My Journey into Rest
Hard work pays off, and I am delighted to announce that after training for one year of training, I am a Daring to Rest Facilitator. However, my journey towards this has not always been straightforward!
My Past Relationship with Rest
I’ve had a complicated relationship with rest for as long as I can remember. My diary has always been jam-packed with things to do, not only work but places to go and people to see. A weekend wasn’t a weekend unless I’d been somewhere new, eaten something different or caught up with friends. When people told me they’d had a quiet weekend, I was slightly envious but also felt that they were wasting their lives. Didn’t they just want to get out and do something?
I lived in the future – always making plans, looking forward to things, but not taking the time to enjoy them when I was there. In the midst of a holiday, I’d be planning the next one or trying to add days to the one I was on. I never really enjoyed the moment; I was always looking ahead.
(Photo above taken on a ferry crossing in 2013 - having "fun", but look at how tired I am!)
I wouldn’t say I found resting difficult in the past – I just didn’t consider it. It wasn’t something that crossed my mind. Sleeping was never an issue for me – I got into bed and fell asleep straight away, staying asleep for the full 5 or 6 hours I allowed myself to have. I think now that I was probably just exhausted. However, I didn’t feel this, I had energy, as long as I kept going.
Something Has to Change
Everything came to a crash in a few different ways. I started to practice mindfulness – and started to be much more involved with the present moment. Suddenly, living in the future didn’t seem so attractive, but it was a hard habit to break.
Practising mindfulness helped me to tune into myself more. To listen to my body, and to recognise my emotions, perhaps for the first time. I realised that part of the need to keep myself busy was to paper over the cracks of unhappiness in my life. My marriage was not a good one. I realised my unhappiness had been there for a long time and wasn’t resolvable. This unhappiness was also leaching into my body and causing physical discomfort.
After separating from my husband, I attended a year-long mindfulness training programme, which was experiential in nature. This deepening into practice helped me to further tune into myself. I continued to live with my ex-husband for around 6 months as we worked on separating our finances and our lives. During this time, I leant into self-compassion practices, learning to nurture and care for myself. This was a revelation to me. My inner critic has always been loud – and finding a way to unhook from this has been a huge relief for me.
(Photo above taken on my first retreat - I'm lying down, but am clearly not resting - I didn't know how to rest)
I started to teach mindfulness locally, around my job as a Social Worker. Mindfulness began to occupy more and more of my life. Some of the practices we offered had a relaxation element and often focused on the body, in the form of a body scan. I used to pride myself on never falling asleep during these, but as I learnt to let go, I found that sometimes I slept, and I was ok with this!
Introducing Yoga Nidra
In 2018 I had my first experience of a “proper” yoga nidra. I didn’t understand the body rotation part and was frustrated with how quickly the focus moved around the body. Having been used to body scans which spent time focusing on individual parts, this was confusing for me. I spoke to the instructor about this, and she said that’s the way it happens in yoga nidra. My interest was piqued.
I started to occasionally listen to yoga nidras on Insight Timer as part of my meditation practice and found that they were all so different. I couldn’t understand what a yoga nidra was and how was it different from a meditation. In 2019 Scott Moore’s “Practical Yoga Nidra” was offered free on Kindle books – I read it and loved it so much I bought a paper copy. I linked in with Scott, going to some of his online sessions, and undertaking some training with him. He gave me some of his scripts, which I used within my community – but I was desperate to find my own yoga nidra voice.
The pandemic broke my pattern of being a good sleeper. I started to find it difficult to get to sleep at night. I began to listen to yoga nidras at night-time, specifically for sleep. I found this helped me a lot, and I started to want to be able to offer yoga nidras that were much more personal to me. At this stage, I was particularly interested in helping people sleep – in our community, this issue came up again and again, and it was something I felt very motivated to help with.
I undertook yoga nidra training with YogaLeela and started to find my own voice more. I understood much more about the structure of yoga nidra and started to become more confident in creating them. At this stage, I mainly offered yoga nidra for sleep – we had an online session that ended at 10 pm – our community (mainly women) would join already in bed and fall asleep during the nidra. It felt like such a support in a difficult time, and I know it was extremely valued.
In 2020 one of our community members suggested we read Daring to Rest together as one of our books for book club. We undertook the 40 days together, motivating each other to rest and came together at the end of the 40 days to discuss the experiences we had all had. I really struggled to put the time aside each day to rest – it still fell off the “to-do” list – probably because it did just feel like another thing that had to be done. I think it's true to say that at this stage, I still hadn’t really had a true taste of rest. It was still something I was thinking about but hadn’t experienced viscerally.
I connected with Karen after reading the book and started to attend her Friday practices occasionally. I started to realise that I wanted rest to be part of my lifestyle, not just something that I shoe-horned in when I was too exhausted to do anything else. I was so delighted to get a scholarship for the Daring to Rest programme, and over this year I have truly tasted rest. I know that my yoga nidras, and my life, are richer for it.
Rest will continue to be something that I have to remember to prioritise. It doesn’t come naturally to me. One of my revelations over the course has been finding out about different types of rest. Saundra Dalton-Smith’s Ted talk might be less than 10 minutes long, but I found it so powerful – it’s completely changed the way I think about rest. Rest doesn’t just mean lying down and doing nothing – which is why I continued to be exhausted during the pandemic. I now feel more able to consider what type of rest I need, and to give this to myself. You can find her Ted-Talk here.
I will be bringing rest into our offerings on a more regular basis, particularly when we open our premises and I look forward to bringing you all on board too and joining the rest revolution with me.
If you have any questions, contact me at susie@pauseandbreathe.co.uk
With a smile,
Susie