The Book of Rest. James Reeves
We are aware that we are in danger of shooting ourselves in the foot by declaring that you do not need to understand complicated yoga, meditation or mindfulness techniques to feel rested. Although we earn a living helping people to feel rested, much of our work is about helping shake off the idea that we must study, practise, understand, master or refine anything to find peace within ourselves. Ours is a business that can sometimes seem mysterious and indeed mystic – full of methods and teachings that only a few special gurus have mastered and are able to share. While we know that there are some beings out there with certainly unusual and perhaps even magical abilities, they do not somehow bestow upon their followers a more special kind of peace than you are capable of finding by other means – either with somebody’s help, or by simply sitting alone by yourself.
We don’t mean to pitch The Wizard of Oz as a life handbook, but the story’s message is relevant to the above point. All the while Dorothy seeks a guru (the Wizard) to show her the way home, she already has everything she needs about her person to find the way home herself. Indeed, the Wizard is an illusion, or at least a human no different to Dorothy. However, that’s not to say the Wizard didn’t help Dorothy uncover this fact. She first had to see that her beliefs were nothing more than an illusion before she could tap (three times) into her own inner knowing.
Rest, yoga and yoga nidra
While yoga as a largely physical practice has now become an established part of our culture in the West, the ‘rest’ aspect of this ancient tradition, known as yoga nidra, has recently started to attract interest as a standalone practice. As much as we can assure you that you do not need to develop particular skills or have access to a guru to find rest, if there is one undertaking that might offer some kind of fast track to rest (in that it takes you by the hand and leads you, without you perhaps even realising it), then yoga nidra is our winning contender, and we have included a number of self-enquiry practices in this book that take inspiration from the yoga nidra techniques we share in our classes and training courses.
Like many yogis, our journey started with an interest in the physical aspect of the practice and all the tangible benefits it can bring, though in time we realised something far more interesting was unveiling itself. For most of us, a yoga practice means working through a series of asanas (postures), and we feel secure in the knowledge that we are ‘doing’ something and that we will therefore likely see results. Certainly we start to see physical changes, and this is pleasing, but because when we are working ourselves into the postures we use our breath to help sustain our position and, especially in postures that require balance, we find our minds quieten as we focus on remaining steady and still, we might also notice a subtle sense of calm reveals itself to us – one that perhaps stays with us even after our practice. However, many of us become distracted by the movement aspect of yoga and continue our ‘yoga journey’ by aiming to become stronger, spend longer in headstands, be able to touch the floor without bending our knees, etc. Although that glimpse of calm pops in and out of the practice and our life beyond, almost saying, ‘Hey, I’m here! You don’t need to spend five minutes upside down to see me!’, we plough on, developing that back bend into something that looks quite spectacular and has everyone applauding our commitment to. . . to our backbend, perhaps.
A ‘physical’ yoga practice can lead you to the contrastingly still aspect of your experience, but this ‘restful awareness’ can equally be uncovered with very subtle explorations of the body and breath, and by enquiring into your feelings, emotions, thoughts and beliefs as a means to discover what lies beyond them. A class in which students are simply welcomed to allow whatever they are feeling – physical and emotional – to be present, just as it is, can be as ‘enlightening’ as several years of refining sequences of sophisticated physical postures.
Often referred to as ‘sleep yoga’ (though this isn’t a particularly accurate term), yoga nidra is very much a process of surrendering. There is nothing to ‘do’ in a yoga nidra class other than be still and follow the teacher’s words as they use various techniques to guide you into being somewhere between awake and asleep (if you’ve ever dozed on a beach, slipping in and out of waking-dreams all the while aware of the sound of seagulls and children playing around you then you’ll know this state). We’ve had students describe yoga nidra as ‘meditation by stealth’, because by its very nature, you don’t have to do anything and yet you find yourself doing something amazing.
For many, a yoga nidra class – or any ‘not-doing class’, for there is not necessarily any reason to label it – presents a terrifying prospect. The thought of lying down in a room for an hour with absolutely nothing required other than that you be present with yourself can be an incredibly uncomfortable proposition. You can’t hide from yourself, you might have to listen to yourself and you might see aspects of yourself that you have perhaps been distracting yourself from with other practices or exercises. This doesn’t sound restful, but you cannot rest without stopping, and when we first stop, we may initially be bombarded with inner noise, not inner peace. This is all part of the journey to rest.
We’ve had students who, when they first attended a rest-based class, expressed concern that it wouldn’t be enough for them. Their worry was that the focus on effortlessness and lack of physical exertion meant there couldn’t possibly be any benefits. But such classes offer many people a rare chance to welcome their inner noise, and be present with themselves in a way that is deeply transformative, leaving you feeling more rested and refreshed than we would argue any form of exercise could.
That said, regardless of our respect and love for the practice, we did not want this book to be a yoga nidra handbook, because we want you to know, and wish to prove to you, that you do not need anything – not even yoga nidra – to rest. Yoga nidra has certainly been a core vehicle in helping us uncover our already-rested nature, but we know we can throw it away and our rested nature will still be there. Practising yoga nidra might help you connect with your innate stillness, but that stillness already exists within you. That stillness is yours.
How to approach our self-enquiry practices
Rest is the most natural state of simply ‘being’. It happens to us when we stop and it reminds us that there is more to us than our thinking, doing and feeling experiences – rest allows us to uncover our awareness. The self-enquiries in this book are intended to help you slip into your own awareness, without effort. For this reason, they should be approached with a degree of lightness. There is no right or wrong way to undertake them.
You can think of them as experiments, without any expected outcome. You will likely face challenges, such as meeting incessant chatter of your mind or a particularly eccentric or nagging self-narrative, and while we understand this might be disconcerting we will, throughout the course of this journey, illustrate how to ‘do nothing’ about such apparent obstacles to your rest. (We are aware there is a contradiction here, in that we are going to show you how to do something so that you can ultimately do nothing. . .)
The enquiries might be useful in helping you to understand rest in the context of your body, mind and that which lies beyond, but we want you to know these are experiments in showing you what you already have; they are not methods to be mastered or skills to be sharpened. They can be employed by anyone and there is no reason why their ‘results’ shouldn’t be as profound as techniques practised by experienced yogi or meditators (or witches, wizards, Munchkins, etc.).
They are exercises in observation, but they might just enable you to allow rest to come when you start feeling that tension between wanting to make rest happen and knowing that the more you try to rest, the further away you are from actually resting (if you’ve ever grappled with insomnia then you will be familiar with this challenge). Ultimately, our advice is that as you set about an enquiry, you let everything unfold just as it wishes. This is your new mantra. . . to let go of immediately.
Our purpose in this book is to demonstrate, time and again, that you already know how to find rest. You just have to trust that it is there and that any apparent obstacles to you being able to connect with it are completely normal.
A busy mind does not mean you are less able