Getting Comfortable with Rest

We talk about rest as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. Yet for many of us, stillness feels anything but easy.

The moment we slow down, something stirs beneath the surface. Sometimes it’s the body tightening, unsure if it’s truly safe to stop. Sometimes it’s a wave of emotion we’ve been too busy to feel. Other times, it’s the echo of old conditioning  the belief that our value lives in our productivity, that if we’re not doing, we’re disappearing.

Stillness can feel uncomfortable for many reasons. Our nervous system may associate it with danger. Our emotions may rush in to be witnessed. Our identity may fear losing control. Or we may simply not trust that life will hold us if we let go. Each of these patterns deserves understanding, not shame.

In intimacy, rest is what allows us to soften, receive, and truly feel another person not from effort, but from presence. It’s what helps the body relax enough to let love, pleasure, and vulnerability land. Women in particular have a difficult time accessing desire when they can’t slow down and cultivate safety in their body.

In business, rest is where innovation and clarity are born. It’s the white space that allows new ideas to surface and strategy to take shape. Even the most forward-thinking companies know that constant output kills creativity; rest restores it.

When your body feels safe to rest, you access more intuition, empathy, and imagination the very ingredients that make love richer and leadership wiser. This isn’t self-sabotage. It’s protection.

Your nervous system may have learned that motion equals safety that as long as you’re moving, fixing, or tending, you’re in control. For many of us, that pattern began long before adulthood: when stillness meant vulnerability, disconnection, or even emotional danger. So when you stop, your body doesn’t interpret it as peace. It interprets it as risk.

The good news is, safety in stillness can be relearned.

In this post, we’ll explore five gentle, body-based ways to get comfortable with rest starting with the first and most important: understanding how your nervous system came to confuse stillness with danger, and how to begin teaching it that it’s safe to slow down.

1. Understanding the Body’s Story

Before you can change your relationship with rest, you have to understand the story your body is telling.

Your nervous system is the keeper of your survival strategies; the unconscious patterns that helped you feel safe in moments when safety wasn’t guaranteed. If you grew up in a home where stillness was filled with tension, silence, or emotional distance, your body learned that calm wasn’t safe. It learned that being alert, doing, fixing, performing, was the way to stay connected or avoid conflict. But, remember, this isn’t about blaming our caregivers. Our unconscious mind is hypervigilant and overprotective when we are young. Even if you were raised by the most generous and loving caregiver, your unconscious mind may have interpreted love and worthiness with production.

Over time, those patterns become invisible. You don’t wake up and decide to over-function, overthink, or over-give. You simply feel a pull to stay busy because your body associates movement with control and control with safety. Rest starts to feel like a risk you can’t afford.

This is why even well-intentioned advice like “just slow down” or “take a self-care day” can feel impossible. It’s not that you don’t know how to rest it’s that your nervous system doesn’t yet believe it’s safe to do so.

Your body isn’t the enemy. It’s not trying to block your peace; it’s trying to protect you. That tension, that restlessness, that sudden urge to check your phone or start a new task the moment things quiet down, that’s your body saying, “We’ve been here before, and stillness didn’t feel safe then.”

Understanding this changes everything. It shifts rest from something you “should be better at” into something you can learn to feel safe practicing.

So before we talk about breathwork, rituals, or micro-rest practices, begin with compassion. The moment you can say, “Of course this feels hard, my body is doing what it was trained to do,” you’ve already begun to rewire the pattern.

Awareness is the first form of regulation; it’s the moment your body realizes there’s another option.

2. Reintroduce Stillness in Small, Safe, Doses

You can’t go from constant motion to complete stillness and expect your system to instantly relax. That’s like asking a marathon runner to stop mid-race and immediately meditate. The body needs time to catch up.

When stillness has been unsafe, the goal isn’t to force calm; it’s to build capacity for it. Think of this as teaching your body a new language  one of slowness, safety, and trust.

Start with micro-rest. These are moments of pause small enough to feel safe, yet powerful enough to begin rewiring old patterns. They might look like:

• Taking a long, deliberate exhale before you open your laptop.
• Feeling your feet on the ground before responding to a message.
• Sitting in your car for 30 extra seconds before walking inside.
• Noticing the way your breath moves through your body without changing it.

At first, these pauses might feel awkward, even agitating. That’s okay. You’re not doing it wrong; you’re just meeting the edge of your current comfort zone.

Your nervous system learns through repetition, not logic. The more often you pause, the faster your body begins to associate stillness with safety. Eventually, what once felt uncomfortable begins to feel like relief.

You may even notice subtle shifts: your breath deepening without effort, your shoulders dropping, your thoughts softening. Those are signs that your system is remembering  that safety doesn’t require motion.

As you practice, focus less on how long you rest and more on how safe you feel while doing it. A few seconds of true, embodied pause are far more effective than forcing yourself to “relax” for ten minutes while your mind sprints.

Stillness isn’t something to master. It’s something to befriend. And like any new friendship, it starts with small, consistent moments of trust.

