A Practice for All of Us

On rest (a reading)

Winter is settling in and making herself comfortable — exhaling in contrast to the calendar year’s inhale. This season, with its frosts and feeble light, is an evening and yet here we are in the morning of 2025 as January wakes up the year. It’s a bit disorienting, isn’t it? Expectations are high and days are gloomy.

How do we ease these contradictions?

We live in a world that tells us to do too much, all the time, at the expense of our own well-being. Nature’s bare branches, meanwhile, show us how to move deeper into hibernation, encouraging us to trust the quiet progression that accompanies dormancy.

Mama, where did everything go? my daughter asks, gazing across the sparkle of our frozen local pond.

Retreat, the breeze seems to reply before I endeavor to answer. You don’t have to listen too closely to hear it. Look about you — the palette is brown and barren. Bleak comes to mind but there’s a beautiful simplicity in the cold air, a distinct restfulness. The natural world knows it must rest in order to rise again come spring; we can’t dream if we’re constantly running on a self-imposed wheel of busyness.

Balance is available, as ever, but perhaps not in the illusion of relief we feel on the rare occasion when stars align and we manage to do all the things in a day. Instead, we might more easily locate it under the duvet in these wintery weeks as we respond to our most innate need for restoration, even when that means leaving some things undone.

The only person who can discern the balance is you.

Rest, like balance, is a practice.

I want to read you something from my new book Move, Rest, Recover — a gentle invitation to catch your breath, right where you are…

Consider your rest practice — Is it the moments when you sit and *just* drink your coffee or tea? Look away from your screen? Gaze at the changing colours in the sky? Tuck yourself into bed early? Perhaps you treat gentle as a verb? Or maybe it’s in your decision to leave a free hour that unexpectedly presents itself just that — free.

How are you practicing rest this season?

Remember that rejuvenation can happen in any moment, and the most powerful, accessible gesture we can make to ourselves is to simply take a deep breath in… and a slow breath out… Continue to deepen your breathing…

Warmly x

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