Let's review our relationship with rest 🐑 // transcript to I Feel For You podcast episode 68

 
 

Listen, subscribe and review I Feel For You podcast on your favourite platform: Apple Podcasts / Stitcher / Overcast / Tune In / acast / Spotify / Soundcloud / Google Podcasts

You're listening to i feel for you, i'm Dionne, a writer, spacemaker, creative explorer and human, being, doing the best they can in this wild world!

this is episode 68 and you can find all the links to everything mentioned in the shownotes at ifeelforyoupodcast.com.

you can also see what i'm up to lately including online events + spacemaking over on my site, dionne.space

and just before we jump in, shoutout to my Patreon community who have enabled me to continue making this show. i feel very grateful that during this deeply challenging time, that there is this encouragement and support to keep doing this work, as well as enabling me to show up to host online events, so thank you from my deep gutteral orifice for that. (sorry for visuals)

I have found intimate communities so powerful during these last 6 months of lockdown. I wonder if you're able to access that these days? I've asked about that in recent Digests and i'd love to hear from you so do reach out and let me know.

Speaking of this members space on Patreon, we also have new benefits in this space, including a private members meadow, the Tender Meadow if you will (i know i go ham with names lol), where we get to connect, have conversations, and share information.

The reason for this Patreon members space is because i love to cultivate intentional and meaningful community connection online and irl. As irl as it can get at this moment, during lockdown...

I MISS the earnest deep-dive of these private online containers, the riffs on topics that swirl into galactic explorations, the real talk, the freedom to dive in if you feel like it, but not feel like you're missing anything if you're not on it 24/7, the expression, the space to go and be and breathe - outside of social media which, as you know, for some time hasn't felt the safest place for me to be. I love that there is space for us to explore any topic that excites us. and the safety to explore them. And rest has been one of them, and is also the topic of this podcast episode.

So, if any of this talk of community and explorations resonates, or if you simply just want to support my work including enabling this very podcast to happen, i'd love you to feel welcome to join this community space - you can head to dionne.space to get access to it and hope we can meet there and get to know each other better there!

ok. so as i said, rest is the topic of this week's episode, which of course is ginormous, many of you who have been coming to my public yoga + movement + meditation events as well as talks i've done over the last 10 years will know that there's always ground to cover, but today, i thought it might be helpful for us to review our relationship with rest. Particularly at this moment in time. For this episode, there's of course, (no pressure) a little creative activity later on, so an option is to have a pen and paper handy, or not if you're out and about, you can simply contemplate and maybe come back to it later! Or not!

Finally, a disclaimer that i recorded this a month ago, back in July, but, well, there's been other stuff going on behind the scenes, and those in my Patreon community have had behind the scenes updates but in short: it's here now.

And i'm so happy to be back here, in this intimate aural pleasurezone. So thank you so much for listening, and i hope you enjoy the show and that this show supports you.

As always, let me know what you think! You could leave me a review on apple podcasts! You could hare it with your friends and loved ones. And reach out to me!

All the details to get in touch are in the shownotes ifeelfor youpodcast.com. By listening, by sharing, by leaving me reviews, by offerings this to your friends and sharing the love, this is another way that you get to support my work so please know that i really appreciate that, i appreciate you, every single one of you, so let's dive in shall we?


Some words on rest

Some of you might know in 2015 i wrote a book called "Take Care of You" and an essay/Zine called "Who's allowed to rest?" in response to the politics of rest and how, for many of us, it’s an abstract and challenging idea. I've certainly found it a really interesting topic to explore, based on my own experience living in this world, 40 years and counting.

The idea of rest can be particularly abstract and challenging if your issues with rest are due to social forces like white supremacy, capitalism and productivity, which we are all affected by, to varying degrees, right? They are systems and all of us are born into them, and even if we don't feel we directly experience them, we are aware of them and their power.

So this topic of rest is something i never tire (pun intended?) of exploring, hence why the last 10 years of my work have been focussed on “self care”, with emphasis on “slowing down” to pause, to invite, or at least entertain the idea of rest.

I have always been transparent that this journey is as much a process for me, learning (and mostly unlearning) my own resistance to rest, and how it’s possible to make this practice a personal, accessible and sustainable one.

