The Muse Mandala
An Oracle Deck
For Human
Connection, Creativity, & Compassion
Muse 25: Rest
by Shannon Bronson
edited by Elise Lorimer
What is Rest?
Rest is when we stop the busyness of our lives to care for ourselves.
It’s what brings Gentleness and Stillness to our souls.
Everything in nature rests;
it is an essential part of being alive.
We are acting naturally to say we need and deserve Rest.
When we Rest we reclaim our birth right.
Rest and action balance each other through cycles.
If we are in constant action,
eventually we exhaust ourselves.
Life becomes a grind.
We can discover too late that we have directed our actions in the wrong direction.
We get sick.
We burn out.
We have to cycle out of action and into Rest to build our strength.
The Rest cycle makes us feel rejuvenated, inspired and aligned in our activities.
When we slow down,
we enjoy precious time to reflect on our lives.
We orient to our place in the universe.
We can think on where our lives have been,
where we are.
We recalibrate misalignments in our actions
so they take us where we want to go.
Conscious Resting means limiting sensory inputs and outputs before we burn out.
Resting well means shutting off our televisions, our phones and reducing contact and conversation with other people.
It means putting a protection boundary around our responsibilities, obligations, duties, fun and entertainment in life for a period of time.
It means saying “No.”
The saying goes,
“Saying “No” to one thing means saying “Yes” to yourself.”
We say “Yes” to simplicity.
We say “Yes” to feeling into our growth.
We say “Yes” to delighting in our lives as they are.
Knowing Rest
We know we are resting well when we feel gentleness and stillness return to our bodies, hearts and minds.
We emerge from Rest with fresh eyes,
clear minds, and
a restored heart.
We flow again into action.
It can be a challenge to rest in todays busy society.
Our streetlights and screen lights create a perpetual day that obscures the restorative effects of night.
We have constant demands of media, our jobs, school, expenses, our families, friends, problems and entertainment pulling our attention.
We are raised in a FOMO society that admonishes
us to “seize the day,”
and to never be idle.
Rest often seems like the last thing we can or want to take.
Sometimes when we do decide to rest
and the world keeps turning,
it can seem like we are doing something wrong.
We feel pressure to fill our space and time
because that is what everyone else is doing all the time.
We compare our one life to the thousands of others we see online.
Our minds focus on these comparisons that shame us for resting.
It can feel like there is no place or permission to Rest being reflected back to us by our society.
On the contrary, we are doing something very right when we Rest.
We can soothe our comparing mind by naming Rest’s value when we are caught in a looping narrative.
Rest enhances action.
If we do not Rest, we cannot enjoy the fruits of our action.
The danger is that our lives will pass us by,
we may go down a path that gets us lost,
or we might not see the Beauty around us.
The world will always turn, it will always give us a new activity.
We can learn to trust that.
Rest enhances our ability to be present in our activities in the way we want to show up.
As we practice it, we can feel directly how it us think more clearly,
helps regulate our emotions,
and gives us insight into our challenges and opportunities.
If our lives are very demanding, slowing down and resting can feel very unnatural and overwhelming.
We might need to start with movement, or walking as Rest.
We might need music or creativity.
We can choose how we Rest, knowing that certain activities are rejuvenating, and others are depleting.
We can find our own on ramp to rest in ways that are most helpful for our nervous systems.
Scale of restfulness from least restful to most restful:
Work, TV, Social Media, Music, Company, Talking, Books, Visual Stimulation, Creating, Movement, Self-Massage, Breathing, Meditation, Solitude, Silence
If we are new to Resting, or feel some shame in it, here are some ideas about how to rest:
Microrests: If our schedule is overwhelming and busy, it is a great practice to take 5 minutes every hour and rest. We can stretch or close our eyes and breathe. We can massage our palms, which releases tons of anxiety. We can put our legs up the wall and get a micro-boost of energy from these moments of pause.
Look to Natures Cycles: Take cues from the seasonal shifts around you. Is it winter? When the natural world is dark and cold and animals are sleeping and turning inward, we can use this as information for ourselves to do the same. Summer is the opposite. Life buzzes with long days, activity and socializing make sense in these seasons. Yet the natural heat of the summer asks us to slow down in the middle of the day. To whatever capacity we have to do this in our work and lives, we can try.
We can look to the cycles of the moons as they wax and wane. Especially if we are women we honor our monthly cycles through resting when our hormones are peaking.
