I found yoga many years ago, probably around 15 years ago when a friend who was practicing took me to a flow class. The two things I remember most about that class are pigeon pose & savasana. I was a consistent runner back then, so pigeon pose sticking out makes sense, my hips must have been tight from hitting that pavement. But Savasana, that was different.
I remember turning to my friend after class and saying. WOW!
After that, I went to class when I could, but it wasn't about rest for me (yet!) I was still in a mindset of push push push. Battling years of body dysmorphia and perfectionism. I wanted to be in handstand as quickly as possible. Eventually, I moved houses, and that yoga studio wasn't as handy so my ambition for inversions petered out.
There were years in between of continued pushing and endless doing. Working in a corporate world didn't encourage rest or slow living, rather it encouraged hustle, late nights, working hard, and playing hard.
I was convinced this was the only way forward, having grown up as a first-generation Australian with Chilean immigrant parents, who to this day work harder than anyone I know.
This was my normal, this was my conditioning, this was what I had always known.
Working hard, meant you had ambition, you had drive, you knew where you were going with your life, you had a good head on your shoulders, you were achieving, you were smart and savvy and successful. Hardness was good, softness was weak.
But working hard and living this way was not my forever path at the age of 26 I got diagnosed with an auto-immune condition called Graves Disease, a thyroid condition. The general gist of this disease is that your thyroid creates too much thyroid hormone, your body attacks itself into thinking there is not enough and so it makes more, this affects your heart rate, your weight, and your mental health, its like a freight train through the body, full steam ahead.
When I got the diagnosis, the main symptom I went in with was a rash that I kept getting all over my body. My levels were so high the doctors were shocked I wasn't experiencing more symptoms.
But now I look back at photos of myself in this time, and I can see in my eyes, the distress my body was in. I was at the end of my tether, and my body was shouting at me. Pay attention!
Even writing this now, I get upset thinking about the distress I was willing to put myself through to “be enough”. My body didn't even believe in me anymore, it was trying to create more in order to “be enough", in order to keep up with my unrealistic demands.
After the diagnosis, I started to assess things. I took a step back, I was able to leave the corporate world and take on some freelance work to pay for bills and life and I was able to give myself space to start healing and recover parts of myself I had left behind, as well as discover parts I never knew existed.
It took time but I found yoga again.
I went to a yin class, and honestly, I really didn't like it.
I kept choosing flow classes because this felt familiar and safe, it was my comfort zone.
Until one day I decided to try a different teacher and she knew how to hold space so beautifully. I found safety in stillness for the first time, in a really long time and I unraveled myself on the mat.
I knew that this was the beginning of a new way.
This was in 2018, 7 years ago.
This was when my practice truly began.
I dedicated myself to lying in stillness, in darkness in unraveling the conditioning of years, decades , and lifetimes.
In 2019 I took a restorative yoga rest retreat, and I met and connected to some people who would become my companions and peers on this rest road.
Fast forward to 2020 when I finally did my Yoga teacher training and in 2022 I committed to a year-long Yoga Nidrā intensive teacher training course with my most beloved teachers Tracee Stanley and Dr. Chanti.
In the last 7 years, rest found me through huge moments of career change, through illness, through joy, through pregnancy, through love, through grief, it uncovered traumas that had been sitting dormant, and it also uncovered my intuitive abilities.
Rest has held me through it all.
Rest has been my constant, and it has taught me a new way.
It has shown me that doing, giving, and achieving is much easier when you feel rested.
It is much easier to give from a full cup than an empty cup.
It has shown me how to let go, how to evolve, how to be compassionate, how to tune into my creative spirit with joy, ease, and grace, and how to show up on the good days and the not-so-good days, it has shown me how to be a mother, how to walk the path of love and strength.
There have been moments when I have forgotten to rest for months, when my old ways emerge. But rest and more specifically Yoga Nidrā is forgiving, is kind, and ready to receive you whenever you come to find her.
And when you land it is the sweetest space of reprieve and belonging.
Rest has taken my hand, and opened the doors of my heart.
It has shown me who I truly am.
I'm forever grateful for finding my beloved practice and humbled to share these profound practices. Because they change you, they fill you, they hold you and they move you to be your bravest, boldest self.
Even now as I write these words my relationship with rest has been shifting. It has called my name more consistently and with it a large wave of change in my life, my work, and my ambitions has emerged.
I'm witnessing another dimension of the gifts of rest.
I will continue to grow in the arms of this practice for the rest of my life.
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If you have read this far, you have essentially been resting in my story.
You have been dreaming of another way.
I thank you, for letting me be open, vulnerable and candid on what the last decade of my life has looked and felt like.