FROM THE ARCHIVES: Ep. 66 Permission to Rest + Release with Meghan Johnston

It's such a, a dynamic and like multi-layered question.

Yeah.

that you ask, and there's a few things that are coming up for me.

And so we'll get to the practice in a second.

But first, I think one of the things that was coming up as you were talking is I've been thinking about this question lately, like what is the biggest thing that stops us from that connection with self? And of course there are so many.

The one that feels like really fascinating to me right now is all or nothing thinking.

And I'm going to call out two forms of this that I hear a lot.

One is the story that we don't have time.

And one is the story that we don't know how.

And I think that both of these show up on both ends of the cycle, the creative cycle, both when it comes to our willingness and our capacity to make space and time for rest and and for replenishment and for that inward journey, as well as they come up when it comes to taking like aligned action, being in that courageous space of moving forward on the things that feel deeply resonant, but are maybe expanding and stretching us.

And both of these stories, the story that we don't have time and the story that we don't know how, they both presume this kind of like all or nothing thinking, like either I do or don't have time.

Either I do or don't know how.

As opposed to like seeing things in this much more fluid, dynamic way, more like a spectrum with curiosity, really seeing things with curiosity, like how do I slightly shift? And so it's not...

And years ago, I used to... really a focus specifically on rest.

I had a course called radical rest rhythms.

I I've been a yoga teacher for 13 years.

And a lot of that time has been teaching restorative yoga and I still teach restorative yoga.

Um, but one of the things that always, always, always came up around this topic of rest is this idea that I don't have time.

Hmm.

And The thing that is interesting to me about that is really this story we have around, like that presumes that there is a certain amount of time that you need.

And what is that? And where did that come from? Because from a nervous system perspective, you don't actually need a lot of time to regulate yourself, which isn't to say like, of course, if you have a weekend or like a glorious, like week of time off or like a retreat or at the spa, like, of course that is going to feel really like delicious and nourishing.

And also I know people and have worked with people who've integrated their a five or 10 minute practice into their day.

And that has been the thing that lets them come back to themselves, to regulate, to self-soothe, to come back into their body and to come back to their wisdom.

And so for me, I think in terms of a tool, the most potent tool in my own life has been curiosity.

I