Bathing: Taking a hot bath and ending it with a cold shower is invigorating. The cold water stimulates our Vagus nerve, which makes our nervous system ready to Rest. If we are high-strung, can’t sleep or need a boost we can try this. We can scrub our bodies down and lay on our beds after and enjoy the feeling of being clean, cool and alive.
Self-Massage: Either before or after showering, set aside 20 minutes to sit on your towel and massage yourself. Use a favorite oil, balm or lotion and beginning at the feet, move the hands up the body in swirling, loving strokes. Experiment with different techniques and pressures to know what feels good for you. There are many tutorials online if you do not know how to do this. Play soft music or enjoy the silence in solitude. It is sweet to practice Loving-Kindness for oneself as we do this.
Bathing in Moonlight: Spend time taking in the moon at night. Wrap in warm blankets, sit in a window, by a fire or by candlelight. Enjoy the night music and the cooling rays of the moon. You can breathe in the moon energy and imagine it filling with soothing silver rays. As you breathe out you can imagine releasing aggression or harmful thoughts you are holding for yourself or others.
Listening to Gentle Music: You can create a special, safe space in your home to listen to soothing music. Put on the album and let it be the only thing that you do. Listen in Stillness or dance if you are compelled to move. Follow your instinct.
Arranging Flowers: Flower arranging is a great way to be creative and express care for yourself. Even if you arrange a single rose, spending time appreciating its beauty, taking in its scents and enjoying the feelings of its petals can be revelatory. After you are done, set it somewhere you will enjoy them as you rest.
Scents:Pleasing scents alone relax the amygdala and take us out of our remnant fight flight responses. Take some essential oils in through your nostrils. Track how far up the nostrils you can sense the smell.
Enjoying Silence: Take time to be silent in your life. Speaking and listening actually use up lots and lots of life force and energy. Silence gives our nervous systems time to settle, to become more sensitive, and to recharge.
We can bring in rituals of Rest and silence to our days, our weeks, our months and our years.
Ideally we have quiet time
every day.
Every week,
we could spend more time in silence and resting.
Every month,
we might go away and spend some time just with ourselves,
writing, resting and taking in the delight of the world.
Every year,
we could choose to spend a week or so in retreat.
Instead of taking a vacation where we run from event to event,
activity to activity,
we could spend in quiet reflection about our lives.
It’s this Rest and silence that allows us to connect with the larger purpose and picture for our lives.
Practice Gratitude for Your Body: As you are massaging yourself or placing your hands on your body, you can think about how your body enables you to experience life. As you touch each part of yourself, you can say, “This is my hand, I am grateful for it because it allows me to hold people I love, to write, to draw, to work, to cook, to eat, to drive, to touch, to hold. My hand is a tremendous tool. I am grateful for my hand.”
You can touch each part of your body and repeat the same exercise. If you have a hard time connecting to gratitude for your body for whatever reason, you can find perhaps the one part of you that you can be thankful for, even if it is as small as your pinky nail. Rest there in gratitude.
Holding Your Body and Breathing in Light: You can also use our own body to sense directly what the healing energy of Rest provides. You can delicately touch and hold yourself all over your body. Resting your hands on your body, you can hold yourself breathing in and breathing out. You can begin by placing your hands on your eyes and taking 10 breaths or so there. You can imagine your hands open into your body and through them you can breathe in golden sunshine and breathing out you can release a grey mist. You can spend as much time as you like placing your hands on each part of your body from your face to your belly. Breathing in and out, sending each part of yourself the energy of Rest.
As you do this, try to develop a light touch that is fully grounded in the present moment, with its intention to fully be and accept what is with kindness.
Unhooking the Cords: The talented acupuncturist Ingrid Peterson gives us this practice if we are caught in the comparing mind or have a hard time winding down. We can use her meditation to bring us into contentment and to help us feel permission to rest.
We can visualize our hearts as having multiple cords to all of our responsibilities, feelings of obligation, FOMO, people, strong emotions and places we are attached to. We can go through each cord one by one and detach them from these sources. We release them for our resting time, knowing we will be back, and they will be there.
We bring the cords back into our own hearts. We can imagine them coming into our hearts and feel our life force come back home to center.
Rest with the Muse: Make a Cosmic Rainbow Heart
Choose one of these exercises and make a Cosmic Rainbow Heart describing your experience.
Think of someone who never rests and make a heart imagining what their life would be life if they could. Imagine how you could help them find time, space and permission to rest.
Make a heart for your exhausted self. What’s it like. Send restful energy to them and make a commitment to rest when you can.