Nourishing our vitality

I've had a mental shift about rest and nourishment. I've been investigating the cause of my iron deficiency and trying to find long term ways to support and manage it, including practical strategies for sleep and nutrition.

So far this has felt like I am drawing on my limited energy to fight against this deficiency, to find the cause and fix it. My light bulb moment was realising that the opposite of exhaustion is vitality. It is actually my vitality that I am seeking and supporting. I want to use my energy towards this rather than fighting against something!

Nourishment doesn't always come from food and sleep is not the only way to find vitality. So I am curious about what rekindles our vitality? what nourishes our passion for life?

Seven types of rest

Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith's TED talk and her concept of seven types of rest has been useful to me. She reframes rest as something that nourishes the different parts of our beings. We don't always need sleep when we are feeling tired. Here are her types and strategies for rest that you may find helpful too:

1. Physical rest - walking for leisure, sleeping 6-8 hours a day, hydrating well, practicing body fluidity by not staying in the same position for prolonged periods of time, daily stretching.
2. Mental rest - regular journalling including brain dumps if you have chaotic thoughts, mindfulness meditation, noticing and protecting what information you are hearing and seeing.
3. Sensory rest - adjusting the brightness of your screens and lights, using blue light filters, switching off or changing the alert sound on your phone, spending time in silence, making sure your bedroom is dark, quiet and cool, using a weighted blanket.
4. Creative rest - spending time outside so you can feel you are a part of nature, taking breaks from constantly doing/ being productive/ creating.
5. Emotional rest - seeking work that brings you satisfaction and activities that bring you pleasure, acknowledging and communicating your needs and boundaries, making life goals that are bigger than just you.
6. Social rest - intentionally spending more time with people who uplift you and less time with people who drain you, prioritising real life connections, spending time with people who are different from you.
7. Spiritual rest - making time for regular prayer/ meditation/ inspirational reading, connecting with something greater than the self.

The invitation of falling apart

This season we are in, when autumn shifts to winter, is traditionally called Samhain or Halloween. The magic of this time is of endings and death and falling apart and breaking open and unmaking.

I have felt this in my current journey to find health and vitality - when we lose our confidence, certainty or capacity there is an invitation to unlearn the perfection, the mastery, the idea of health as a personal achievement or goal. To let go.

An invitation to see our brokenness as sacred and necessary. To hallow/ make holy these times of loosening, softening, decomposing. To recognise holy is part of the whole.

I keep thinking about this moment as just one part of the whole story of my life. And your life and my family's life and our ancestor's lives on and on. These human stories are comforting and humbling.

So this month I am trying to be as dynamic and also as soft and slow as I can be. I'd love to hear about how you're feeling this month - do you have a sense of vitality? How do you feel/ find it?

Much love,

Emily