Hope you are experiencing beauty and ease today! Next week, I’ll be engaging in the spiritual practice of rest and will not publish a new post. However, I’ll be back in two weeks. Have a wonderful two weeks! Speaking of rest, this post is about the spiritual practice of Rest and Relaxation.
As a little one, I absolutely loved anything having to do with speed. This is probably why I loved watching sports where speed was the ultimate goal. One of my favorite sports to watch on t.v. was track. One summer afternoon when I was in elementary school, I was watching the track and field events at the summer Olympics and made an earth-shattering decision.
I went and found my dad.
“DAAAD!! I’ve got to tell you something!!”
“Ok, what is it?”
“I’m gonna be the first person with CP to win an Olympic gold medal in track!”
At this point, my father had many options for how to respond. He could have responded according to the current reality, which was I had only recently graduated from using a walker to crutches to help me walk and my running involved me falling more than actually moving in a forward direction.
But, my dad responded by saying, “You can do it!! You’ll have to work harder than the other runners because of the CP. But, your mom and I will be in the front row with the camera when you get your gold!”
With that support, there were only two things to do… figure out my training regimen and get to the 2000-something Olympics! I was convinced that my dad and mom had already bought their airline tickets to the Olympics.
That afternoon I began training, which amounted to me running in circles in our backyard. I’m fairly certain that our neighbors were wondering what on earth I was doing. But that was ok; I knew I was preparing to be an Olympian!
Well, after a few days of falling repeatedly and having some serious spasms, I rethought my Olympic track ambitions. I reasoned that perhaps I was created to watch track, not run track.
As an adult, when people ask me how I accomplished everything I have, I often recount this story and say my parents instilled in me the belief that I could accomplish absolutely anything I put my mind to. For so long, I felt a bit uneasy about having set a goal and not reaching it.
However, a few years ago, I was taking a long rest from my regular routine. I had been working a full-time job for a few years and experiencing changes in my muscle control so my body was exhausted. While on my respite, I allowed myself to relax in a way I hadn’t in years.
During this period of relaxation, I told a friend about my Olympic aspirations and had a sudden epiphany. I realized that I had achieved my goal. Don’t worry, you didn’t miss the headline of me winning an Olympic gold medal.
Instead, I came to understand that little Allison’s true goal in saying that she wanted to become an Olympian was to be a trailblazer. Little Allison believed that if she became a gold medalist, she would have done something that the world assumed someone with CP could not do. Her goal underlying her Olympic dreams was to show the world the abilities of those with disabilities.
I realized that I did become a trailblazer by being the first person with CP to earn a PhD in economics from MIT. I had done something that many assumed would be too challenging for me(click here to learn how I used spiritual practice to handle people’s misperceptions of my abilities).
That sudden realization changed my entire perspective of my Olympic aspirations. Instead of being embarrassed that I hadn’t achieved a goal, I became immensely awed and inspired by how the Universe conspired to help me reach my true goal.
Why did the epiphany come to me during a period of resting and relaxing? Epiphanies often come when you relax your mind. A relaxed mind is a mind available to the creativity and wisdom that are always flowing. When you relax, you take a respite from occupying your mind with matters of this world. Constantly thinking about all of the matters of daily life causes our minds to focus on the physical world, which can block the whispers of the Universe from reaching our awareness. But when we relax, our minds cease to be occupied with the doingness of the world and expand into the beingness of the spirit, which causes us to be more aligned with intuition, epiphanies and love itself.
Love, blessings and purple,
Allison
Try incorporating this exercise into your week. If you need modifications to the practice, scroll down to the section titled Access Notes.
Rest and Relaxation
Relax for 5 minutes each day this week (or as often as you can). That is, do nothing related to being “productive” or related to your to-do list. You can choose how you do this. A few examples are: staying in the shower or bathtub an extra 5 minutes and daydreaming, looking out the window, or sitting somewhere and breathing.
The following modifications are intended to create equal access to the spiritual practice above. These modifications are somewhat general to be as useful as possible to as many people as possible. Please feel free to further tweak the exercise as needed so that you can participate as fully as possible while honoring your body’s needs.
For those who have ADHD or those who’s minds become more active when you sit quietly, try the following mindfulness exercises to quiet your mind.
1. Color in an adult coloring book
2. Go for a walk and pay attention to the sensations of your body during your walk.
3. Focus your attention on each movement you make while washing dishes, folding laundry, or doing any other solitary activity.
