Three Types of Rest

As we approach the end of the year, you might feel a deep need for resting. If you want to truly rest, I suggest that it might be helpful to think of three types of resting practices. Engage with one or all of them as you find most helpful.

Psst: don’t forget to get the 2025 Journal to prepare for the New Year

Relaxing and having fun

The first practice it simply enjoying taking some time off, spending it alone or with family and friends in a relaxed and fun way. Let your heart and mind guide you:

• What does your body need? More sleep? More exercise?
• What does your heart need? More time journaling or meditation?
• What feels nourishing? A solo walk in nature? Gathering around food with people you love?
• What feels good? What feels restful?

Grieving

You might have been through a lot this past year: you might have said goodbye to loved ones, experienced the ending of a dream or relationship, felt hurt or disappointed by events.

There is a type of rest that you only experience when you let ourselves cry. Tears can release so much stuck energy, and free you from inner pressure. You can find that after such heartfelt emotional release you have energy again, or you rediscover the joys of life, or even experience more hope and lightness. You might need to cry only once, or you might need to cry multiple times. Sometimes watching a movie that moves you can help the tears come.

Think of it as an opening of the heart that lets life and love flow, washing away all the stuck energy, and preparing you for new life.

Finding deeper meaning (a philosophy to include the dark as well as the light)

There is a kind of rest that happens at an even deeper level. It’s when we find meaning in life, with all the good and the bad, without the need to suppress, deny, resign ourselves, etc.

I don’t know what that meaning will be for you; every human being has to find their own. You might find it in religion or philosophy or teachings you feel deeply connected to.

Or you might find meaning from an insight, something that emerges from Source, and then you know: “this is why this is happening; this is what I have to do.”

There is no right or wrong way, and you cannot have rigidity around this either. The feeling will tell you if it’s the deeper meaning you need now. To find it, you can do a few things: enjoy content that shares deep teachings and inspiring stories, talk to people who you feel could help you open up to this deeper Wisdom, or do what feels good to you that helps you be in a quiet mind (being in nature for example).

The important thing is to understand that you cannot force meaning intellectually. The meaning finds you just as much as you find the meaning.

Rest means being able to let go of all the extra thoughts, worries, and doing that we don’t need now. And embracing more deeply the essence of your Being.

Practice these three types of rest and embrace the Flow of Life.