Hibernation
The Sun Clocks Out Early this Time of Year.
Growing wiser into the ancient knowledge of our spirit and the animalistic nature of our humanity demands the realization that many things our society looks at as luxuries are actually necessities.
Two come to mind in particular:
Play. and Rest.
Though I’d argue that they’re one in the same.
This is a story about how I’ve come to learn this.
From Hyper-Independent to Hibernation
I used to be the type to run myself into the ground before I felt it was time to lay down upon it and take a break.
A hyper-independent “I can do anything if I work hard enough,” pulse and a beat of urgency drove my heart forward. I would bleed it dry before I let myself catch up to a breath and refill it with life-force.
I was addicted to the hustle. I didn’t know how to live without it.
I spent years in this cycle of racing to the finish line, pushing myself as hard as I could go, and motivating myself with “never enough.”
When I would burnout - it would be entirely physical.
An ineffable fatigue encompass my whole body, a sickness would overcome me, I’d sprain an ankle or break a bone. My body had to collapse me before I allowed myself to take a break.
I was in this cyclical rhythm of race and recovery for years - a pace where the pendulum swung from one extreme to the next.
I came to understand burnout as just part of my natural cycle.
I thought it was normal.
The Self-Righteous Resistance of Rest
I was taught that if you want something, you should work for it and you should work hard for it.
So hard that the grit shows through your teeth. So hard that there’s no room for anything else. So hard that everyone around you knows just how hard you’re working and doesn’t mention your name without a lamenting statement of, “Oh.. They work so hard.”
I was taught that you should wear the title of busy around like a badge of honor. I was taught that success was inextricably woven within stress.
I was taught that you could not have one without the other.
Thus, I learned: rest and play are luxuries, frivolities that one does when they’re not working hard enough.
If you have time to rest, you have time to work.
And If you have time to play? Well - why the hell aren’t you using that time to work?
It was only after years of earning this rest and play, meriting the late-hours in my room writing poetry and playing guitar and sleeping until noon only because I’d worked three 14 hour days leading up to it that I began to really see this lifestyle catch up to me.
And when it did, my entire life-force felt drained and deadened.
There was no more recharging the batteries.
There was no more racing and recovering.
There was no more cycle of hamster wheel, burnout, get back on the hamster-wheel.
I had done what I thought was impossible: work myself to the bone.
My solution to this -
Rest? Finally?
No.
Medication.
Crashing and Burning
I spent 9 months on an ADHD medication that made me a lifeless, anxious robot half the time and a lifeless, depleted pile of bones the other half.
In an effort to keep it all up - to keep it all going - I chose to leverage the diagnosis I knew I had, but never really needed medication for.
Until I did. And then, I really did.
Medication, in this case, was a bandaid - and it covered a gaping wound.
When I inevitably crashed again, I crashed and I burned.
And this time - I knew that if I wanted to go on, to learn to live and not just survive, I would have to learn how to surrender.
And more importantly, I knew that if I wanted to live an honest, intentional life, that I would have to pour my energy into that which gave it back to me.
As if the Relaxation Gods came in and bestowed me with an intervention, I left my job and the city of New York for two months and went to Bali.
In the Arms of a Lush Green Forest
When in the throes of my get-it-done mania, I would daydream about being in a jungle, wrapped in the arms of a lush green forest, with nowhere to go and nothing to do. A place where I could sleep for weeks.
Yoga Teacher Training was the closest thing to this dream. Because there was still some part of me that craved something to show for this voyage of rest, a certification would have to do.
This act of leaving and radically changing my environment felt like a form of deep rebellion to what I’d been taught.
Sitting with an upright spine in a Yoga Shala, quieting my mind from outside noise as I heard the vast array of chirping birds was an inner revolution.
I leaned into the studies of Hatha Yoga, learning about the deep balance and inner union interwoven within the lineage of the practice.
“Ha” (Sun) and “Tha” (Moon) representing the balance of energies - a way to sustainably exert energy and then play witness to the softening of it.
For all of these years, I felt like I was at the top of an inhale, holding my breath and waiting until I turned blue to release it.
In the arms of a lush green forest, I learned to properly fill my belly up and then let it all go.
Softening into Concrete
It’s been over a year since I took that voyage.
And as Winter settles in this year in New York City, I find myself noticing the lights and the trees and the smell of Christmas in a way I never have before.
I find myself stopping and pausing during the day to take deep breaths or ritualize a mid-day meal.
I find myself admiring the bouquet of flowers I bought to adorn this home with at the beginning of the week and admiring the warm glow of a candle.
I find myself softening. Exhaling. Letting it all Go.
I used to believe that it was all up to me - that I was the beginning and the end of everything. I didn’t know how to let go, Survival wouldn’t let me.
“Every man for himself,” my heart would say to my lungs as it raced to help me push forward.
I craved peace but I didn’t know how to receive it.
Because you can only learn to receive, when you know how to rest.
Inspiration strikes in surrender.
When we get out of the way, when we allow ourselves to let go a little bit, romance finds us.
It can only find us when we are moving slow enough to let it find us.
Leading the Revolution by Letting Go
We live in a world that never stops turning. We are conditioned against our animalistic cycles of rest and renewal. We resist the urge to close the door on the world, to let our bones soften beneath the bristle of empty branches.
We pay a man-made price of guilt in exchange for our rest.
We are taught, collectively, this fallacy that rest and play are luxuries and frivolities.
And as someone who knows the ins and outs of that fallacy - who has seen both sides of it, to that I say:
Let it go.
Let it go the way the trees release their leaves and trust that they will return.
Let it go the way that the sky lets the sun clock out early this time of year.
Let it got the way that the birds let their song be quiet until Spring.
Let it go the way that you were always meant to.
Find this surrender in the moments in between.
Find it in the subtle listening where you would rather fill the space with noise.
Find it in a soft smile spread across your lips and the letting go of seriousness as we let go of this year.
Rest and play are not luxuries or frivolities.
They are necessities.
The ancient knowledge of our spirit knows this.
And in a world that never stops turning, if lighting a candle and reading a book in the sun as it begins to set early is an act of rebellion, then let us all be the leaders of the next revolution.
Listen to the Podcast Episode “You Are Allowed to Hibernate, Too”