Why is rest and ease hard? Why is it so hard to slow down to take your time to rest?

We call it beast mode. Right. And we got pretty used to it. Beast mode. We are, like, really pushing. Really driving. But the truth is that beasts nap a lot. Check out your pets, your dog, your cat. Think about the bears. They sleep all frickin winter. So many animals do. So they’ve been lying to us about the wisdom of the beast.

They say the beast is how we’re supposed to drive and hunt and prey and run. The truth is the beast, especially the predators. They sleep most of the day. When I was backpacking through the wilds of South Africa, we could hear the lions. They were up all night, but they were up all night getting it on. And then they slept all day with an occasional hunt.

Your beast needs the same thing. I’m really speaking to you. If you’re a hormonal mess, if you’re in the midst of the perimenopause, the menopause, big hormonal shifts. As a woman, the pressure is to go to push. And that’s not the wisdom of your body. The body is a beast. The body is an animal. This is an animal.

Flesh and bone body. And when it’s time to rest, the body knows it’s time to rest. And when it’s time to eat, the body knows it’s time to eat. What has it been like to trust your body more in midlife? What’s it been like as your body keeps shifting and changing and giving you some challenging hormonal stuff to deal with?

Maybe some injuries, maybe some sleep difficulties. It’s forced you to listen to the body, though, right? And it’s forced you to rest. It’s forced you into a place of ease. Me, too. My body is making it so clear that as I get a little older and wiser, I need to rest more and let my work periods be those intense sprints that I love them to be, and then to go back into a rested state.

For a long time, I thought, I have to push myself. I have to be that beast in beast mode. But now I’m learning the wisdom of it. Beast mode is nap mode. Animal mode is rest, conserve energy mode and then hit it when the time is right. So what is it that makes these difficult? What is it that makes naps hard to take?

I think that it’s our brains, not our bodies. I think that it’s the push of our stress-driven amygdala and our patterned, puritanical work ethic. And I think, check my facts, that when we drop into the body and really feel, we know that rest and ease are the natural state and that those sprints of activity can then be targeted and efficient.

This is something that we’re working with in my programs like The Wisdom Collective because it’s springtime, the energies are starting to rise, and we are starting to feel ourselves again. The warmth has thawed, the ice, and now we can feel our bodies were coming back into this body and out of the dream state of the winter. So it’s time.

And this month of March, we’re working with the archetype of the creature. There is a part of you that is creature. We are all animals. We’re human animals. So I invite you to feel into your animal self and you’ll know when it’s time to take a rest. When it’s time to take a nap. When it’s time to lay in the sunshine on a pillow.

Just ask your cat right. When it’s time to go outside and find a beautiful patch of grass to lay down on. Just ask your dog. That’s where my dog is right now. Your creature knows the path of ease. It’s your messed up, stressed out old human self that drives too hard. Drop into the body. Drop in the body.

Drop into the body. And I’ll try to meet you there.