Description: Our bodies weren't designed to go one thousand miles an hour. Yet, in times like now, it feels like that's the only way to get everything accomplished. This week, Tina will share how to get back to your best with one simple—yet brilliant—idea.
Resources:
1. Need some free help slowing down? Check out Headspace.
2. "In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you." —Deepak Chopra
Learn more here: Deepak Chopra on How to Meditate at Your Desk | WSJ
3. Have a few more moments? Try the 5 minute option here: 5-Minute Meditation You Can Do Anywhere
4. If you are interested in reading more about Glennon Doyle's horseshoe metaphor, check out her best seller, Untamed, at UntamedBook.com.
Listen Now:
The Self-Care for Educators team cares about the content-accessibility for all educators. If you have trouble accessing the audio for the podcast, the transcription has been provided below.
Transcription: Hi, and welcome to the 10th episode of Self-Care for Educators. I am your excited host Tina Boogren, and in this episode, I want us to explore a really important theme and that is the theme of rest. Rest. R. E. S. T. Rest.
Right now you are in the middle of your Season of Sacrifice. The start of the school year is so hard. It's hard. In normal times, it's downright—oh my goodness—almost impossible. Right now, what you need is to give yourself permission to rest. You've been going a thousand miles an hour. Every day feels different. Everything feels new. Veteran teachers, you feel like a first year teacher all over again. No one feels prepared. Things are not going the way that you thought they were going to go. It's just hard. Yes, there are so many celebrations. You are doing it. I am so stinking proud of you. I want you to be so proud of yourself. Who knew you could do this? You're doing it. You are doing it. I am so proud of you, but you know what you need? You need to rest.
This is a job that we could do 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and we still wouldn't be done with the work. The expectations are insane. And for many of us, for many of us resting feels weak. Somewhere along the way we've associated that. That busy is better. That there's some sort of gold star award for busy.
Oh, we have to stop. We have to stop. We need to rest our bodies, and our brains need to rest, and we need to rest without guilt. So this week, I want you to carve out some time for rest. And you'll get to decide what does rest look like for you? Rest could be active. Going for a walk could feel like rest. It's just a way to shut your brain down. I do feel ... I go for a lot of walks, as many of you know. You've heard me say this. I go for a lot of Attitude Adjustment Walks—AAWs, I call them. And while my body is moving, I don't really think of that, that I wouldn't put that kind of under my exercise category for me. That just feels good. My body craves that. I am not thinking about how fast I'm walking or. Goodness, the calories burned ... Any of that. That for me, it's how I rest my brain. It's when I need to get into a different mental state. Now, sometimes I do take walks that are really about exercise and burning calories and hiking and, you know, challenges. But just ... just a stroll or a walk feels like there's no expectation around it.
That's the whole goal of that is to just get my brain into a different place that can be rest. Mindfulness can be rest. Using an app. Headspace is free for educators. Using an app. Setting a timer. Just breathing. Doing some box breaths. Taking time to just be in your body for a minute. Taking a nap. Oh God, wouldn't it be great if we could take naps during the day? I know that's impossible, but just allowing ourselves to rest, to close our eyes for a minute. You take time on the weekends to slow down or to set some boundaries during the week on when will we be done working. What needs to get done and what can wait?
I want you to really explore the idea of rest this week. I want you to do some reflection on, when I ... when I ask you to rest, what does that ... What does that make you think? Does that feel easy or does that feel really hard for you to give yourself permission to rest? And I want you to just explore that. What comes up for you when I asked you to rest? And if this feels like an impossibility, I want you to reflect on that, too. What maybe, do we need to shift or what needs to give during this Season of Sacrifice, so that you can rest? I know, it won't be enough rest, right? School is hard right now. School really takes up so much of our time. It's why I call this our Season of Sacrifice as we get going. But, that doesn't mean that we can't also take care of ourselves. In fact, this is—as I keep saying—when we need to double down on taking care of ourselves, That, yes, we will be working more right now. Oh gosh. Probably more than ever before, but that doesn't negate the fact that, we also need to find some time to breathe.
It's amazing to me, what even pausing for a five minute mindfulness meditation in the middle of the day can do for me. It feels like my whole body has really rested to walk away from the screen for awhile to sit down with a cup of tea or a cup of coffee and really just enjoy my beverage. Being really conscious of that can feel like rest.
So we're talking ... it doesn't have to be a long amount of time to even just close our eyes for a few minutes. In fact, for many of us ... I'm not real good with naps, 'cause I tend to nap too long, and then I'm groggy, and I can't quite figure out who I am and what's going on. But doing a mindfulness meditation or just closing my eyes for just a couple minutes with an alarm. That can feel good again—as I said—maybe going for a walk or maybe even just a really great conversation with a good friend can feel like rest, right? We're resting our bodies. We're resting our minds ... So many ways to explore this. The most important piece is to give yourself permission. You deserve to rest just by being you. You've earned the right to rest.
Oh, I can't wait for you to take a deep breath this week and give yourself a little space. As always, thank you so much to Brooke for making this happen. Thank you, to Marzano Resources and Solution Tree for this job I get to do. And thank you to this bad-ass Self-Care Squad that reminds me that I need to rest, too. I'm so grateful for all of you. Oh, I'm so grateful. I'm right there with you. I am in the trenches doing this work, because I got a lot of you pushing me and reminding me that I need this, too. And I'm forever grateful for that. Forever grateful. If you haven't yet, if you could rate and review and spread the word on this podcast, it would just help our fellow Self-Care Squad members to find us. You know, just like Glennon Doyle reminds us, we don't stand in a circle. We stand in a horseshoe, and we welcome everyone to join this sacred squad.