Devotion to My Sheets and My Dreams

These times have been crunchy.

I mean that both metaphorically and literally. I just snuck out from underneath my sleeping kid, rolling through a pile of actual crunchy crumbs to get out of the bed.

Tonight, I couldn’t bare say no to this child eating his “chips” while we read together.

Today while I was resting in my chair by the window, my four year old son got hungry. He skipped the part about coming to ask me for something to eat and helped himself to the cupboard.

At some point later he came to me with potent breath and said in a mischievous smirk, you don’t know what I’m eating. I thought it must be the vegetable crackers.

Later he invited me to a “dinner party” in his blanket corner. I arrived relatively eager for someone to serve me a snack. Then I saw it, the empty box on the floor - holiday stuffing mix - and I look up to see my kid proudly holding the inner packaging he had cut open himself.

Raising resilient, nonjudgmental, creative child: check!

He joyfully handed them out to me two at a time - the dry crispy shrunken would-be-stuffing-chunks. Literally two tiny-ass crumbs. It was a real moment of sincere joy-delight mixed with this-is-too-much-of-a-metaphor-omen-for-this-time-right-now.

I haven’t paid rent for December yet. Not all of it. And it’s mid January.

Am I behind, or just resting?

Can we not each choose many things to hibernate from?

If I sound completely irresponsible to you, by many “normal” standards, I am. I’m also feeling pretty genius.

Everything is working out and there is a direct correlation to the amount of relaxation in my system and the amount I am able to receive allowing the flow of resources to arrive without effort.

Having a roof over our heads with absolutely no one yelling at me because I’m late on rent, this is a successful manifestation even if in the “real world” I “should” be able to pay rent on time, etc. (And no my landlord is not my mother or anyone related to my personal life in any way other than being my landlord I almost never have any direct contact with.)

Don’t get me wrong, I apply my efforts, I do, and they are sincere and devoted and sizeable and respectable and definitely absolutely contribute benevolently to the collective in an ongoing everyday way.

When I say “resources that arrive without effort,” I guess I mean without worry. Without the kind of ever present slowly suffocating worry I used to live in as a general life ambiance.

I mean resources that arrive through a state of pleasure and openness as opposed to hustle and grind.

One of the efforts that I do choose to make now is to rest, and to let myself learn to rest even better. My New Years Resolution is to surrender to rest even more - to seriously relax into my life and drop the charade that things have to fall apart because I’m riding a wave (of emotion, of charge, of life force) that isn’t or wasn’t expected.

I’m dropping the charade that the cycles of my life fit perfectly into calendar months. I’ve got basic needs and somehow they’re always met. I trust, yet I have plenty of experiences blocking myself from having needs met in patterns of unconscious unworthiness and inherited attachment to the feeling of being restricted (of having needs withheld) (of being punished) - can you relate?

Those unconscious desires (yes I said desires!) of staying restricted are based on early experiences of not having needs met and learning to associate the accompanying sensations of restriction with “home” “family” “love” etc. When I am in that restricted state my body feels rigid and my nervous system is on high alert. The pathways of my body and mind are squeezed so the circulation is not good.

We need open pathways for the circulation of energy and resources.

When the pathways are restricted I feel anxious/depressed in my body. I’m concerned about the past and the future, not very present. I’m either active while relatively disassociated, or I’m a bump on a log who can’t hardly convince myself to move. In either of those states I definitely don’t rest well.

I grew very tired swinging between those extremes of manically-energized and fall-asleep-standing-up-exhausted. Learning breathwork and embodiment techniques, quick accessible tools for presencing in the body no matter what emotions or sensations are going on, has really helped me learn to rest. This has been an increasing devotion over the past years.

Part of my resolution this year to rest better and rest more is doing bodyscans and more conscious clenching and releasing, more self massage and gentle movement, instead of scrolling. These are the things I want to show my son.

A couple years ago I challenged myself to take three deep breaths before getting out of bed in the morning and three deep breaths as I got into bed at night. I had never been consistent with self care before in my life and isn’t it kind of hilarious that those deep breaths felt like SUCH luxury.

