On Rest/ Exhaustion
what happens when there's no time to feel tired or to feel rested
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The tree in the backyard is dead. The gardener took out a knife and scratched the surface; see? It should be green, but it's dark brown. I looked at him and asked, "Can you resuscitate it?" like if you ask someone what they ate for breakfast or how the weather is. He laughed very loudly in my face. Seeing that I was serious, he quickly answered, "No, we can't. We need to cut it." On top of that, I have to make an appointment with the dentist. The sink faucet needs repair. I need to send payment to the accountant and call health insurance for a claim. There’s a costume fitting for my daughter's dance recital, and I can’t forget to sign her up for camp during the summer. There’s a pile of laundry to put away. The dog’s limping, so I should call the veterinarian. Meanwhile, the world continue to fall apart: Haiti, Gaza, Sudan. My body feels tight. My breathing feels tight.
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I write extensively about sustaining our emotions, allowing ourselves to feel. I often discuss the importance of inhabiting ourselves and our ambiguities, emphasizing concepts like breathing, listening, and stillness, as well as spaciousness. But what happens when there is no time to feel? What happens when life feels like a steamroller? What happens when, in theory, we know all of this, but in the practicality of day-to-day living — in between doing dishes, laundry, working, driving children from point A to B, paying bills, and working some more — we are too tired to even begin to rest?
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I wasn’t going to write about exhaustion because, well, we are all exhausted and we're tired of saying we're tired; it feels like a redundant complaint. But then, I paused. It became clear that exhaustion was what lay in front of me, inside of me. So, I did what I generally tell others to do—I invited the exhaustion in and had a chat with it. Here's what I found: Exhaustion can easily become an identity, a default state of being. It becomes a modus operandi, which is dangerous because once something is established, it is easily overlooked. We assume that this is just how things are, and we adapt to this reality of being constantly exhausted.
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I'm looking at the dead tree, all the leaves are brown, but the tree is still standing, tall and steady. Is it really dead? The wind moves the leaves, and I have a small hope it will bounce back. It has to. Rest goes in the opposite direction of the discursive narrative we are part of. This narrative is characterized by the need to constantly prove ourselves to others and to ourselves, accumulation, and self-overcoming. It doesn’t really matter where we set the bar; it keeps getting higher. So the question is, if the boundaries don’t come from the outside, how are we going to establish them from within?
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“To me, the body says what words cannot” - Martha Graham
In my last newsletter, I briefly discussed the nervous system from the polyvagal perspective. It seems we have developed a capacity to swing between a tensioned state and a relaxed state that is more disengaged or numb, than actually rested. It's as if we have become adept at alternating between these two extremes: being really tense, contracted, and then extremely disengaged and numb. In this process, we often skip the middle. We don’t stay in the middle.
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When I think about rest versus exhaustion, stripping away the obvious factors like living under an oppressive system, lacking necessary support, watching war scenes on our phone screens, and processing the aftermath of a pandemic, we find ourselves inside a context and a narrative that is inherently exhausting. Even though this is a collective experience, we often forget it, and a sense of isolation prevails. Despite this, we still have agency when it comes to our attention and our presence. This agency is not a given. It might feel as if we are wrapped in the tentacles of an octopus-like monster, but we still have a lot of choice in where we put our attention, it doesn’t feel like it (a lot of the time) but we still do.
And every day, the world will drag you by the hand, yelling, "This is important! And this is important! And this is important! You need to worry about this! And this! And this! And each day, it's up to you to yank your hand back, put it on your heart and say, "No. This is what's important" - Lain Thomas
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I yank my hand back and place it on my heart, feeling it still beating. Mentally, I say to myself, 'Of course you are tired. Of course, you are.' Saying it helps; my body begins to feel a bit lighter. Pema Chodron wrote “The most difficult times for many of us are the ones we give ourselves.”
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Mindfulness practice is a big word for one simple thing: Where is your attention? Remember it? How is your presence? How is your breathing? What’s there, inside of you, wanting to be known? Acknowledged? This is the agency we own. This is the intention we still have. What happens when instead of allowing ourselves to operate under exhaustion, we allow ourselves to feel the exhaustion? Not as if we are holding a hot potato ready to be thrown, but just being with it, and acknowledging it: Yes, tired. Yes, exhausted. Yes, I am a human being. This practice helps the feeling of contraction and being stuck to open, to relax. When I remember this, instead of just resisting, complaining, or repeating myself about how exhausted I am, it generally begins to dissolve, to create space. Then, from this space and only from here, I can actually begin to think of possible ways for rest.
