The Deep Rest Immersion
image from pintrest
Rest has never been a natural state for me.
I spent the majority of my life trapped in sticky loops of over-achieving, over-committing, trying to prove myself without end. I came onto the earth encoded with the belief that hard work was all that mattered: all other obstacles could be overcome. If it was easy, I didn’t deserve it.
When I found myself, somehow, teaching Restorative Yoga it was an identity crisis. To be perfectly honest: there were moments I felt embarrassed and ashamed to be doing something so different, so gentle, so soft.
Students would come pouring out of vinyasa class in the studio I taught, red faced, still dripping with sweat, glistening, laughing, saying things like I’m cooked or Did you see?! I FINALLY nailed forearm stand.
Sometimes, they’d ask what Restorative Yoga was. Is it Yin? Not really. I need to move to relax they’d say, as if I hadn’t heard it a million times before, offer me a sympathetic smile before saying: but I might tell my Mum to come take your class, she likes the gentle stuff before walking out the door.
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Years later, things have changed.
Rest has entered the chat, it’s finally something we’re starting to understand we need, and yet: the addiction to difficulty, to struggle, to assuming we’ll be forgotten, irrelevant or left behind if we do not keep up is still, for most of us, a driving and depleting force.
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Rest continues to be my greatest, and most unlikely teacher.
In the realm of health, business, relationships, creativity and success: it was never the doing I needed more of.
Seriously, think about it.
If all it took to be healthy and successful was hard work, almost everyone reading this would be a radiant billionaire with the biological age of a prepubescent teen.
For me, it was about learning how to do less.
It was about learning how to discern between the right action, and mindless doing simply because I didn’t feel safe to stop.
It was about learning how to receive, to be, and to trust.
While it sounds simple, pulling the plug on our learned ways of being is anything but easy. Especially when the story from the outside world is: nope, you’re wrong.
The Rest Practice is an Embodied unravelling of this. It goes beyond the mind itself. Through the act of practicing Rest, we (slowly) learn how to surrender to it, to stop fearing the pause and physically experience how stillness is actually the safest, ripest, most fertile space in the world.
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On November 4-5th, I’m teaching a weekend, in-person Deep Rest immersion in Batemans Bay, an incredible coastal town a few hours drive, or a quick flight from Sydney.
The location itself is a dreamlike space and it’s a perfect time of year to visit, to nestle up in a cute airbnb to Rest and swim and Rest again before the holiday crowds appear.
This is an intimate immersion for anyone who feels called to join and the only one planned in Australia for the foreseeable future.
If you’re curious, I’d love to see you there :)
Rest is the future. We’re only just getting started here.