Stockholm, Sweden. A program on the 3 Principles psychospiritual understanding that my husband, Bill, and I had been invited to do. The room was airy, bright with sunshine filtered through large wood-crusted windows. Bill sat on a stool in the front of the room and waited for the buzz of the morning break to subside.
“These days, I am more mindful of how important it is to have rested well-being,” Bill said. The room fell pin still. His words had landed. Bill had never used that term before. He sat, not moving, and looked at the 35 people in front of him. “Check in with yourselves. How many of you can say that right now you are in rested well-being?
Somebody coughed. I listed to my body. I could not say I felt in rested well-being. Travel takes a toll. I felt tears smart in my eyes. I looked around the room and was shocked to see that my tears were not isolated. Bill’s question had touched a nerve, a truth.
“What does rested well-being mean to you and what would it take to get there?” he asked. “The answer is important, because that is the place where whatever answers you are looking for live.”
The past couple of weeks I have felt pulled between an apparent dichotomy. On the one hand, I’ve heard several people speak the phrase, “I’ll rest when I die.” On the other hand, I have been studying the Human Design and Gene Key systems, which tell me that I, personally, was not designed to work more than a few hours a day. A Human Design practitioner said to me this week, “when you are really rested, then invitations to share your wisdom will flow to you because you’ll be in alignment with your natural design.” What is my truth about that? Does rested well-being mean the same for everybody?
I suspect that our answers are highly individual and affected by our constitutions, our conditioning, and how we create ourselves.
When I listen to my inner wisdom, the still small voice, what I hear is that the latter is far truer for me. I function best in rested well-being. Lord knows, I have paid a big health price in accidents with life-long consequences that came from pushing myself way too hard.
Recently, my friend and colleague, Jules Swales, released a pocketbook called, “Declarative: 33 Statements that Changed my Life.” Take a moment to sit with this one:
“My body is my church, she is my jurisdiction. She is always beautiful and strong. I listen and trust my body. I care for her before all other things.” – page 53.
Reflecting on, and rewriting for myself, this beautiful declaration has brought me full circle to considering what rested well-being means for me, at age 70. I am thinking a lot about what radical self-care is. I have felt myself slowing down, unwinding into a new relationship with rest. This feeling has a softness, a purity, like water.
The very softest thing of all
Can ride like a galloping horse
Through the hardest of things.
Like water, like water penetrating rock.
And so the invisible enters in.
That is why I know it is wise
To act by doing nothing
And how few, how very few understand this!”
Lao Tzu
Copyright 2024: Linda Sandel Pettit, Ed.D.
Photo courtesy of istockphoto.com
Dr. Linda Sandel Pettit is an author, speaker, personal consultant and champion for the Wild Intuitive Way of Love which guides us to breakthrough insights for living at optimal levels of well-being, self-expression and creativity. Read more about Dr. Linda and order her acclaimed memoir/self-help book, Leaning Into Curves: Trusting the Wild Intuitive Way of Love at https:lindasandelpettit.com.
Check out this blog: https://drlindapettit.com/elegy-8/
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