Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS
Your personal growth journey can’t always be consistently fast growth, there needs to be rest and integration too for it to be sustainable. In this episode I share an approach and practical ways to rest and integrate in your personal growth journey.
Featured Resources on the episode
What is spiritual integration?
Hello beautiful soul, today’s episode is all about the importance of rest and integration in life particularly growth. I know I used to and talking to many clients, we think and have this impression that growing seemingly needs to be always happening, hitting goals, going higher and higher —the thing is we actually need time to rest and integrate new levels and phases in our life.
Integration is about wholeness it stems from a french word which talks about bringing together the parts of a whole. When we experience big growth spurts in life and don’t take the time to integrate, sure you’ve experienced growth but what about sustaining it and incorporating it into your everyday, to actually embody what you’ve learned in reality and not just in your mind. It’s like the equivalent when you go a on a wellness retreat and then quickly slip back into your previous everyday mindset and routines, so much for all the yoga and meditation you previously did!
The impact of not resting and integrating in your personal growth journey
Furthering this concept of rest and integration, the analogy of climbing mountains it would be the equivalent of scaling one and then immediately going onto the next. You’ve barely had a moment to catch your breath, let your body rest, take in mentally the fact you’ve physically conquered the mountain… It’s not sustainable and you may end up doing more damage by continually pushing. Alternatively it’s like going diving underwater and not coming up for air, or only a little gulp to go back down again.
Another analogy is that of romantic relationships the equivalent of getting into one and then immediately into the next. Then in your next relationship you wonder why the same things keep happening, you still feel dissatisfied, thinking being with someone else would take away the pain of the previous… Again it’s likely by doing this you haven’t had time to reflect why the previous relationship didn’t work and to fully process the separation. Hence the need for rest.
Rest and integration is important because in this journey of personal growth you’ll either be high on the wins and feel like you’re crashing when really it’s stabilising this new level you’re on or you’ve experienced a low and integration will lift you back up because from the hardships of the low, you’ll gain wisdom and insight through your experience.
How to approach resting and integrating in your personal growth journey
As I’m channeling for this podcast, what has been shared with me is taking a top-down approach to integration in terms of the mind-body-soul connection! Think of it as a holistic approach and ensuring your nervous system is in balance. Another interesting way to look at this connection is that we have three brains in our body. Your brain, mind, Your gut brain, the body and your heart brain, your soul.
Mind - Mental integration and rest
This is your mental state. Thinking of your brain as the hardware and your mind is the software. This is responsible for your thoughts and interpretation of your emotions: feelings. Emotions are more the sensations and experience hence energy in motion whereas your feelings are the mental stories you create based on your emotions.
Ways to rest your mind is well through mindfulness being in the present moment. Acknowledging your thoughts. Acknowledging your feelings. Not being resistant to the thoughts that are happening but allowing them to happen, to be in flow which leads to inner peace. You don’t want to just trap your thoughts within your mind but releasing them by means of talking to someone, that’s where a life coach like me comes in handy or writing it all out in your journal. You don’t have to make sense of your thoughts and feelings straight away it’s about releasing them, letting go. It can be also helpful to have silence, not listening to a podcast or music but simply being in the moment. Taking in the surrounding sounds.
Having spaciousness to reflect, having spaciousness for those ‘aha’ moments and insights after a phase of growth. This entails creating spaciousness in your mind and a beautiful way to do that is of course meditation. Specifically carving out time to allow yourself to meditate, you get to observe, witness and hold space for all the thoughts running through your mind. By watching you’re consciously and unconsciously connecting the dots to integrate information within whether that’s knowledge you’ve learnt or energetic information through your senses like your gut or intuition as examples.
Body - physical integration and rest
Paying attention to the physical cues within your body. Are you taking care of your body? Eating well? Having enough fluids? Looking at your quality of sleep and patterns around sleep. Having down time and noticing when you are feeling more tired than usual especially for women around your menstrual cycles in built are phases when you are more lively and when your body is calling for downtime. Getting acquainted with the sensations within to be able to recognise and discern feelings arising within — can you distinguish the difference between different feeling states such as when you are stressed, when you are scared and when you are angry.
Doing a whole body scan and checking in with how it feels to be inside your body. Do you feel a heaviness anywhere? Any aches? Pains? This can be done with PMR (progressive muscle relaxation). The premise here is to tense a particular area of your body for a few moments and then release to feel yourself letting go of tension. Going from the bottom to the top. Starting with your feet and toes, wiggling and curling them. Moving up your body tightening your thighs. Squeezing your hips and bottom. Breathing in deeply into your chest. Pushing your shoulder blades together. Clenching and unclenching your jaw. Scrunching and unscrunching your face.
