or going to the spa then gossiping or complaining the whole time. These are versions of unwinding or self care that do little to replenish us, but we can say we did it, and in our society it is doing that is constantly rewarded.

Exhaustion Fosters Obedience

This is not our fault.

When we are unrested we are easy to control and manipulate because we are tired. And when we are tired, we are not functioning at peek capacity.

When living in the energy of exhaustion, we are disconnected from our own power, our own gifts, our own truth, our own bodies, our own rhythms.

From this place our talents and gifts can be harvested. When we are disconnected from this source of our own power, from our inner truth, from the cosmic flow of energy, we are disempowered and easy to control.

We become tools for someone else’s legacy, rather than the creators of our own masterpiece.

And while inherently, there is absolutely nothing wrong with helping others with their big work, often in our current paradigm, our contributions are not aligned with our soul’s mission, with what we came here to do.

We preform a job. We task.

When we clock in, we clock out.

For better or for worse, we do what we are told, we follow orders, we get it done, we do not question.

We find ways to survive. We let go of caring, so we can do the job. I know I’ve done this many times, put my passionate heart aside so I could survive in the wage system.

We separate our personal life from our professional life, even though they are both our life.

We stop believing that we can change anything, that we can make a difference, and in many ways we give up.

I’ve known many people living this life, and I do not blame them, I’ve lived that life. We are all doing what we can to stay safe and survive in this system that wants to use us and control us and give us nothing back.

Who Benefits from Collective Exhaustion?

When we are unrested, we are sleepwalking through life. We accept whatever we are told is true. We don’t have the energy to fight. It becomes easier to believe what we are told.

When we are unrested, we are unable to discern what is true, and right for ourselves, so if they say it enough times it becomes our truth.

Beliefs that are not necessarily true, become true because we give them power, and make them true.

We amplify the truth of the lies like: “we have to work hard to be successful”, “no pain no gain”, “nothing comes from nothing,” “money doesn’t grow on trees,” “this is the only way,” “there’s never enough…”

We move through the motions, but never get anywhere.

Or maybe we have gotten somewhere, but once there, able to breathe and take it what we created, we find it is not at all the place we want to be.

And then we are left there wondering why we worked so hard to get this thing that we don’t even want. Then we are left to ponder what it is we do what, and what we are willing to give up to have our heart’s true desire.

This is the power of rest. That moment of breath when we can look around and see what we have created and decide if we want to keep on the path, or forge a new way.

Rest Is The Way to Liberation, Freedom, & Thriving

Rest brings us back into alignment with our soul, back into relationship with our core, back in connection with our heart. And from this place of inner stillness is where we can identify our deepest longings, and are greatest gifts.

I believe it is of the upmost importance for all of us to come back home to our hearts, our longings, our gifts, our dreams.

Because there is so much harm in the world right now and it is being perpetuated and continued by people who are not living in alignment and not connected with their source power because if they were they would not be creating so much harm and pain.

And watching all this fear and pain grow and spread is overwhelming, and scary, and exhausting.

We need to stop going through the motions, stop business as usual because we need big change in our world now.

Rest is what will bring us closer to what we desire for ourselves and our world, not frantic, exhausted actions.

In rest and stillness in where our inner wise voice whispers to us. When we reconnect with that voice we can tune in to our wants, needs and desires. From that place we can begin to craft the life we desire.

Instead of building lives we think we should love, we can sit in the center of our lives and feel deeply in love with what we have created.

Want Support to Reclaim Rest?

I’m here for you. I’ve been holding embodied, healing space for almost 10 years and conducting one on one healings for over 7 years. I am Taurus *sun & moon* (Capricorn rising), so I’m deeply rooted in earth energy and the energy of pleasure. I’m passionate about collective liberation, sustainability, and re-wilding the planet (and ourselves). (You can find our more about me here)

I believe we are all needed now, and I offer support to healers, witches, way-showers looking to reclaim their relationship with their body and the planet through regenerative rest-growth cycles, energy healing, grounding activations and more.

If you want support integrating rest practices into your daily life or just want to connect then, schedule a free call with me.

Or join me for a Virtual Moon Circle, held twice amonth on/around the New and Full Moon.

I delight in supporting powerful souls to reclaim their right to rest, because I know that the more of us that are rested and resourced that the better, more healthy, more beautiful our world will be.

Rest well my love.

Then Rise and Reclaim your power to rewrite the stories.

in devotion,
-kristen

P.S.

Check Out Part 2: Reclaiming Our Right To Rest, Up Next