Resting into our power... hear my song for International Women's Day...
In response to the Siren's call... a practice for you to rest into your innate aliveness and share your own unique voice...
This is a special piece shared today at 11.11 in honour of International Women’s Day 2025. If you want to dive straight to the Yoga Nidra practice I am sharing for you, then please do scroll down towards the bottom of this piece.
Hello lovely one
How is the fire burning within you today? How is your heart feeling?
Today I am proud to be part of a collection of incredible women’s voices and creative expression — all of who are sharing their own unique response to this beautiful Siren’s Call invitation from
. I am so honoured to be sitting beside other incredible women such as , , , , as we create ripples across the waters of Substack’s creative pages.
Perhaps it is my current season of life (early years of Motherhood often leaving feeling distinctly exhausted and depleted), or perhaps it is because this topic has been something I have had to learn and relearn over and over again, but in this moment this topic that is pressing most heavily on my heart is REST.
So today, on International Women’s Day 2025, I felt called to write a little about WHY I feel so passionate about sharing practices of rest as a way of connecting to our innate aliveness… AND also gift you a deep rest practice that I hope will connect you to the power that comes when you nourish and tend to your own wellspring.
Resting into our power
Rest might not be what we instantly think about when we consider fired up, courageous, awe-inspiring women who are pioneering change in the world through their own expression… BUT… hear me out…
The truth is that when we have energy, when we have aliveness coursing through us — we have the capacity to change things. That change can be on a micro or macro level, but without the energy in the first place it is unlikely we will have the motivation or capacity to weave any kind of change into our life — be that changes in our own daily structures, or changes in the wider sense of the word.
The ALIVE woman has the capacity to be present with her family and friends, to take care of themselves, to nourish those around them in their community, to make important art, to thrive and create ripples in the world… to start movements, to lead, to guide, to hold, to nurture… but let’s be very, very brutally honest now… how many of us ACTUALLY feel this aliveness? AND… have you ever considered how ‘dangerous’ that woman might be to some of the modern structures that are holding our society together?
It has become fairly standard for so many of us to be simply ‘getting through’ or ‘surviving’ on a daily basis… (I include myself in this often and have to regularly take inventory on why this is). There is often a sense of waiting for the current season of life to pass and enter into a new ‘easier’ phase. And yet, that season doesn’t tend to come because life is not a linear process, and we simply carry our depletion from one cycle into the next.
Am I the only one that feels a rise of fire from my belly at the injustice that this ‘getting through’ and ‘merely surviving’ sense of being brings? I am furious about it…
Mental health struggles are high amongst many people that surround me, I don’t know many women who aren’t finding things hard in some way. The emotional load of life, mothering, working and juggling ‘it all’ is taking its toll in a heartbreaking way.
Why are so many women depleted? Why do we need a long list of ‘things’ to do just to exist each day? Has it always been this way? Can this really be our reality? These are a few of the questions that I found myself scribbling angrily into my journal over the weekend.
Pressure, expectation, overwhelming amounts of information, excessive stimulation, an inability to feel ‘enough’… why can we never seem to be doing ‘enough’?
Burned out women.
Frazzled, overwhelmed anxious women.
Shrinking, withering depleted women.
Women who are trudging through each day because the pressure of life is crushing them.
Women who are numbing out with distraction and addiction because the world doesn’t make space for their sensitivity as a superpower.
Beautiful, incredible women dimmed and depleted lacking the lifeforce to engage with life in the way that they wish.
None of these women can be in their power — and call me a conspiracy theorist but this all seems a little convenient to me — because imagine what would happen if women were well rested and restored and full of aliveness?
When women rise together in their fullest selves — mountains will move and wow… that could create some serious ripples of change.
The well rested woman
Burnout cycles are killing our creativity. Killing our fire. Our souls are literally withering because we are not able to rise into what we know we could be and that frustration is shattering hearts and obliterating our hope.
Imagine how much more art could be created in this world if women were well rested? What beauty are we missing because the system and overculture are intent on keeping us small?
A well rested woman has the vitality to make change in their community, in their family, they have the energy to change generational paterns and shift paradigms.
A well rested woman has the resource within her to feel fully alive AND impact the world around her in whatever way she feels called to.
