How To Practice “True Rest” In Each New Season

Inside: Learning how to practice true rest in each season of life is one form of learning to trust the wisdom of your body. Learn new ideas for how to practice true rest in your 40s, 50s, and 60s.

Rest comes in many forms (beyond naps or quality sleep). And our precise rest needs change in each new season. Learning to flex and adapt, as we listen to the wisdom of our body and respond to what we hear, supports mind-body-spirit health, resilience, and joy.

As a mere starting point, I believe that daily and weekly rest and recovery is non-negotiable. If we aim for a soul-honouring life, we need to add rest into our weekly rhythm before we add in all of our other responsibilities or desires.

What is True Rest?

True Rest is personal and honors your unique wiring and honest capacity in the season you’re in. It’s rooted in self-awareness, self-compassion, and ‘permission.’ It’s a practice and an invitation to value yourself deeply. True Rest is mind-body-soul restorative. It either fills you up or lights you up.

You can listen below to a short presentation on True Rest.

Why I talk about how to practice True Rest through each new season

Learning about rest in general is good and wise. Understanding that there are so many different types of rest beyond sleep or naps on the couch, is very helpful.

But because I live and teach a seasonal living framework it feels important to me to point out that the types of rest we need or that serve us best WILL CHANGE as we move through different seasons of life.

We need to practice letting go of what used to work or what used to be true for our body and life so that we can open up to a new joyful possibility.

The seasons of a woman’s life

Different cultures and traditions frame the life cycle in different ways. For instance, the Indian or Ayurvedic tradition speaks to four seasons of a woman’s life: maiden, householder, forest dweller, and crone.

I love gleaning wisdom from all the different approaches and frameworks and spent decades scouring the library and later the internet for books and resources about a woman’s life cycle and different ways to make meaning of our experiences.

But the framework that I live and weave into my work takes us through each season twice in a lifetime, should we live long enough. The middle season of life begins with the midlife crossroad that begins around 40 years old as we enter Autumn, winter or late perimenopause through the menopause transition, second spring or your 50s, and summer or your 60s into your early 70s.

At this point in my work life, once women arrive around 72 or 73 they feel ready to transition into their Second Autumn. Things are changing though. I see this in my youngest sister and my daughters. They are being empowered and have access to quality health education so much earlier than myself and the women I most often work with.

It’s exciting. And I am curious about how this might shift the unique ‘seasonal experience’ for the younger generations.

Building a friendship with your whole self is a form of soul rest

Building a friendship with yourself means your whole self – this includes the beautiful and wise body you live in. Hating, abusing, ignoring, or shaming your body means you are living divided. Not on the same team. 

Getting to know your True Self, and learning to love and trust yourself is a form of soul rest. Honestly, all the other forms of rest put together do not matter if you are divided against yourself. And if you don’t believe you are worthy of or deserving of rest.

Let’s define Soul Rest. Soul rest is a form of True Rest. It is the relief, restoration, and recalibration that we experience when we slow downward, listen inward, and trust our inner wisdom as it calls us back into alignment with the truth of who we are and what we need for freedom and joy. Soul rest is not typically found in doing more. On the contrary, it is often found in doing less. In quieting the noise, stripping away, shedding, rewilding, or returning to the core essentials.

In this older post I talked about needing soul rest as a Highly Sensitive Person. But we all need deep soul rest. Rest that comes from quieting all the inner and outer noise, shaking off the old inner and outer expectations that keep us pushing past capacity or keep us in judgment. And rest that comes from simply meeting and befriending our True Selves and building a loving, respectful relationship with ourselves.

Your relationship with yourself is the heart of your life. Everything else flows from there. And until you let go of shame and learn to be on your own side, you will never know the level of freedom, wholeness, and joy that is possible for you.

A Practice of True Rest requires trusting the wisdom of your body

A conversation about how to practice True Rest is really a conversation about trusting the wisdom of our body. And prioritizing our inner wisdom over cultural norms or pressure.

Trusting the wisdom of our body can mean many things. Here are a few ideas to consider:

• Practicing true rest though it requires a slower, more sustainable pace of life and feels counter-cultural;
• Listening to body cues that you have a leaky boundary, or feel unsafe or devalued, and responding accordingly;
• Honouring hunger, thirst, fatigue, desire for healthy touch or not wanting physical  intimacy. Or sensing that something is ‘off’ and seeing a doctor;
• Knowing that you are inherently good and worthy of love and friendship;
• Noticing when you’re at the edges of your capacity or past capacity and pivoting. Then using that information in practical ways as you move forward;
• Learning how to gently expand your capacity for your work/dreams, to use your voice, and build a life you truly want.

