Practice Ways with Octavia Raheem
Practice Ways is a monthly feature on Balance Practice, sharing practice notes from writers, makers, and coaches, and offering perspectives on what practice looks like as real life is happening.
A restorative treat for all of us this month. Octavia F. Raheem — author, yoga teacher, activist — has generously shared her notes on the themes of balance and practice. Reading her words is like having a tea break with her; it’s a potent rest practice in itself.
Octavia’s new book (her third), Rest Is Sacred, just came out last month and creates entry points to, as the subtitle invites, Reclaiming Our Brilliance Through the Practice of Stillness. Rest, yes. I’m halfway through at the time of writing this and following her advice in the intro, which is to not read it all in one sitting. Instead, I’m savouring it slowly and can feel my nervous system settling with each page I turn. It’s prayerful, practical, and poetic; an opportunity for deep reflection and an invitation to the healing that accompanies slowing down, breathing deeply, and paying attention.
I love that she doesn’t believe in balance, and instead seeks harmony. Indeed, it’s not about weighing one thing against the other, leveling scales, or striving to juggle everything all at once. Rather, it’s a recognition of where shifts are needed, and a practice of acknowledging where we’re at and responding accordingly, day to day and moment to moment.
If you’ve been here for a while you know how highly I regard rest as an essential practice and way of being (I’ve just written my second book on the topic). I also deeply value others’ perspective on recovery and healing arts at a time when this world so urgently needs it. Octavia’s voice is a true beacon in this space and beyond. Read on for her insights and, as she says, Soften your gaze and continue…
What’s feeling really good to you in this season?
The simple things in my life feel good. The conversations I have with my son on the way to school. Sitting on the couch and holding my partner’s hand in silence. Today my family and I had a big breakfast for dinner just because we wanted to. Reading early reviews for my upcoming book Rest Is Sacred feels really good. I recently returned from leading a Rest Revelations: A Rest & Write Retreat that was transformative, inspiring, and profoundly clarifying. Watching summer greens slip quietly into the burnt orange, golden red, and honey yellows of autumn... all of this feels good right now.
What does balance look like for you right now?
Sooooo I have to be honest, I don’t believe in balance.
When I hear people talk about balance, my eyes usually glaze over. I start to visualize a person in a bedazzled leotard high up on a rope, face painted to perfection, skin and muscles so tight they could break, walking across a tightrope.
Or I see a person with too many plates and cups, all glass, piled high, too high. I see a person struggling to keep it all together and hold it all up so nothing falls and breaks.
My issue with balance started young. When I was eight years old I took gymnastics for about four weeks. I was surprised to realize that I hated the balancing beam there because it was my favorite structure on my elementary school playground. I was able to run, jump, and easefully lay down on the one at school. The “real” one in gymnastics towered over me, required intense concentration for my eight year old brain, and promised to punish me if I stumbled and fell.
Though I don’t believe in balance, I trust harmony.
Two definitions of harmony according to Merriam Webster are:
1a : the combination of simultaneous musical notes in a chord
b : the structure of music with respect to the composition and progression of chords
Prioritizing harmony over balance invites me to first attune and tune in to:
What’s happening inside the instrument of my being and whoever I am present with?
What solo am I leading or what song are we playing together now?
Harmony demands that you feel where shifts need to occur like slowing down, speeding up, turning up or down, less of this, more of that all of the while actually listening to how everything plays together and impacts your capacity to sing the song that is your precious life.
For me, this is so different from balance, from trying to say up right, teetering, tottering, and tight gripping in order to not drop anything. Harmony tells me that some things actually need to be dropped or put down depending on the season or circumstance.
Harmony acknowledges the role and function of varied notes. No particular note or area has to carry the song of my life through and through. It’s about how it all plays together.
What practices support your sense of balance?
Prayer, Yoga Nidra, Restorative Yoga, and Meditation support my sense of harmony and provide a place for me to experience being grounded and expansive in my body, mind, and heart. I can be with the both/and of life and hear my inner voice. Following that voice and guidance more than the static and noise of the world is the key to harmony for me. It helps me discern what is mine to do and what is not mine to do.
What’s one gesture toward center you’d invite everyone reading to partake with you today?
I’d invite them to consider the harmony and the power of how things play together and create the song of their life so to speak. I’d offer this creative practice:
Consider a song that is dripping in harmony and that you love.
Pause and listen to it. Follow sensations that arise. Move how the song invites you to move or simply be still with it. When the song ends, notice what you notice. Write that down.
What if you endeavored for your life to feel like that song more than a balancing act? What would you lift up? What would you put down? Where would you place more pauses, stillness, or silence? Where would you string together more movement? What notes aren’t playing together so well this season?
You are the great composer and vocalist, harmonize your life.
Octavia F. Raheem is the author of books including Pause, Rest, Be, and Rest Is Sacred. She is the founder of Devoted to Rest, a transformational rest-focused immersion for visionary leaders making a high impact in their field. Rest with Octavia at octaviaraheem.com.