August 24, 2011
Learn how to relax and rest your body without having to do anything else, not even reading, listening to music, or talking — and notice your energy increasing dramatically.
Vacation Update:
Although I came back to the office on Monday, I prepared this ahead of time so I could catch up on other things in the office after being away for two weeks. This has a part two that will be posted on Friday. Then on Monday I’ll be back to writing the posts about the same day they are published.
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FOND FAREWELL ARTICLE # 3
As I wrote in the post on August 15, I am changing the format of Support4Change and will eliminate some of the sections and the articles in them. One of the articles I will no longer have was written by Judith Petry, MD, who gave me permission to reprint it in 2002.
Now I am dividing it into two parts. This first one sets out the reasons why rest is so important; and she isn’t talking about the the “rest” we feel when we sit back and listen to music, or read a book, or talk with a friend. She is discussing the need to simply rest. Nothing else. Just rest.
Dr. Petry is a physician with a beautiful and gentle attitude toward life and those who suffer. If you don’t learn how to do any other stress buster (see Take-a-Break Stress Busters), be sure to learn and practice this one!
In Part Two she offers tips on how to rest. Be sure to read that on Friday.
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The Marvelous Gift of Resting – Part One
By Dr. Judith Petry, MD, reprinted with permission
Recently I had the opportunity to co-facilitate “The Healing Tools Course”, a ten-week class sponsored by Vermont Healing Tools Project, for people living with critical and chronic illness. During the weekly 2-hour sessions, we teach personal tools for healing such as meditation, visualization, drawing, dream work, and much more. I get as much out of the course as any of the participants. During one of the mid-course sessions, we had been talking about the healing power of rest, and of sleep. A women taking the course, a nurse with breast cancer who had just completed a round of chemotherapy, related an incident from the previous week, an experience of resting. She, who never rests, decided that she would just sit in her favorite chair and look out at the view of her yard. She got settled comfortably into the chair, took some deep breaths, and gazed out the window. She watched the wind in the crab apple tree, the birds as they stopped in it’s branches, the clouds passing by, the light changing as she sat there, doing nothing, for 4 hours!
As she spoke of this peaceful interlude of doing absolutely nothing except resting and described to us how wonderful it felt, I became increasingly agitated. I noticed a yearning sensation in my belly. My legs wanted to get up and walk me out of the room. Surprised by my response to her story, I looked more closely at how I was feeling. The sensation was one of abject longing for what she had described. My body begged to take me home to my own favorite chair and sit me down for an unnamed period of time and do nothing but rest. It felt like a small child hearing her first description of Disneyland and wanting with every part of herself to go there too. My body ached to be given the gift of rest that this woman had described.
I was barely able to wait until the meeting was over and I was on my way home. I could almost taste the deliciousness of sitting in a chair and watching the birds and the clouds and the wind, and doing nothing. As soon as I got in the house, ignoring the usual distractions of checking phone messages and e-mail, I went right to my favorite chair and sat down. I had the pure intention of resting, something I could never remember doing before. I didn’t plan to read, or catch up on the newspapers, or organize what I would do tomorrow, or even think about making dinner. I just rested. I noticed things that had never caught my attention before: the way the wind moved the bird feeder and how the birds held on and seemed to ignore the gusts; the way the clouds raced across the sky and changed shape with such ease; the way the aspen leaves moved in a totally different way than the maple leaves. They were all sights I had seen before, but never with such clarity; never with such total absorption.
I understood for a time what it felt like to be fully present in the moment. And I felt so comfortable and peaceful. My cat, who had been sound asleep in another part of the house was somehow drawn to the serenity of my being at that time and climbed into my lap and went to sleep. I had no feeling of tiredness or sleepiness. I was fully awake, yet perfectly quiet and tranquil. I stayed that way for about 40 minutes before my mind began to judge my lack of activity as laziness. When I allowed it to draw me back into motion, I felt as if I had just awakened from a perfect night’s sleep, fully refreshed and exceedingly grateful for the gift I had given myself. I have no doubt that if someone had measured the activity of my immune system prior to that rest, and again after it, there would have been a major improvement in it’s health. I could feel the overall positive effect of that brief true rest period on my body, mind, and emotions.
It seems, in our frenetically active lives, that we never take time to just rest. If we do slow down, we usually fill the time with TV or reading, or surfing the net. Not that there is anything wrong with those activities, just that they do not allow us to truly decelerate, rest, become present to ourselves. It seems sometimes that the only way we are able or willing to rest without guilt is if we are sick or injured. I wonder, if we cultivated the habit of resting just to renew ourselves, if as much illness and injury would be necessary. As a famous Mexican proverb says, “How beautiful to do nothing and rest afterwards.” Words to live by.
See Part Two on August 26.
Stress Reduction | Arlene Harder August 26, 2011 | 
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