Rest as a Sacred Act of Returning to Self
Édouard Manet (French, 1832-1883) Repose (Le Repos), ca. 1871- on view at Risd Museum
The Need for Rest...
The day after the graduation is quiet. But not empty. It smells like the Holy Rock on Kruja Mountain, where I would go as a child to rest — warm stone cradling my body, sage rising on the breeze, the faint sweetness of mountain tea mingling with the rhythmic song of cicadas.
It’s not a celebration, I feel, but a longing — to curl into a blanket, to open a book of fairytales, to sip something earthy and warm, and immerse in trails of scents and open fields of aliveness.
The air feels different now — not heavy, but hollowed. As if the world makes space for something sacred to arrive. Not a beginning. Not yet. Not a doing. Just… the after.
The pen is down. The last words have left my hands. And what rises in me isn’t adrenaline or relief — but something more ancient. Something cellular. Something sacred. A return. To ground. To remember.
My body asks to rest.
What Is Rest, Really?
The word rest sounds simple — but when I pause with it, I feel just how layered it is. It holds more than physical stillness. It carries a kind of wisdom, passed down through time and language, woven through spirit and bone.
Its roots trace back to the Old English ræst, meaning peace or a place of repose. The Proto-Germanic rasta points to a stopping place or even a measure of distance — a pause along the journey. In Old Norse, ræsta means bed. A place to lie down. A place to dwell in stillness.
Rest, then, is more than the absence of action. It’s both a state and a space. It is a letting go. A recalibration. An embodied remembering of what it means to not be driven by doing. In this season after striving, I begin to sense rest as something intelligent—something essential to all forms of life.
Forms of Rest
As I listen more deeply to what my body and spirit are asking for, I begin to think about the different forms rest takes.
Physical rest comes first — the permission to stop moving. To lie down. To sleep without regret. To let my muscles soften and my jaw unclench. I feel my breath drop lower. My spine soften against the mattress. My body, at last, able to repair and return.
Then comes emotional rest — more subtle, but just as vital. I release the need to hold space, to perform empathy, to be “on.” I give myself the radical gift of not tending to others for a little while. Just tending to me.
Mental rest shows up in the spaces where I allow my thoughts to wander. No agenda. No planning. Just watering the plants in the garden, gazing out the window, letting my mind unfurl like mist. There’s no productivity here — and that’s the point.
And perhaps most profoundly, I touch the edge of spiritual rest — a return to being rather than doing. I sit with the mystery, with enoughness. I remember that I am held, not because I’ve earned it, but because I exist. I stop striving. I let go into trust. Into presence. Into the unseen.
Rest Is All Around Us
I start to notice how rest is not something I invent — it’s something I rejoin. It lives all around me, in the natural rhythms I often rush past.
In nature, trees drop their leaves. Bears curl into their caves. Tide pools hold the stillness between waves. At dusk, the world quiets down, not in defeat, but in recalibration. Winter is not death — it is dreaming. In music, rest marks hold space in the score. Without them, the notes would lose their shape. A fermata lingers, holding time like breath. Silence is not an interruption — it’s what gives the sound meaning. In my body, I feel the wisdom of the exhale. That parasympathetic release that whispers, you are safe now. In yoga, the final pose — savasana — is not an afterthought. It is the moment of integration. Of arrival. In art and literature, rest appears in white space. In line breaks. In the stillness caught between brushstrokes. What isn’t said is just as sacred as what is.
Rest as a Sacred Act
It’s taken me years to unlearn the story that rest is indulgent. That it must be earned. Now, I know rest is not a reward — it is a way of being, a necessity. It is devotion to life beyond the grind.
Christian mystics speak of the soul resting in God — not through effort, but surrender. In Judaism, Sabbath isn’t just a break — it’s a sacred rhythm. In Buddhism, awakening arrives through stillness under a tree, not striving. In Islam, prayer interrupts the momentum of the day with breath, bowing, and return.
Rest is holy. Resting is returning to wholeness. And in a world that worships output and urgency, it becomes radical — the fertile ground from which new worlds are imagined into being.
So I rest. Not because I am weak. But because I remember, I am more than my output. I am a soul with a body that vibrates with the rhythm of the earth, the ache of becoming, the grace of simply being.
Where Rest Finds Me
Rest finds me in micro-moments. In the scent of mint rising through steam. In the silence between verses of the hummingbird buzzes in the garden. In the long exhale that follows completion. In the soft animal in me that still knows how to curl, nest, and wait. In the white candle I light just for myself — not to mark an occasion, but to honor my being.
Rest is not the opposite of productivity. It is the soil beneath it. The wisdom beneath the urgency. The place where I return to myself — slowly, fully, truly. I rest. Not to prepare for the next thing, but to allow this thing — this milestone, this movement — to become part of me.
Rest is not the end. It is the sacred middle that keeps birthing the song of the heart.
A Leadership Apothecary Practice for Leaders: A Ritual for the Sacred Middle
There’s a moment between the offering and the next call. Between the exhale of doing and the inhale of becoming. This is the sacred middle — the liminal space where transformation roots itself quietly. As leaders, we often know how to begin. We even know how to end. But the in-between — the fertile pause — is where wisdom integrates.
This ritual invites you to slow down just enough to hear yourself again. Not your strategy. Not your planning voice. But the deeper you. The soul-led you.
You don’t have to exit the spiral to lead. You can lead from the rest. From the ember. From the sacred middle.
This is not a retreat from responsibility — it’s a return to inner alignment. Let this be your practice of remembering.
You will need:
A warm drink (mountain tea, cacao, or water with lemon — something grounding)
A comfortable spot to sit or lie down
Something to write with (optional)
1. Arrive in the Body (2 min): Find a place where your body can soften — a chair, the floor, or lying down. Let your back be supported. Let your shoulders drop. If it helps, press your hand against your chest or belly to anchor yourself.
Take a few gentle breaths, just enough to say: I’m here.
Ask: What does rest feel like in me today?
2. Sip Something Grounding: Hold your drink in both hands. Let it warm you from the inside out. Taste it slowly. Let it be a reminder that you are allowed to slow down — not as a reward, but as a rhythm.
As you sip, reflect: What part of me has been overworked? What part wants to rest?
3. Name the Middle (5 min): This is not the beginning. Not the next push forward. This is the middle — the fertile, formless space where integration happens.
Let yourself speak or write freely from that space. Try finishing this sentence: “Right now, I am between ___ and ___.”
4. Close Gently (2 min): When you feel complete, don’t rush to stand or switch into action. Stretch. Rock. Touch the ground. Let your body know: this pause was real. Let your system feel: this rest belongs to me.
Whisper to yourself or write: “I honor the middle. I trust the space between. I am enough, even in stillness.”
You can repeat this ritual:
After a big effort or offering
When you feel between projects, or roles
In a season of uncertainty or creative limbo
On a quiet morning when you’re not sure what’s next
Anytime you need a reset