Last week, we shared our conversation on rest with Marcela Iglesias.
This rich conversation gave us several reasons to advocate for our own rest in a culture that urges us to keep doing, doing, doing. We touched on the types of rest needed: Physical rest, emotional rest, mental rest, spiritual rest.
Physical rest is any activity that releases tension and restores calm to the physical body. Physical rest is found through practices that we can actively do to help our bodies find relief and rest from all those aches and pains that we so often try to ignore.
Emotional rest can mean having the time and space to express your feelings and cut back on people-pleasing. It can look like hunger, exhaustion, and confusion all at once. Get some emotional rest by offloading your feelings to a willing listener, then keep talking to prevent future emotional overload.
Mental rest is taking a pause and stopping your brain from work and creating space to process information, reflect and make connections. It's essential to learning and processing. Without mental rest, we have trouble remembering new information and seeing how it relates to other information.
Spiritual rest is the ability to connect beyond the physical and mental and feel a deep sense of belonging, love, acceptance and purpose. Meditation, community involvement, and connecting with a deeper purpose work towards spiritual rest.
"Most people are sleep-deprived to some degree or another or wake up not rested. So the health ramifications and our quality of life - how we're moving through life and what kind of decisions we wind up making are impacted by how we show up. If we don't show up well-rested the decisions we make aren't the best that we can make. And then the lives that we have may not be the lifestyle we are intended to have." Marcela Iglesias
Below we have some journal prompts for you to work on this week, as we center ourselves around rest and create space to focus on rest. We invite you to reflect on these questions and perhaps find a companion to discuss answers!
1. Which type of rest do you need in your life right now?
2. When is the last time you felt rested…what got you to that place?
3. What messages did you receive about rest growing up and how does that impact you now?
4. What is one takeaway you can leave with to work towards more rest in your life?
We hope you get some rest this week,
Cindi & Rachelle
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