I immediately started noticing results, improvements, reliefs in my life because I was breathing deeper during my days too. Muscle memory is real. If we grew up tense, getting addicted to restriction living around others addicted to restriction and withholding, then we probably don’t have much muscle memory of deep breaths in our body. So this practice of taking three deep breaths in the morning and at night really worked some magic.

I’m growing, naturally, in a willingness to play with more luxurious (aka spacious, expansive, relaxed, pleasurable) experiences as I learn to really rest. The deep breaths relax my mind and open up the pathways.

I vow to continue taking deep breaths. Deep breaths enable my relationship with both rest… and pleasure.

I’ve been falling in love with my bedsheets over and over again. I used to feel guilty about how much I love to lay in bed - when I wake up, whenever it calls to me during the day, and especially crawling in there at night.

My bedsheets are not organic or expensive, but they delight me. I love the designs, the textures, the smells, and especially the way they embrace me … while I feel deeply… and while I dream.

That said, it’s still pretty easy to just zombie my way through and forget to notice or actually feel the pleasure. There’s a huge difference between staying in bed extra in the morning stuck in my head not ready to meet the day, and luxuriating in bed daydreaming awesome realities into being.

I spent a lot of time in bed late teens early twenties. I would say mental health back then was a gurgling volcanic pool that looked pretty serene most of the time, but still acidic and dangerous.

I wouldn’t say I did much resting even though I spent a lot of my time naked in bed. I was mostly shutdown and overwhelmed overstimulated and hungover or stoned in an attempt to numb all of the above.

Then I started having intimate relationships. Yes, quite late. I had been successfully avoided intimacy with myself as well as others.

My bedroom became a new kind of Mecca. Instead of small herds of cool stoners lingering with me during the regular onslaught of house parties and a random assortment of people I didn’t argue with who wanted to crash on one slice of my immense bed in a very small room… there was a string of precisely chosen men.

My new drug was being the fly caught in the spiders web buzzing buzzing buzzing determined to sing its way into death. I really give relationships my all, aka I let them consume me, but in the belly of that monster I started to get to know myself better.

Until recently I felt like I hadn’t rested in decades, not since I was a very new baby only just becoming sensationally aware of what I’d entered into. Trauma piled on trauma. Just like everybody else around.

I guess I didn’t realize that I was lacking rest at all until I started to feel rest for real. For so long I was living inside a haze of kidding myself about what rest meant.

But here I am, early January 2022 and I’m really coming to know the possibility of pleasure as a regular thing. I’m getting to know pleasure as a synonym with rest and or rested - ever connected whichever way you look at it.

Pleasure has become a feeling I can find in everything, and if I’m out of touch with pleasure, I can guarantee I’ve lost touch with rest.

Are you following? I know it’s rather circular, but that’s the point, it’s all connected and when we don’t relax into that fact, we feel dizzy, unhinged, and put upon by life.

Now that I’m getting to know rest I’m able to hold pleasure in an expansive spacious way I had never met before. I’d perhaps experienced the spaciousness possible, but not in any kind of sustainable way.

I used to hold pleasure like this rare thing I had to hold onto so tight and possess and be afraid I’d lose or wouldn’t get enough of or die and be separated from.

Holy shit that was a very draining way to live.

The past year I’ve perhaps experienced more pleasure than in all the past years combined. Which is 32, if you’re wondering.

One significant differentiator is that the past year I spent way way way more time in the forest. I particularly like resting my body in the tapestries of moss. The moss and my bed are in a solid tie for my favourite spots on earth.

I heard someone diss moss recently suggesting it’s this dirty grungy stuff we want rid of. I figure this person must live in a city where moss is just this gross thing that clogs up your rain spouts?!

Moss, when you really connect to it, has this brilliant energy of rest and rejuvenation. It’s like, “Here, let me slurp all your woes away, no charge.”

It’s a pretty decent best friend.

That’s also how I feel about my bed.

And my big comfy couch.

And my LRG clawfoot bathtub.

And this new (to me) “Queen Anne’s” chair by the fire place that I’m sitting in now while typing.