A well rested woman is powerful beyond measure… and isn’t that a scary exciting prospect?!
It isn’t the first time I have said it, and it certainly won’t be the last… but what if we can find that power through gentle acts of rest? What if it is that ‘easy’? I say that in ‘quotation marks’ because it really isn’t that easy of course - but perhaps it could be that simple?
I am not bypassing the need to tend to ourselves in many different ways. There are other things at play of course, systemic beliefs, a culture that celebrates ‘doing’ over ‘being’, our own lived experiences and trauma in our systems. BUT… if our nervous systems can slowly begin to acclimatise to a sense of finding safety through rest rather than feeling like it is a failure… that could be a strong start.
For many of us to simply stop and rest doesn’t feel safe in our systems… we are too far down the line of toxic productivity to make an instant leap from doing to being, but what if we made little gentle baby steps and created a bank of evidence in our body that tells it that we are ‘safe’ enough to take restful moments. What if we can stretch that rest muscle? What might be on the other side?
Devoting to rest
When I devote myself to rest — and for me that looks like doing a yoga nidra while my little one naps, lying down with the girls reading books in the evenings, sitting and watching a film with them without scrolling my phone, reading fiction before bed, sitting in the sunshine for a few minutes — I notice a significant difference to my creativity, my patience, my overall wellbeing and most importantly my tolerance to stress. I feel less overwhelmed, less on ‘edge’, less reactive and less as though I am going to spiral into an anxiety attack at the drop of a hat. How can any of that be negative? And yet to get to that place often takes me a lot of mental effort to ovecome the stories that I am not ‘allowed’ to rest or slow down.
The harsh reality is that nobody other than ourselves is going to change this. We have to take responsibility for our energy levels… and I do think that practices of rest have an important role to play. This is why Yoga Nidra plays such an foundational part in my offerings.
So today, on International Women’s Day (or any other day that you find this piece), I want to invite you into an experiment with me as I share a Yoga Nidra practice that I have created to support connection to your innate aliveness.
This practice is less than 20 minutes long — shorter than my usual Yoga Nidras — but I hope that it gives you a flavour for what might be possible when you are rested into your power.
(If you love it then you can join The Balm Membership and sink into the whole library of practices of rest amongst other things.)
To me rest rekindles hope… and hope right now feels like it is needed more than ever. So make yourself cosy, cocoon yourself in blankets, lie down… and rest into your power with me…
Do let me know if you enjoy this practice, feel free to share with anyone who might need to rekindle their own energy levels, and as always I welcome you into conversation via the comments or on email.
Celebrating you today, and every day amazing one…
Until next time
Love
Lauren
xxx
Hello to anyone who is new here… I am Lauren. A Mother of two daughters, Writer, Women’s Circle Facilitator, Sacred Business Mentor & Guide, Soul Branding & Website Creator and multi-dimensional human being. I walk with, and hold space for, others who are treading the tender path of their heart and soul work. You can find out more about this space and what to expect here. If you wish to be held in a deeper way do consider joining The Balm membership for restorative practices, sacred heart work offerings and more…
If you enjoyed this piece and wish to explore my other spaces please use the links below to explore…
Motherhood Essays
Self-Tending Practices
The Unravelling Podcast
Human Design
Work With Me
Lauren, thank you for these wise and stirring words. I was nodding along the entire way through. Looking forward to coming back for the Yoga Nidra practice - what a generous gift to us. I must add, I think this is the first I have properly wintered... My own children are now mid and late teens and I am only now permitting myself the rest I have needed for years! With each cycle of the wheel I am learning and reclaiming more of the goodness that was never meant to be denied to me. Wish I had read this a few years back! Now, feeling rested, I am waking with the dawn chorus and going to bed at sunset. Thank you for being a healing balm in this broken world. Keep resting and creating! x
Thank you for reminding us all of the magic, the medicine of rest. And for this practice. I have been very interested in this "resting into my power" you mention as I work. Like, how can I balance moments that have a lot of energy and activity, with a more restful approach on most days to serving? There's something deeply feminine here, about the ways we work and the ways we move through the world that are very different than what patriarchy makes us believe. Many thanks.