3. Pair Stillness with Soothing Sensations

For many people, stillness doesn’t feel restful at first, it feels empty. The absence of motion can register as loneliness, boredom, or even fear. That’s because for years, your nervous system has been flooded with the stimulation of doing. When that stimulation fades, the quiet can feel like a void.

The key is to replace the absence of activity with the presence of safety. You can do this by pairing stillness with sensations that comfort and anchor your body  small, sensory cues that whisper, “You’re safe to be here.”

Try dimming the lights or lighting a candle before you pause. Wrap yourself in a soft blanket, make tea, or place one hand on your heart and one on your belly. Play gentle instrumental music, or notice the texture of something comforting beneath your fingertips  fabric, wood, stone, or skin.

When you give the body something tangible to experience during rest, you remind it that stillness is connection. This practice also deepens intimacy both with yourself and with others. When your body learns to soften into comfort, you become more receptive to touch, more attuned to pleasure, and more present with emotion. Stillness transforms from something to endure into something to savor.

In moments of overwhelm, return to your senses. Ask: What feels good right now? What can I touch, taste, smell, or hear that reminds me I’m safe?

Rest doesn’t have to be silent or still. It can be sensual  a slow reclaiming of your body as a safe and nurturing place to land.

4. Use Breath to Regulate Safety

Breath is the simplest and most powerful way to tell your nervous system, “We’re safe now.”
It’s the bridge between body and mind  the rhythm that can pull you out of overthinking and back into presence.

When your system has learned that safety lives in motion, your breath often mirrors that story: shallow, fast, caught in the upper chest. It’s as if the body is always on alert, waiting for the next task or demand. Slowing the breath doesn’t just bring calm; it literally rewires your body’s perception of safety.

Each slow, intentional exhale activates your parasympathetic nervous system  the part of you responsible for rest, digestion, intimacy, and creativity. It’s what allows the body to shift from survival to connection.

You can start small. Try inhaling slowly through your nose for a count of four, holding for one or two counts, and then exhaling through your mouth for six. Longer exhales signal to your body that it’s safe to release. If that feels like too much at first, simply notice your breath without trying to change it. Awareness itself is soothing.

You might also try placing a hand on your heart or belly as you breathe, letting the warmth of your touch remind your system that it doesn’t have to brace. That you’re here. That you’re listening.

With time, you’ll notice your breath deepen naturally  during work, conversations, and moments of rest. That’s your body beginning to trust that it can slow down and still be okay.

The beauty of breath is that it’s always available. You don’t need a quiet room or a long practice just a willingness to pause and meet yourself mid-breath. Because every exhale is an invitation and a soft reminder that you are safe to slow down.

5. Practice Rest in Co-Regulation

Rest doesn’t always have to happen alone. In fact, for most of us, it’s easier to soften when we feel someone else’s calm nearby. This is the power of co-regulation  the way our nervous systems communicate safety through tone, presence, and energy.

From the moment we’re born, we learn how to regulate through others: the rhythm of a parent’s breathing, the warmth of a hug, the sound of a gentle voice. Those early experiences taught our bodies what safety feels like. As adults, that truth doesn’t change, we just forget it.

When you rest in the presence of someone whose system feels grounded, your body begins to mirror that steadiness. It’s why sitting beside a calm friend, cuddling with a partner or a pet, or even breathing in sync with another person can feel instantly soothing. The body recognizes, “I’m not alone. I can let go.”

If resting in company feels new, start small. Sit quietly with a loved one without filling the space with conversation. Share a slow walk, a meal, or a few minutes of silence after a long day. Notice what happens when you don’t rush to fill the moment, how your breath naturally syncs, how tension quietly dissolves.

You can also experience co-regulation in community spaces intentionally designed for it  healing circles, meditation groups, or guided gatherings like our New Moon Ceremonies. In these spaces, rest becomes collective medicine. When one person exhales, the whole room softens. The group’s calm becomes your calm.

Stillness feels safer when you’re witnessed in it. You begin to learn that quiet doesn’t equal isolation; it can mean belonging.

Because at its core, rest isn’t about withdrawal; it’s about returning. Returning to your body, to connection, to the feeling that you are held  by others, by breath, by life itself.

Reclaiming Safety in Stillness.

Learning to rest isn’t about mastering relaxation or forcing your body to be still. It’s about remembering that safety can exist without motion. When you begin to understand your body’s story, create small moments of pause, anchor in soothing sensations, breathe yourself back into presence, and practice co-regulation with others, you slowly rewrite the nervous system’s script.

This is where real transformation begins.

When stillness stops feeling dangerous, it becomes a portal  to deeper intimacy, clearer creativity, and a steadier kind of power. You stop needing to prove your worth through constant motion and start living from something quieter, wiser, and infinitely more sustainable.

Rest is not the thing that interrupts your life. It’s the rhythm that allows your life to unfold.

As you start to reclaim safety in stillness, notice how everything softens: your relationships, your decision-making, your capacity to receive. You begin to realize that rest isn’t a break from purpose and it’s how purpose breathes.

And if you need a place to practice, to feel what safety in stillness actually feels like, you’re invited to join our next New Moon Ceremony  a guided space to slow down, reconnect, and let your system remember what true rest feels like.