These are my beautiful friends that catch me after I’ve been up moving around in this dynamic strange highly sensitive human body.

These are the places I remember to practice taking deep breaths so that deep breaths are available in the face of challenge.

These are the places I will come to regularly this year to find spaciousness in my mind and body, relaxing into true rest, and indulging in the pleasure of daydreaming my desires into being.

These are the places that will support the pathways within me to be open to receive all that need and more - to be overflowing with prosperity in its most expansive form.

Taking pleasure in rest is a game changer.

The other day I got into bed and rubbed my face all over my sheets as I snuggled in, feeling like a little sweet spunky animal truly enjoying myself.

Taking pleasure in rest and therefore actually getting more genuine relaxation time in my life and in my body… has meant I feel more secure in my body and my life. Security is now a lived felt experience and not just a theory dictated by numbers on paper or whatever.

Feeling secure in my body I am willing to move it more. Moving my body more - and more consciously - I am increasingly connected to its rhythms and wisdom. In this I feel safe letting energy pass through my body. I feel safe having big emotions and I know my ability to experience them and let them pass through without rationalizing or judging and suppressing them as trauma.

This is imperative to allowing my life to unfold beyond the inherited energetic restrictions imprinted in my early years and in my DNA.

As a neurodivergent person (autistic, adhd, etc.) I still encounter lots of resistance to as much movement as my body is really asking for (because of years and years of masking my natural urges and needs in order to fit in and be appropriate) but having a conscious relationship with rest and pleasure I move through the resistance with a lot more compassion and grace and joy.

In my blossoming relationship with rest and pleasure I am so much more able to stay conscious and not disassociate in high sensation events to a degree I have never had access to before. Both blissful and terrorizing events can be very highly sensational and it has been my dream for a long time to learn my way into fewer meltdowns and uplevel into a lifestyle that really honours me, my whole system, my needs, and my desires.

This uplevelling has meant my relationships are skyrocketing in terms of communications and smooth collaborations as well as intimacy and playfulness and general pleasure in all of the above.

This means my work feels more authentic and available to me. My schedule is as flexible as my natural personality and I am attracting like minded folks interested in the synergy of this lifestyle.

I am reparenting myself, without criticism towards my early years caregivers knowing full well they did the best they could, influenced by their environments and ancestors and without access to this World Wide Web of information about secure attachment and emotional intelligence, trauma and embodiment.

I loved laying in bed daydreaming as a kid too, but it didn’t feel as safe as it does now. I felt wrong and bad and scary for a lot of the things that crossed my mind naturally, there weren’t people to share it with who wouldn’t shame or gaslight me because they themselves had their pathways of awareness and circulation blocked at some point along the way.

I affirm that my clear unflinching resolution for the year of 2022, is to carry on in the spaciousness of this love affair with rest and pleasure. May my heart continue to open and my mind continue to relax - both into their friendship with each other, and into their service of the world through this way of being.

To recap, here are the clear resolutions I will be living with this year of 2022 in devotion to my sheets and my dreams:

1. Remember that resting means actually relaxing my mind and body and my breath is my best friend with that.

2. Keep laying on the Earth, every time it crosses my mind, don’t doubt it’s a friend calling me to help me out. Let go. Surrender what I don’t need to carry. Let gravity and grounding discharge my system and support me to maintain my openness.

3. Feel the pleasure in everything. Feel the pleasure even in the restriction, even in the moments of seemingly not having enough, sink into how familiar and quasi-comfortable it is.

4. Use my senses to expand in pleasure - touch, taste, smell… all of it… slowing down to really sensationally experience it… (apply same process in challenging moments and stay in my body where I used to disassociate).

5. Take many pauses during the day for body scans, conscious breathing, stretching, singing, dancing… things that bring me into my body, into a felt physical sense of connection and inner security… instead of scrolling and being stuck in my head.

6. See myself in my child and be the person I needed as a kid - resourceful, accepting, playful, mischievous, unafraid of the mystery.

7. Rest well and rest often in gratitude for and deep surrender to all that holds me as I hold myself in my own expanding quality of attention and presence and inner peace.