With that on my mind during these months, during lockdown and the uprising and the many other layers of things going on for us individually and collectively, i'm noticing how many people i’ve been in contact with have been speaking about the challenge they have found accessing sleep and rest, as well as the (understandable and relatable) headaches they are experiencing from this moment we’re living in.

Sidenote: if that's you, i made a video especially for that which i really hope will help you:

 
 

So headaches are a sign of the times that we're living in for so many of us, whether it's stress related, due to a lack of sleep or rest, eye strain, too much information trying to be consumed at once and so on.

And not to mention, those who have a menstrual cycle, speaking of increased intensity during this time, and i definitely relate to this, it's been interesting to observe and notice the fluctuations. Think it's helpful if you do have a menstrual cycle or not, to log what's going on, moods, sleep and so on.

So all of this, plus general heightened anxiety and stress which people are talking about, is obviously making rest difficult and sometimes impossible...

And so this relationship i've had with rest has been a deep thread of the work i've been exploring over the years, both in real life and online, and know a number of you listening here have attended things over the years like the Pause workshops, Take Care of You, Slow Down Club, the Self Care Sessions, women of colour wellness in the UK or even “Rolig” classes with me in Norway back in the day - 10 years ago, wow! So shoutout to you who've been riding for a decade!

A few days ago I asked Instagram fam what their relationship was like with rest and - spoiler alert - the results were a mixed bag.

And so, i got to thinking:

Why is it so hard to rest and why is our relationship to it so volatile?

I feel like i always have to remind myself, friends, clients, strangers who ask me for help with their rest challenges- that this rest thing, is understandably harder in this moment.

I don't think i need to remind us we are in the midst of a global pandemic, exhausting waves of the uprising which demands a lot of attention. Energetic shifts, personal hardships, worries for so many of us about how we will make ends meet. Astrological stuff happening. Worries about what work looks like in 2020. Fears for our own health as well as the health and safety of loved ones. What the future looks like at all....

All that atop of life stuff, day-to-day, moment-to-moment situations we're navigating right now.

It's real. And it's hard. Most, or at least many of us are moving through a hard moment.

So rest, and the quality of it, its frequency and our relationship with it, will undoubtably be affected. It will fluctuate. And the side effects of not getting enough rest are real. Serious even.

I think this was the turning point for me, on my own (complicated) journey with rest. I was forced into taking it seriously for health reasons. I was diagnosed as some of you know, with an autoimmune disorder, and the effects of that when i'm out of balance can be pretty serious. So i really saw the benefits in practicing rest and, i'm also cringing to write it yet i earnestly know the truth of it, i'm going to let you into a secret:

I have grown to actually enjoy rest....?! I know. i know. not saying there isn't still resistance, but hopefully offering encouragement to those of you who like me, resist rest with all their might.

So at this moment in time, when there is so much going on in the world, there couldn't be a more important moment to review our relationship with rest.

Perhaps we could do that? Like, right now! You might treat this like a little writing exercise, shoutout to my Patreon fam who joined Freewrite livestreams, i'm loving that journey with you!

You can treat this like a braindump, a place to put whatever comes up down to paper. You can even pause the podcast after each question, and maybe even record a little voicenote, so if writing things down feels a bit too much at the moment, take a note. I think there's something powerful in logging something down.

So do what you need to babes, pondering is also welcome! Whatever you choose is the right decision.

Those of you who are writing, feel free to get a notepad and pen for this one.

QUESTIONS FOR CONTEMPLATION

  • What is the quality of your rest like at the moment? Those of you who follow me on instagram have probably seen i've offered you a few ideas on how to answer this, but there's no right or wrong answer. If you're looking for inspo, the link to that is here. Try to answer this from a really honest place.

  • How do you define 'rest'?

  • Is there any resistance present when you contemplate the concept of rest?

  • If there is, can you place where that resistance is in your body? Is it, for example in your thoughts? (head, face, shoulders)? Is it showing itself in tightness anywhere in the body? Maybe you could check in with your belly right now. Continue with your hands, jaw, tongue, shoulders, feet..... and log what you notice accordingly.

