Rest Your Mind

The concept of rest has been leading my practice and my teaching this past week. My intention has been to simply rest and to help my students find the space so that they can rest as well. There is something so comforting to me about the word rest. It seems to give me permission to slow down and shut down from the world even if just for an hour.

The need to rest our minds from overstimulation is now more important than ever. The media is in a frenzy barraging us with news of the financial markets and the election. On my mat last week I realized that I was feeling mentally and physically fatigued because I had been over dosing on news.

It was during that practice that I decided to just rest my mind. I felt an overwhelming desire to not do or think about anything. And so I did. During that practice, I let go of my need to perfectly execute each pose. I let go of having to go “deeper” in a pose. I let go of the alignment principles. I let go of everything and I rested. It was an incredible experience and is one that I have been able to duplicate over and over during the week.

After sensing my own overloaded mind, I then sensed this same syndrome in my classes. As a society, we have all been on an intense media high since early September and I think that we are all starting to feel the effects of the prolonged stimulation.

If you’ve been in one of my classes over the past week, you have probably heard me repeat the phrase, “Rest your mind on your breath”. It is such a relief to me to give myself permission to not think, not solve, not ponder anything at all!

There are so many decisions to make these days, that we truly exhaust ourselves by over-watching, over-listening and over-thinking. If you feel overloaded as I did a week ago, then I offer you this simple advice:

Try not to read or listen to the news more than once or twice per day.
Rest your minds in your cars by driving in silence.
Rest your minds at home by making a conscious decision as to when to watch the news
instead of having the buzz of the talking heads in your ears in a continuous steam.
Take 5 conscious breaths once every hour.
Get on your yoga mat and rest your minds while moving your bodies.

These practices have helped me get off the spinning wheel that I was on just a week ago. I hope that they will help you too.

I wish you a well deserved rest.

Peace.