Out walk at the Poudre river - my top regenerative practices include nature time, movement, and intentional connection with my loves. Let’s dive into your practices!

Rest has become a fave topic of mine for this time of the year. Rest is critical to living your best life and living whole and wild. But what is regenerative rest? And how you ‘do’ regenerative rest that isn’t just about napping?

I lived through pandemic burnout and depression as the cherry on top of our widespread toxic productivity culture. And so for me, rest was something I didn’t know about and even resisted it because of all sorts of stereotypes about lazy and work ethic. Now, I see rest as a critical element of living intentionally and mindfully. On top of that, I’ve shifted into a regenerative paradigm of rest, which I want to share with you this month.

Neuroscience shows that we as humans can adapt to stress (physical and mental) and grow from that stress, but only when paired with real restorative rest - which is the opposite for many folks on this side of the pandemic or even for work hustle culture generally.

My free week long live Grow Boldly virtual workshop starting next Monday, Jan 9th on this very topic of regenerative rest - sign up for that now.
I’ll wait….it’s okay, go register, only takes a second….[insert jeopardy music]…

Regenerative

What is regenerative mean anyway? Dictionary definitions offer words like: renewal, regrowth, and restore. And when applied to humxns we typically think about body parts or neural pathways and the like. But what could it mean for regenerative to be a way of life?

In climate crisis coaching, we talk about sustainability isn’t enough - it maintains the status quo. What’s your wellbeing status quo right now? Is that something you want to continue on with? Are you like I was a couple years ago to where I could not continue on with my then-high levels of stress, workload, overfunctioning.

Regenerative living then is about change. And I love me some good change that originates internally and expands out beyond our circles, communities, and to Earth.

Regenerative is cyclical - rather than linear living and thinking - it’s all is connected and when one part is out of wellbeing, then the cycle has a wrench in it and it can’t restore.

Regenerative is about knowing yourself as an ecosystem interconnected with other ecosystems. And when a part of your inner ecosystem is awry, then the rest gets out of whack. So regenerative rest is reincorporating restorative practices into your routines and schedule so that you can show up whole and wild.

Rest

Last winter I wrote about the 7 types of rest that high achievers, like you, need in order to rebuild resilience in healthy, adaptive ways versus the capitalistic societal message of bounce back already. If you missed those, I’ll add the links and resources to the bottom of this post so keep reading.

But essentially rest is more than sleep and naps - and if you’re feeling a constant exhaustion then chances are you need one or more of these other types of rest - physical, mental, emotional, social, sensory, creative and spiritual.

2023 Goal: Regenerative rest as a daily, monthly, and annual practice.

When you view rest as a practice rather than another task or something you lack, you can shift into the mindset of trying different tools, routines, schedules, and activities. Yes, sleep is a part of this but rest is bigger. So join my free workshop next week - sign up for the series and come and go as you need - to learn more about how you can add in regenerative rest practices to feel more restored this winter.

Steep yourself some tea and see you next week!