A Disruption or A Portal?
I’ve written about how pregnancy and birth can be an initiation into knowing yourself more fully. I keep mulling over this topic in my mind, as not everyone feels that it is true. Rightly so, everyone has their own experience with crossing the threshold between individual and mother/provider.
I recently began reading Neha Ruch’s book The Power Pause. While I’m less interested in the career break that she speaks to, I am fascinated by her thoughts and research on what can happen in the space of a career break. Again, taking a career break is not for everyone whether by choice or necessity.
However, when you take a career break in motherhood or a short break from day-to-day life like in maternity leave, your attention shifts. If you didn’t want the break, it might feel like you are constantly distracted by wanting to continue with what you were doing before. If you are open to the break or pause, you might feel like you are going on a new adventure. Of course, there is always an experience in between the two.
Rest offers something similar. Depending on where you are in your life, rest can feel like a distraction or obstacle rather than a boon or portal. When you pause to rest, you step outside of the forward motion of life. Scientifically speaking you shift from Beta brain waves into Alpha or Theta brain waves, which are powerful stuff.
Without the constant mental processing of what is next and how you are going to get there, your mind has space for creativity, imagination, dreaming. You enter a space of stillness and clarity. As I think through all this, I feel any type of pause in life at any point in life can offer this to you. Sometimes you come willingly to the pause and other times unwillingly. Either way, something will emerge through your experience.
If this portal to stillness and clarity feels like something you want to access regularly, here are some practices you might try.
Stargazing
Nature gazing
Napping
Daydreaming
