Rest In Your Heart...

I want to talk a little bit about...Resting

This is new territory for me here, people, so just go with me on this one...

Resting is not something I'm very good at. Oh, I don't mean laying on the couch watching tv kind of resting. That kind of resting I am VERY good at. And I don't mean cuddling with my mister and spending too long in bed kind of resting...also, very good at. I'm talking about the kind of resting that can happen at any moment any time and can (and should) last all day kind of resting. I'm talking about the kind of resting that prompts a totally spontaneous and giant sigh of relief. I'm talking about the kind of resting that makes the space of your chest all melty--the kind that makes your mind s - l - o - o - o - o - w d - o - w - n and communicates this slowed-down-ness to the rest of your body in waves of pleasure.

That kind of resting, I am not very good at. Or so I have discovered.

I came to this revelation during a recent class in which the teacher (the excellent and supremely talented Gina Zimmerman--look her up at Still Yoga, people!) started the class by talking about how there are people in the world who are seeking, endlessly thinking that they have to go to this class, or this lecture, or this book, or this healer to find their answers, and that maybe this isn't the most efficient way to live one's life. As soon as she started talking my little ears started to blush. (And when I say little ears, I mean it...my ears are weirdly too small for my head...but that's another post altogether).

Though I'm not yet going to "healers" (or, at least...not very often. heh.) I immediately recognized myself in her description of the endlessly seeking. I thought about how often when I am in a pickle of some kind I immediately think, "well, I have to call s0-and-so" or "I have to do such-and-such" or "if only I could do that thing that that book told me to do...what was that again?" And while I know the act of seeking in and of itself is not BAD, I could feel, in that instant, as I was listening to her, that the energy of seeking is very out and very forward and very fast-moving. I picture myself with my eyebrows raised, and my chin jutted forward and my hands a-flapping the air when I'm in that state. The "I need help from ______" state of mind.

And then she said something that has stayed with me, looping around my head and body, every day since. She asked us if we could just "rest in the heart."

That's it. So simple. Rest in the Heart.

But as she said it I knew, viscerally...CELLULARY, exactly what she meant. I could feel all of that forward eyebrow-raised energy sinking down down down into the center of my chest. I felt my butt plant more firmly to the ground. I felt my breath change. I felt myself--backing off. And I felt that spontaneous and giant sigh of relief. I think I might have even heard some tiny voice inside me utter a long-held and breathless, "finally!" And I thought, my god, do I really NEVER do this?

I have been in a phase for...don't ask me how long, actually...a phase of gathering information and amending behavior, asking advice and refining amendments...gathering, amending, asking, refining, gathering, amending, asking, refining, and feeling at times unbearably frustrated at the dearth of questions and tiny trickle of answers I felt I was getting. And then, in an instant, with that one little instruction: Rest In Your Heart, I felt it all start to change ("finally!"). Not because I was flooded with answers or because some great mystery was revealed to me but because, for the first time in I don't know how long, I was RESTING. And I could listen to instructions and move my body and participate and laugh and fall down and worry and fantasize and all of it from this place of rest.

I don't know how to describe what it feels like, to rest there. Or at least...not what it might feel like to you. To me it feels like sitting in a little hut with soft walls. I think it might be pink in there. It is definitely quiet...and for a little hut, it's spacious...like the sky is in there with me. Try it if you want...take a second, stop what you're doing, look away from this screen or don't, and ask yourself, whisper it, demand it, whatever...just try to feel what it feels like to Rest all that activity inside. You might find, like I did, that you are moving a lot more and a lot faster than you thought you were, and the rest might just do you some good...

That's all for now...

I love you, Shanti-towners!!


xo
YogaLia