A Right Rest

For most of us, when the need to rest arises, the first choice taken is to lie down or nap/sleep.  The awareness that other types of reprieve are possible if we follow the availability of the body's call, is often unavailable.  This requires a more nuanced listening.

Rest is required when we have expended considerable energy, negativity has created a leak in my energy channels, or the failure to shift my energy through another type of activity (or too much repetition of even a good thing) can be draining.  Sleep is not often the only or best resolution.  Evolving one's own individual care-taking approach is possible.

There I was, wrapping spring rolls for 60 people, about 100 in all.  It was a lovely task:  the beguiling stretchy rice wraps, fresh vibrating herbs and slivered vegetables in interesting layers, ending with a careful tuck .  It was a small motor hand coordinated, delicate operation-- very pleasing to the senses.  About two hours into the task, it became apparent a gear switch was necessary.  A fatigue came over me, my legs had been in one place for hours, my hands in a small repetitive pattern for same.  I picked up a broom and vigorously started to sweep the floor.  I then mopped it with big wide sweeping arcs, a sort of dance that was fully enjoyable, a static containment getting released.

An entire day of large, challenging movement, considerable perspiration in extreme heat conditions, with a concentrated attention to a myriad of tasks --called me to rest.  I took half an hour, went into an air conditioned room and crawled under a large work table. (A vague recollection of spending a lot of pleasure time under tables as a child came to me.) There, I rested on my back, pulled my knees up, rolled side to side, enjoyed some prone stillness, played with my hands and elbows and provided a rolling touch to mostly unrecognized places like ankles, groin, back of legs near buttocks, sacrum, moving and smoothing (energy?) layers of self.  I followed impulses, some surprising, all of them deeply restful. I finished by rolling out from under the table, picking up a water loaded watercolor brush on the table and ran it across a piece of paper, appreciating its movement and action.  I completed the period by adding  a dot of color at the end.  Sublime satisfaction.

Unexpectedly, I spent most of a morning with someone with a consistently mild thread of sarcasm running through their dialogue.  By the end of the morning I was feeling depleted and fatigued.  Realizing, despite my efforts not to let that particular brand of negativity impact me, I had indeed been influenced.  I took a "bathroom break" and instead went out into the drizzle and energetically walked around the block, feeling the hips, femurs in the sockets, my arms swinging up and wherever they felt like going, the cool heavy precipitation dampening my exposed arms.  It wasn't an easy start; the body was halting and apparently in a stuck rhythm at first.  But before long, attention to the way the movement was unfolding and the almost joyous arm swings had me emitting small yelps of pleasure and the shift was made. I did a few chi (energy) baths at the end for good measure.

The common aspects in these different scenarios is awareness of the need for a change in energy and a willingness to let the body play (a type of rest/release any child would attest).  Rest for the weary can be finding play in the heart, mind and body. The right configuration is limitless, it just depends on following the call to where the awareness is leading you. Fingering a delicate branch of a plant, submerging oneself in water and receiving that new impression.  Lying still or allowing fingers to find their expression through another media or their own manifestation.  Sleep is a delicious mode of respite.  But a rightful, authentic rest can be found in our own nature's beckoning if we listen a little closer and respond.