Rest as Resistance
A horizontal gathering
In light of recent events….
“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
--Audre Lorde
Years ago, a former colleague was trying to get me -- an only parent and full-time teacher -- to stand at the picket line with her. My nervous system wasn’t designed for picket lines.
She’s not the villain in that story. We just had different perspectives.
I like to work within the system that I’m in and at that point in time, I was working in a school with dysregulated students.
My work back then was teaching kids to self-regulate and to stay self-regulated.
Dysregulated kids become dysregulated adults. Adults who inherit the same systems and enact them under pressure. And those adults shape the world we all live inside.
Some people organize bodies in the street. I organize nervous systems in rooms. Both are how power moves.
I’m not rejecting activism. I’m expanding its definition. Everyone has ground. Mine just happens to be interior and relational, and it is a very real front line whether or not it comes with signs and chants.
The same work in different spaces.
“Without constructs, you will unravel few mysteries. Without knowledge of the mysteries, your constructs will fail. These pursuits are what make us, but without comfort, you will lack the strength to sustain either.”
― Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built
And then there’s power. There’s always power at play. And a society that keeps people exhausted is a society that narrows what they’re capable of imagining. When you’re depleted, your world shrinks to survival. Eat. Work. Recover just enough to repeat. And exploring mystery becomes a hobby for the privileged. Construct-building gets outsourced to institutions. Your personal agency thins out.
However, rest interrupts that cycle.
If constructs are the systems we build and mysteries are the truths we seek, then comfort is the protected space that lets ordinary people -- like you and me -- participate in both. Choosing rest in a culture that glorifies burnout is a refusal to be reduced to output. It’s saying: I am not just a battery for someone else’s machine. I require interior space. And interior space is where curiosity, ethics, art, and protest germinate.
What kind of world do we get to live in when productivity stops being sacred?
Where is a rhythm where worth isn’t measured by constant making? Where wonder is allowed back in?
Rest becomes a quiet strike against the myth that endless motion equals meaning. It’s strategic replenishment. A greenhouse for the human capacity to question the blueprint and redraw it.
Rest as resistance says: if you want me compliant, keep me tired.
Rest answers: I will not hand you my exhaustion.
Sure, it’s not the traditional vertical protest, standing in a picket line. My nervous system is not built for that. So this is my lane of resistance.
It’s a subtle, quiet voltage running on parasympathetic power instead of anger and adrenaline.
A nervous system strike.
So, I’ve planned a monthly sleep-in. A drop-in so you can drop-out. A rest-in as resistance. Let’s occupy stillness. And regulation as activism.
A culture addicted to speed is disrupted by people who practice stopping.
Instead of confrontation, restoration. Instead of picket lines with signs, yoga mats. Replace chanting for breathing. And instead of standing ground, let’s lie down and rest.
Rest is not retreat. Rest is infrastructure. Rest is construct. Rest is mystery.
So, if you want to join me, I’m hosting a free monthly Ripple of Rest. This month’s is on February 15, 12 noon PST/1 pm MST/2 pm CST/3 pm EST.
A 25-minute Yoga Nidra to ripple calm and love outward into the world.
This is my contribution. Activism as nervous system regulation. Rest as resistance. Consider this an open invitation: https://luma.com/grhazztq
When we are rested, we can rise.
Warmly,
Cherie
reset • restore • rise