The Irony of Trying to Rest

I woke up this morning feeling a familiar dread. It wasn’t the dread of anything in particular, but because it was aimless, it touched everything I did.

I didn’t want to work out. It was deadlift day, and I didn’t particularly feel like lifting anything heavy. But I got on the Stairmaster to warm up anyway, because not wanting to lift has never been a reason not to lift in my book.

Then Puscifer’s Monsoon popped up on my playlist. And cue the swelling in my chest that caused the swelling behind my eyes. Out flowed the tears.

Moments like these are a relief for me. It feels like finally. Like a clenching I didn’t know I was holding can finally let go. I let the wave come and go. The song ended. The tears stopped. I got off the Stairmaster to continue my warmup, but something in me was sad the moment was over. So I played the song again. And then came the tears again.

I decided to grab my yoga mat instead.

I’ve been practicing yoga for over twenty years, but the last five have been more off than on. It had been probably eight months since I’d touched my mat. Going back to it is always bittersweet. I avoid it for a long time once I feel the urge, because I know it’s going to hurt. My body is so tight now, especially as a regular weightlifter.

But I needed it. Every time I get on my mat when it’s been a while, I feel sad, and I feel relief. It feels like an old friend welcoming me back home. I’ve had the same mat since I was twelve years old. I’m thirty-four now. There’s no judgment from my mat. No questioning where I’ve been. No calling me out for the absence. Just a silent, witnessing space, open to however I am now.

I went into child’s pose. My hip flexors screamed. My shoulders hurt so badly from carrying my baby for the last eight months; they couldn’t settle away from my ears like they used to. My body was mad at me. Where have you been?

It’s hard to care for yourself when you’re caring for another. My body understands. I gave birth and never looked back. Never slowed down enough to appreciate all that my body has done and continues to do for me and my son.

I moved to downward dog. My hamstrings were so tight I had to keep my knees bent—a far cry from the body whose heels could touch the floor. But that body hadn’t birthed a child yet. That body hadn’t gone through the daily labor of nursing and carrying. That body was strong. This body is magical.

The Habit of Hooking

As I laid there, moving through the tight spots, I noticed something else happening beneath the physical ache. I could feel my consciousness actively looking for something to hook onto.

My son is eight months old now, which means I am constantly paying attention. And beneath that, I have a billion other things I’m tracking. Attention dysregulation born out of habit is incredibly predictable. You can actually feel your attention searching for a place to land, simply because it is so used to having something to chew on. It’s the habit of always having something in front of you.

But the feeling of consciousness not wanting to hook onto something? That feels entirely different. It feels like freedom.

When you aren’t hooked, you just have open space. Beyond your mind, even beyond your body, it’s just free. Your mind isn’t trying to capture anything. Your attention is easy. It’s restful. And when your mind doesn’t capture your attention—when your attention is allowed to actually rest—consciousness opens. The simple awareness that you are here, when it isn’t forced to assume the form of a thought or a worry or a task, is the best feeling in the world.

And I realized I hadn’t felt it in a long time.

My consciousness keeps hooking onto things. It hooks onto thoughts about the future or the past, but it’s more than just thinking—it feels like time traveling. We time travel in our bodies constantly, projecting ourselves into different dimensions of worry or anticipation. It feels reductionist to just say “my attention wants to hook onto a thought,” because it’s so much more visceral than that. It wants to hook onto entirely different places and times.

What We Call Resting

The concept of resting is complicated in our culture. We tend to think of resting as watching a show or scrolling on our phones. But in those moments, our consciousness is still completely sucked in. It’s hooked onto the screen, hooked onto the narrative, hooked onto whatever the mind is doing or the body is feeling.

And it’s hooked on things we aren’t even aware of. I once heard a metaphor that the subconscious mind is like a smartphone: if you never actually swipe up to close your apps, they keep running in the background, draining the battery. We all have these background apps running constantly. Those are the things that hook our consciousness.

