Yesterday I took the day off.
I needed it.
Time change, waking up too early to go surfing, the afternoon was a full on in and out of siesta experience.
Contrary to what I’d like to believe about myself, I’m a pusher.
I like to push myself.
In my twenties, this expressed itself through my career as a Park Ranger, and through climbing – oh, and also self development. I liked to push. I am so fucking good at it, if I do say so myself.
It is something that I am so good at, it’s literally ingrained in my nervous system. My ego thinks it’s who I am – what makes me, me, what makes me a “good” person.
Push.
Push.
Push.
My inner wisdom knows that this pushing and pushing is the direct result of my struggles with chronic fatigue.
In fact, one of the core fundamental lessons I learned in my healing process with chronic fatigue was that it wasn’t so much the what I was doing, it was the how.
How we do one thing is how we do everything. We literally cannot compartmentalize our nervous system – it’s too ancient to be able to bypass. We believe we can bypass it though. Our minds are literally that cocky.
We think it, therefore we can will it so.
But the body doesn’t care what you think. It only cares about its deeper, wiser, intelligent animal nature.
Developing a language and relationship with this animal nature was my direct path to healing chronic fatigue, chronic pain, and more. It doesn’t mean I’m immune to the trap though.
Today I decided to pull on my Animal Medicine cards for a daily message and support. I was a bit surprised – until I read the medicine message they carry: Salmon Medicine and Prairie Dog Medicine.
Jamie Sams & David Carson’s medicine cards
Salmon (Wisdom/Inner-Knowing)
“Salmon is the sacred keeper of wisdom and inner knowing who, despite strong river currents, will always return to the place of its creation … Coming full circle, Salmon medicine people finish what they begin, bringing life’s evens and cycles to closure.”
“Go back to the beginning and retrace your path to this point.”
“Imagine yourself returning to the place you last felt certain of yourself.”
Excerpts from Jamie Sams & David Carson’s Animal Medicine.
Prairie Dog (Retreat)
“Prairie Dog … calls me
when it’s time to rest,
When it’s time to honour
the internal quest.
I go into retreat
so I may see,
A way to replenish
the potential in me.
“strength and inspiration can be found by retreating into the stillness that quiets the mind. The strength of this medicine is knowing when and how to replenish your life force.”
Excerpts from Jamie Sams & David Carson’s Animal Medicine.
Inner Knowing and Rest …
You would think I’d have this one figured out by now.
The honest truth is that although the inner knowing part comes much easier to me, the resting deeper part is deeply confronting to my pushing nature.
Even when I allow myself to rest (haven’t I been resting for the last 2 years?!?!), I often don’t really allow myself to really rest.
Even after all of my embodied lessons and experience in my own energy system, I still try to fight it – I still try to push.
I feel this thing emerging and I just want to work it, share it, perhaps force it out.
But forcing is not the way.
Back when I originally surrendered to chronic fatigue, I ended up in Mexico – my first trip to Mexico.
I spent days and days and days just surfing, swimming, eating, and sleeping.
Days and days and days on end just being.
I came back to my life – my Park Ranger identity, my climber, backcountry expert roles – but it felt different.
I felt lighter, I wasn’t attached to any of it anymore. And something else happened – I began to really enjoy my life for the first time.
For the first time, I really savoured hiking up the Joffre Lakes trail, not thinking about all the shit that needed fixing along the way, just letting myself enjoy the crisp glacial air, the sweat on my skin. I dealt with things as they came in the moment.
I had entered an altered state of conciousness – and I was living in it.
Pounds of fat started to disappear off of my body, my breathing got lighter and more easeful as I peddled my bike uphill. I started taking salsa classes in the city. I took on a lover and felt my body truly worshiped for the first time. I felt sun-kissed, luscious, and worry free.
I lived fully connected to my Inner Wisdom, every moment of everyday. I was not swayed off of this knowing. I was deeply plugged in – so deep, I had never really known the existence of this state of being.
In retracing my steps down the memory lane of this experience, I start to see the pattern unravel.
I took a vacation from my life – one that was long and deep enough that I could fully give myself permission to just be.
There was nothing to push for. There was nothing except pushing against myself – and I did that, fed myself, took a nap, until I was ready to yield. And yield, I did.
I surrendered.
There was another really important lesson I learned from that experience.
That was the simplicity and power of truly embodying the present moment.
When it’s time to rest – really rest. Don’t be distracted by all of the programs running in the back of your mind.
Check out. Just be.
When it’s time to do – really do the thing. Be present to the moment you are in right here and now.
There is so much energy we spend in thinking and worrying about the thing instead of just using that energy to just do the thing in the right time to begin with.
So today, I will honour these energies and rest. I will rest like it’s the most important thing I need to do today – like my life depends on it, because it does.