Something I have been thinking a lot about lately is the topic of rest. And when I discuss rest with the women in my life, (and yes, many of those women are moms) there seems to be a common dialogue: no one I know has figured out how to rest, everyone is overcommitted and feels totally stretched beyond capacity.
So, what’s the deal? Why when we’re biologically designed to rest do so many of us find no time for it, or worse, don’t even get a good night’s sleep regularly? Why do we resist opportunities to just chill or lay down or just stop for five minutes? Why do we all have more to do than is possible to do?
My guest today thinks about questions like these, too.
Karen Horneffer-Ginter is the author of Full Cup, Thirsty Spirit: Nourishing the Soul When Life’s Just Too Much, and she has a passion for helping people reclaim what gets lost amidst the busyness of day-to-day life: qualities such as self-care, joy, humor, gratitude, and compassion.
CLICK HERE to download the Sabbath Worksheet
Karen currently serves as an Associate Professor and the Assistant Dean for Wellness at the Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine. She is the former Program Director for WMU’s Integrative Holistic Health and Wellness Program and the co-founder of the Center for Psychotherapy and Wellness in Kalamazoo.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Downtime has come to feel very foreign to many of us. The idea that we can give ourselves permission to rest seems preposterous. But when we can relearn to give ourselves the space and time for rest, when we can unplug from life and technology, we start to feel a sense of clarity and inner knowing that we can’t access in our frantic state.
- Think about having a Sabbath. The idea of having a day or part of a day every week to turn away from the world and into your inner self has been contemplated for centuries but somehow went out of vogue in the last few decades. Bring it back into practice, even if that means just starting with a few hours, one day a week.
- When we start to re-inhabit ourselves, we start to reclaim the feeling of home. And once you start to experience what home feels like, you can return to it and access it more easily. This is the reason I have my daily centering practice, which you can hear all about in episode 41 (listen here).
- Try not to get too militant about any practice you implement to bring more light and calm to your day. As Karen says, when don’t want to set up new forms of suffering in our attempt to cultivate more wellbeing. So, try not to restrict or clench around your practices.
- Practice being more present, or how Karen says it: show up in real time.
- And finally, in your attempt to living more consciously and intentionally, remember lightness. Having a spirit of ease, humor, and laughter is good medicine.
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A big thanks to Karen Horneffer-Ginter for joining me this week! You can find her at www.karenhg.com.
Until next time,