  • Consider your daily routine, take the last 24 hours. Can you map that out? Include: Logging the time you went to bed How much time you spent resting When you went to bed. And that can include your skincare routine, self massage, watching netflix, reading etc, all the way until you close your eyes.

  • How does it feel to review this?

  • Is there anything you would change?

So my loves, well done for moving through this journey. I'm honoured to be walking with you in this exploration. And i just want to add a disclaimer, as i said earlier, there's no wrong answers here.

I wonder, as you look through what you wrote, or perhaps listen to what you logged, to really be honest about how you're speaking to yourself, start there, and if possible, notice if there's an encouraging or at the minimum, a neutral tone, that's cool. But if there's a negative berating voice that's coming out, i really recommend a challenge for you this week:

.....You know what i'm going to say.....

💐 TALK TO YOURSELF NICELY (please) 💐

I know i say it all the time. 10 years of me nagging for you to talk to yourself nicely. But i mean it! It's powerful and transformational. Start there. Cause it starts with you, right?

Cause what i find is, when it comes to rest is (and if any of you have ever had insomnia you might relate to this), often, the tension with being able to rest or sleep, is that we need to let go. We need to be able to soften, and not contract. When we're contracting, we're tensing, we're holding, we're resisting. So when we do that, we're not making rest and sleep available to us. Does that make sense?

The tone in which you speak to yourself is part of that. If you're talking to someone you love with that tone, how do you think that relationship would be? Not so good, not so helpful and not so kind.

And i would add, when you're working on repatterining something or unlearning or learning something new or learning a new way of being in relationship with yourself, which is everything to do with sleep and rest, right?

It's about allowing, it's about enabling yourself or giving yourself permission to step into this new place, this new relationship, this new way of being, - if you're approaching that with a tension, with a kind of hostility, it's not going to feel so good. There's just going to be pure resistance, pure bumps along the road.

If you're at least starting from a place where you're just being tender and kind and as sweet as possible with yourself, i truly believe that it offers more space, more receptivity if you like. Because when we're open, we're more able to receive right? When we're contracted and closed off and maybe defensive, it's not so easeful.

So, there's your challenge: try and talk to yourself nicely! In fact, i think that's a challenge for all of us! whether your tone was kind or not.

And also, re the prompt: Is there anything you would change? If there was anything there, i wonder, what could you make accessible right now? Like, today? And put that into action. And then let me know what that is.

Send me an email! Send me a message! Contact me on social media, i'm on ig but also not (i’m mostly on Patreon at the moment but ig now and then)!

all the links to get in touch with me are in the shownotes.

And if you're feeling particularly excited about this, leave me a voicemail, i love to hear from you!

There's a link to my answering machine - it's free and everything, you just record a message for me, and that would be amazing!

And i'd love to know what you think about this practice, how it was for you and your thoughts on rest, what are you doing? Especially those of you who have a really good relationship with rest! Tell me about your journey, tell me what you're up to and know that i'm rooting for you every step and also a reminder that this is a journey. Things are going to fluctuate, and that's ok. It's ok.

So if you're struggling right now, know that this can change. And if things are smooth right now and suddenly change into a different pattern, know that you can always get back to that sweet spot. It's all good BABY-BABY! (ok i'm going to stop…. i need to stop).

I really hope this was helpful and those of you who are interested in diving into these ideas further, i have a Patreon community where we go deep, we take deep dives and hang out together online, we have tea + chat, we do freewrites, we have a bookclub, and i share things there that i don't share elsewhere on the internets and irl. A lot of stuff from behind the scenes, you get pre-releases of this podcast and videos i make for my youtube channel dionneyoga on youtube and other goodies as well, so if you're interested in that, come over and join us!

I've also got a free yoga summer series you can access here. A free month-long journey with a weekly mail from me with a seasonal yoga + somatic movement practice i've curated for you which i really hope you dig and that it keeps you company during the summer months.

What else? Oh there's lots of other things, you can find it all in the shownotes here.

I usually make a playlist for every episode and put other treats in there too.

Thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate you.

And - rest well, my friends.

 
 
self caredionne elizabethself care, Self care, i feel for you podcast