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Rest might not look the same for everyone and can change depending on our life’s circumstances. Each of us knows what that means. Maybe it’s eight hours of sleep, maybe it's a vacation, or slow weekends. But let’s not forget that rest simply begins with attention. The writer Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, said: “Rest is not something that the world gives us. It’s never been a gift. It’s never been something you do when you’ve finished everything else. If you want rest, you have to take it. You have to resist the lure of busyness, make time for rest, take it seriously, and protect it from a world that is intent on stealing it.”
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They called and said the removal of the tree has to be done in parts, and does not include the trash, which they meant, the rest of the tree. Because one thing is to cut it, the other is to remove the branches, leaves, and trunk. When I reflect more deeply on this sort of chronic exhaustion and clumsy inability to rest that a lot of us feel, I think it's worth asking the question: are we feeling exhausted in order to avoid feeling something specific? I wonder if for some it is a question of choices and sustaining those choices, in which something will have to give. I wonder if it’s a frantic search for approval (so I say yes to everything, to everyone, all the time). I imagine it might be a strong critical, perfectionist living inside of us dictating this tensioned body to do more, and a bit more. Under our exhaustion, we’ll find a part of us that is pushing harder, that is scared, that is burdened, and that doesn’t know how to get out of this cycle. We’ll find a part of us that is very irritated, wishing for things to be different. This is when exhaustion is telling us: I want to stop, I don’t know how. Help me rest. And, as far as I know, the only thing to do here is to listen and welcome it.
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The other day, I went really close to the tree, realizing it’s been hard to accept its death. How can something so big, so rooted, so alive, be dead? Was it my fault? There was water and fertilizers; what else could I have done? After some research, I learned, without much surprise, that even a technically dead tree, is still alive. It’s said that a dead tree is in the process of making room for new growth. Within forested ecosystems, one dying tree can translate to new life and new opportunities for a host of living things. For a forest plant, for instance, a dying tree releases all sorts of resources and makes room for new and different plants to grow. More light may now filter down through the canopy, which spurs germination and other processes. As the tree decomposes, the nutrients once stored within the tree are released and made available to other plants.
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I always thought trees are like women's souls, whispering to us things they know. This one said to me: Pick your battles. Pay attention. Stay soft.
With love,
Mariana
Do you feel overwhelmed? Turning stress into a gateway of awakening by Tara Brach. She shares here the 4-4 breathing technique, which I use a lot before going to sleep: Inhale for 4, exhale for 4. You can also add a gentle breath hold of 4 counts in the middle. With each exhale, feel what wants to be let go
Slow change can be radical change - by Rebecca Solnit
Women holding things. (!!!)
Growing old with Isabella Rossellini
A few books recommendations around this topic: The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han, Not working by Josh Cohen, How to do nothing by Jenny Odell
The state of the culture, 2024
The Middle Passage: A Jungian Field Guide to Finding Meaning and Transformation in Midlife
Modern life is making you sick, but it doesn’t have to - a conversation with Dr. Maté
If these themes resonate with you and you are interested in a deep, more personal experience, I support individuals, teams and new teachers in different capacities. If you need more information, you can find it here:
Private Sessions: One-on-One Contemplative Psychotherapy
Mentorship for New Teachers : One-on-One Mentoring Sessions to Beginner or New Teachers or people who wants additional training
Corporate Programs : Contemplative Program for Companies
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FREE MONTHLY COMMUNITY GATHERING
Friday, May 3rd at 9am/pst
As always, everyone is welcomed! We’ll do a practice on rest/exhaustion. I introduce the topic, often do a quick reading of related material and we dive into the practice: breathing exercises + guided meditation. No need to talk/share, if there’s questions you can ask at the end or send me an email.
To join, visit here
“When you go out into the woods, and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree.
The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying ‘You are too this, or I’m too this.’ That judgment mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.”
―Ram Dass