The Nature of Rest

This year marks 23 years of sharing Restorative Yoga. The practice continues to be a deep process of learning, insight, discovery, creativity, innovation and co-creation. What a radical and sensible idea that one would gather in community to deeply rest. I have been blessed over the years to have a group of dedicated ‘resters’ as well dear colleagues and trainees who year after year continue to evolve the practice with me. This conscious rest practice continues to be a deep resource for my own physical, mental, emotional and energetic well being.

Writing about Restorative Yoga seems a natural evolution of sharing and making the practice more accessible. I’m not what I would call a natural writer, however I do have a passion for gathering a few words and capturing the essence of what rest is for me with the support of a wonderful team of collaborators, Todd Eyre with Imagery, Suzanne Day with vision and Design and Sandy Farquhar my writing mentor and editor.

So in honour and celebration of this deeply nourishing practice I have co-created a first journal ‘An Invitation To Rest | He Tono Kia Okioki’, somewhere I can seasonally offer my ideas about the nature of rest, and share my joy and love of rest as a life practice.

About Volume One | Pukapuka Tahi – this journal includes 24 pages which share some of my journey with rest and Restorative Yoga, essential principles of practice, a five part personal practice and some musings.

Who is it for? – Lovers of conscious rest, Restorative Yoga and moss! I have intentionally created a practice which requires easily accessible props like bed pillows, blankets and a scarf so theres an accessibility, an ease. Todd has I feel captured the essence, beauty, simplicity and spaciousness of the practices. It’s not so much a ‘how to do’ – more that the images, words and design literally invite you to rest.

This page serves as a place to order Volume One | Pukapuka Tahi in digital form at $33 NZD. Limited print copies exist for purchase at the Contemporary Yoga Centre in Remuera. Print copies – $44/$55/or $66 NZD – you can choose which price.

It is my hope that the journals and accompanying resources here may inspire, be in service to, and companion your rest.

Aroha Mai, Aroha Atu,
Karla

Order now for $33 NZD.

Payments are accepted by Direct Bank Transfer. Please complete the form below and make your payment to:

Karla Brodie
01 0381 0056146 00

Musings on Shavasana
An alive death of sorts of emotion / thought / effort. So too the surrender to thoughts, feelings / emotions. So too the practice of rest which involves a kind of discipline or encouragement and the question to ask may be who am I where am I and who answers this and any other question? What part of us do we yield governance to? Or does autonomy come from wholeness? Everything is as it is, and a kind of dissolving of this and that, you and I, ‘i-dentity’. At the head, heat, gut and cells of this practice is wellbeing / health / wholeness not determined entirely by the singular us or individual, indivisible from everything and everyone everywhere.

Of Earth
Find a way to the earth. Rest there. Surrender any effort or thought or knowing or unknowing. Everything right now could be considered on a spectrum of deep meaning and knowing to no meaning and not knowing.

Be as you are – the brilliance of just that, you and the wonder of your trillions of cells, the extraordinary-ness of you as you are; skin, heart, bones, blood, breath….No choice and your choice and every possibility.

Held, Matt Licata
“In those moments when we are held, our nervous systems down regulate, our minds soften, our hearts open, and we come into an ancient sort of rest. That rest that we’ve been longing for in a lifetime that always seemed just out of reach. The rest from the becoming.

While our true nature as open, luminous awareness is the ultimate holding environment, as tender human beings we are wired to rest within a relational matrix.

To enter into this field with another – weaved of the alchemical substances of presence and of space – is one of the great mysteries of the embodied world.

Held by another, held within by our own hearts, or held by a star – somehow we are already held. It’s not something we must earn or deserve or search for.

Held by the morning light as it comes into a room, by the song of the birds, by the imaginal world. Infinitely, already held.”

Podcasts I love