Learn to hear and trust your inner wisdom

As you build a trusting relationship with yourself you can develop your ability to hear your inner voice. And as you listen and respond with wisdom, you will also build self-trust.

If you want to learn to befriend yourself and be on your own side, I invite you to join the Brave + Beautiful Community.

When you hear the wisdom of your body or your inner wisdom (or the voice of True Self), you will need to practice trusting what you hear.

There can be a lot of resistance that shows up. Internal and external resistance. And many reasons why you may struggle to hear and/or trust the signals your body offers you. For example, women have been conditioned to override the wisdom of their bodies. Trauma may have led you to disconnect from your body. Neurodivergence impacts interoception. This all deserves a meaningful conversation.

For now, what I most want you to know is that wisdom shows up in lots of different ways. For example, it could be receiving an image or hearing a voice or thought. It could show up as a strong inner “knowing that you know” in your gut. At times, or for some people, it could feel like a sensation in your body. Or it could show up as a sense that something is off or feels right.

And you won’t always be able to explain WHY you want/need/know something… and that’s OK. You can trust what you hear even if you don’t have language to explain it to others. Even if you aren’t one hundred percent sure why you’re feeling a certain way. 

Err towards trusting your body or inner wisdom – and sorting through it later. 

12 reasons we don’t rest enough

Identifying WHY we struggle to rest – or struggle to trust our needs for rest – can help us figure out the next positive step forward. In this podcast episode I offered up 12 reasons that (collective) we don’t rest. Do you see yourself in one or more of these reasons?

1. Guilt, shame, judgment, over-giving – ex. “It’s lazy to rest / I’m lazy.” Conditioning that tells us our value is tied to (constant) productivity or being immersed in ‘more-and-faster-is-better’ or hustle-culture.
2. Comparison – ex. “other people have it worse or can’t rest so I shouldn’t. It’s selfish to rest when there’s so much need in the world.” Or “they can manage a faster pace, I should be able to keep up.”
3. You’re in an extremely hard season and hard circumstances. And you’re doing your best to simply survive or put food on the table. Rest feels out of reach.
4. Trauma – it doesn’t feel safe to rest (this may not be a conscious thought).
5. Mindset around aging / urgency – ex. “time is short” or believing there’s a time limit on creativity, joy, and meaningful contribution.
6. Competing tensions and desires – ex. you want and need more rest and also you have dreams / projects / soul nudges that call for your time and attention.
7. You don’t trust yourself – ex. “if I let myself rest I may never get up again or find momentum again.”
8. You have a limited view of rest. For example, you only think of naps as rest and would benefit from learning about the different types of rest.
9. Too many shiny ideas, lack of focus, feeling scattered (this could include ADHD traits) – pull you out of rest – triaging, visioning, or values work might help bring you more clarity and focus.
10. An all or nothing mindset – ex. “20 minutes of rest isn’t enough so why bother?” Remember, 20 minutes is more than zero!
11. Lack of understanding of the creative process (or your unique process) – ex. labeling time spent thinking/puttering/connecting the dots as “procrastination” instead of realizing that we need times of incubation and illumination (times to process and for creative inspiration to arise).
12. At the most practical level, you forget or avoid making space for rest in your day, week, year. Your values aren’t expressed on your calendar/planner.

Different types of rest you need in the middle season(s) of life

You’ll learn how to practice true rest using the True Rest Resource (you can sign up below to receive it or click here).

I’ve provided a description of some common challenges and invitations of each season of midlife (autumn or your 40s, winter or late perimenopause through the menopause transition, second spring or your 50s, and summer or your 60s into your early 70s).

Then I provide one page per season of examples of the different types of rest you most need in that season. You might want to play with different types of rest as you move through the seasons of each year as well as through the seasons of your life.

I organize my examples using Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith’s 7 types of rest that we all need. You can listen to her TEDx Talk here.

These are simply examples (likely ones you’ve never thought of before) and are offered to spark insight for yourself. You might want to play with different types of rest as you move through the seasons of each year as well as through the seasons of your life.

Krista xo