Ayurvedic medicine promotes rest as one of its four pillars of health in the postpartum time along with diet, herbs, and oil massage (abhyanga). It looks at rest far beyond the act of sleeping but more to stillness and tuning in to our needs and saying ‘no’ to many of the things we would push ourselves to do when not in recovery or often even when we are, it encourages turning away from screens and radio and those things that have have a direct impact on our nervous systems. This wisdom of course goes far beyond the postpartum time.
It’s a loaded word ‘rest’ as it can often be encouraged at times when we feel it completely impossible or when we don’t fee like resting. I think a lot of this has to do with a cultural conditioning in the West to prove we’re not “lazy” and can take on far more than we ought to. I have been one of those people and can easily fall back in to that. We also live in a time when we have to multi-task to survive so are juggling many balls in the air at once.
I think rest takes on a whole new meaning after having a child, it did for me. Over years of feeling like sleep was being pulled from my being each which way, and spending days on end feeling hot and high with the lack of it, I am more than ever before aware of the lack of rest in my day to day life as a mum to a small child. I think there’s something powerful and practical about just knowing those early years of parenthood aren’t going to be the rested years of your life and not making it mean too much but simultaneously giving your deserved self moments of glorious time to yourself, to be still, close your eyes, tune out and turn off the outside noise. This for me has become a regular place of rest. I am so aware of the impact that a fleeting news story for example has on my nervous system that I have consciously removed aimless listening as part of my day and instead choose much more consciously the information I want to absorb. This is a hugely powerful yet such an easy way of making a choice to rest the nervous system. Whether a parent or not I think the Ayurvedic view of including stillness, consciousness and the removal of excess noise and ‘doing’ that busy our bodies and our brains a powerful tool at calming the nerves and prompting rest. If you love a sleep in the day or going to bed early, give in to it but know rest can be found in more ways than we might think.