On an aside, one particular body part, I want to draw attention to is your gut as I mentioned earlier. Our gut communicates to our brain. Our gut influences our emotions and feelings which makes sense like when we feel anxious or nervous it’s in our gut first through grumbles, noises and butterflies. The gut is the only organ with it’s own nervous system known as your enteric nervous system or the second brain. It’s importance is known with sayings such as ‘trust your gut’ and ‘gut feelings are guardian angels.’ There’s a lot of research out there and I encourage you to look into it yourself too but our gut is far beyond just digestion, it’s been linked to our moods and mental health too.
Incorporating movement into your day. It must be said that the core essence of meditative movement brings all three parts into the present moment through means such as yoga, tai chi and Qi gong. Yoga combines muscular activity and turning the mind inwards. Tai Chi and Qi Gong are all about Qi – life force through breathing, stretching and movements.
Soul - spiritual integration and rest
This is all about energy. Thinking of your soul being the core essence and vehicle that you are like a computer, your spirit is the wifi — the energy that’s being put out there to the world. Being aware and conscious as to how your energy is flowing and how energy itself is communicating to you (that you can perceive as the Universe/Source/God/Consciousness). We all know what it means to be body conscious yet so few of us are soul conscious that is be concerned about how we view ourselves internally beyond our appearance and the surface.
Do you have practices in place that nourish and light up your soul, that renew your energy? What really comes to mind that’s being channeled is that child like behaviour and essence: feeling playful, laughing, giddy, pleasure, joy, excitement. The simple things. Pockets of happiness.
Energy is everywhere and in everything, particularly our environment. How good does it feel when we create space in our homes by cleaning and decluttering? It’s also about an energy audit, looking at your life and becoming aware of what drains your energy and what gives you energy. So much of integration isn’t learning but also unlearning (the very core concept of my debut book The Great Unlearning). If we keep adding stuff think of it like clothes it just accumulates, we need to actually clear some and have space in our wardrobes for more or perhaps that idea of a capsule wardrobe and minimalist — breathing room… which leads to my next point rejuvenating the soul by taking moments to consciously breathe in and out.
Spending time in nature whether that’s walking barefoot on the Earth, breathing in fresh air, feeling the sand between your toes on the beach, being immersed in the sea.
Devotion and commitment to yourself, something of routine that you do daily for yourself. For me that’s non negotiable meditation everyday, for you that may be something different! Doing something you know feels really good for you and helps you to be grounded within yourself and the busy chaos that life can be.
All these come together as means and ways to approach rest and integration in your journey. By no means is it restricted to what I have just shared more acting as a springboard!
Doing a whole body scan and checking in with how it feels to be inside your body. Do you feel a heaviness anywhere? Any aches? Pains? This can be done with PMR (progressive muscle relaxation). The premise here is to tense a particular area of your body for a few moments and then release to feel yourself letting go of tension. Going from the bottom to the top. Starting with your feet and toes, wiggling and curling them. Moving up your body tightening your thighs. Squeezing your hips and bottom. Breathing in deeply into your chest. Pushing your shoulder blades together. Clenching and unclenching your jaw. Scrunching and unscrunching your face.
On an aside, one particular body part, I want to draw attention to is your gut as I mentioned earlier. Our gut communicates to our brain. Our gut influences our emotions and feelings which makes sense like when we feel anxious or nervous it’s in our gut first through grumbles, noises and butterflies. The gut is the only organ with it’s own nervous system known as your enteric nervous system or the second brain. It’s importance is known with sayings such as ‘trust your gut’ and ‘gut feelings are guardian angels.’ There’s a lot of research out there and I encourage you to look into it yourself too but our gut is far beyond just digestion, it’s been linked to our moods and mental health too.
Incorporating movement into your day. It must be said that the core essence of meditative movement brings all three parts into the present moment through means such as yoga, tai chi and Qi gong. Yoga combines muscular activity and turning the mind inwards. Tai Chi and Qi Gong are all about Qi – life force through breathing, stretching and movements.
Ways to rest your mind is well through mindfulness being in the present moment. Acknowledging your thoughts. Acknowledging your feelings. Not being resistant to the thoughts that are happening but allowing them to happen, to be in flow which leads to inner peace. You don’t want to just trap your thoughts within your mind but releasing them by means of talking to someone, that’s where a life coach like me comes in handy or writing it all out in your journal. You don’t have to make sense of your thoughts and feelings straight away it’s about releasing them, letting go. It can be also helpful to have silence, not listening to a podcast or music but simply being in the moment. Taking in the surrounding sounds.
Updates
In exciting news, with my dear friend Japna who is an incredible intuitive energy healer we are going to be running a day retreat in Sydney, Australia details to come but we’re calling it the divine feminine day retreat season: moving with the seasons. We kickstart with Nourish which aligns with Autumn here and that will be on Saturday 5th of May. If you’re interested send me a message on Instagram and I can share more with you there!
The final plug prior to finishing this episode: yes I’m still doing human design readings and have 1:1 coaching spots open so if you’re interested please send me a message on Instagram. My debut book The Great Unlearning: Awakening to Living an Aligned and Authentic Life is now available for pre-order worldwide too, releasing June 2023.
Until next time, lots of love beautiful soul.