To be able to exist without any of those apps running? It’s incredible.

Laying on my yoga mat, I realized how hard it is for me to rest right now. I’ve been on edge with my son—in a biologically natural, necessary way, where my brain checks in every five seconds to ask, was that the baby?

But my husband had taken our son out for a walk, along with our dogs. His heroic outing gave me a minute to try to rest.

Try to rest. There it is. The effort. It’s never going to happen if you’re trying to make it happen.

I could feel the weight I’ve been carrying. I could feel my consciousness covered in hooks, like a coat rack holding a hundred different heavy coats I’ve put on over time. And the ability to just put them down? It wasn’t there. I couldn’t do it.

And so, I just had to notice that.

The Hand on the Back

My mind and my attention feel a lot like my son right now. He is learning to crawl and pull himself up to stand, and he is absolutely possessed by it. It’s a compulsive need to do it. I’ll put him down for a nap, he’ll lay on his belly for a second, and then he’ll push up on all fours like, I gotta try.

When he does that, I just put my hand gently on his back. A quiet physical cue that says, it’s okay. You don’t have to try right now.

He collapses back down. A minute later, he pushes up again. I put my hand on his back again. He collapses. We do this twenty times before he finally decides to just go to sleep.

That is exactly what my brain feels like right now. It keeps pushing up, insisting, I gotta do something. I gotta try.

And the practice is just offering that same gentle hand to my own mind. No, you don’t.

I move too fast. I get ahead of myself and go, go, go. And lately, I’ve been practicing letting that internal hand just say, shh. No, Lacey. Have a seat.

This compulsive reaching usually comes up when I’m waiting for something, anticipating something, or even excited about something. I feel like I have to do more right now. We have this illusion that doing more will make time move faster, that it will hurry us along to whatever is coming next. But doing more doesn’t change the way time moves. There are still only 24 hours in a day.

So I have to ask myself: what am I missing when I’m doing that?

Because that unhooking of the consciousness, that resting of the attention—that is when you can actually be present in your life. All of this hooking and focusing takes away the actual experience of being here.

The Space Between the Hooks

Here is the thing about the hooks: the goal isn’t to permanently remove them.

We get so caught up in the idea of “healing” or arriving at some perfect state of zen where our minds never wander and our attention never hooks onto anything. But that’s just another project. That’s just another way of telling ourselves we aren’t doing it right.

The hooking is going to happen. It’s biological. It’s human. The adaptations we’ve built to survive and belong are going to keep running their programs. The point isn’t to eradicate the hooks. The point is to notice them. To feel the difference between the tight, compulsive grip of a mind that has to chew on something, and the soft, open space of a mind that is just here.

When you can feel the difference, you have a choice. You can’t always choose to unhook completely—like I said, sometimes I just can’t put the coats down—but you can choose to stop fighting the fact that you’re carrying them. You can choose to put your hand on your own back and say, it’s okay that you’re trying so hard right now.

Just Get a Baseline

Finally, I rested. Truly rested. A rest I had not felt in months.

The feeling of my body settling. The sound of just my breath. No white noise in the background from my baby’s monitor. No banging cabinets from my husband in the kitchen. No barking of my dogs. Just me and my cat resting peacefully by my mat.

My cells realized they hadn’t stopped. I could feel them all stop for a moment and look around. There’s nothing anyone needs right now?

No, no there’s not.

If you’re like me, and you try to do this and it doesn’t really happen because the habits of hooking are so deep—that’s okay. Just come back again. Just like the hand on my son’s back. Keep coming back. Keep remembering.

And when you do, it gets easier. Because being present with that unhooked consciousness, the freedom to experience what’s here without all that pressure... it’s the best feeling. It doesn’t last, because this is life. But it’s worth checking out every now and then.

Always in the process of unbecoming.

Listen to The Unbecoming Hub Podcast Episode here.

Listen to The Unbecoming Hub Guided Reflection here.