Hello dear one,

Have you ever held a Chinese finger trap? It's a little woven tube. You slip a finger into each end, and then the moment you try to pull your fingers apart to get free, it tightens. The more you pull, the more stuck you are.

The way out is the one move that makes no sense while you are panicking inside it. You have to stop pulling. You have to bring your fingers gently toward each other, in toward the center, the opposite of the exit. And then it loosens, and your fingers slide right out.

I wrote about these little traps years ago, back when my youngest was five. He is twenty-two now. The morning I was thinking of, I was tired and behind and trying to get him dressed, and I pulled and yanked against him for half an hour. Lunches unpacked, nobody dressed, both of us stuck. It wasn't until I let go of my agenda and moved in toward him instead, toward connection, and away from the outcome I was gripping so hard. Once I let go, we were in the car in three minutes.

That story stayed with me all these years because it turns out we do not only do this with our children.

We do it with our whole lives.

When something isn't working, most of us pull harder.

We are tired, so we push through. Something feels off, so we add another system, another supplement, another early alarm. We white-knuckle. We optimize. We try to think our way out, do our way out, earn our way out. And so often, the thing we are stuck in only tightens.

What if rest is the move in the opposite direction that is really what's needed, even thought it feels like the wrong direction?

And I'm not talking about rest as one more item on the to do list. Not rest as the reward you finally get once everything is handled, which will never happen. The word radical comes from the Latin radix, meaning root. Radical rest is not extreme. It is rest at the root, the inward turn, the move that feels counterintuitive while you are still pulling. It is turning toward yourself instead of away.

I have been thinking about who this is really for. Maybe it is you, maybe it is not. Only you can know that. But I notice it tends to be the person who has been pulling for a long time. The one who is good in a crisis, who holds a lot, who keeps the people around them fed and steady. The one who has tried harder and harder and on the inside, quietly, has felt more stuck.

If any of that lands, here are a few questions to sit with. There are no right answers.

Where in your life have you been pulling harder, and getting more stuck?

What might moving inward even look like for you this week?

And what are you afraid would happen if you stopped pulling?

Someone who was at the first retreat put it this way:

"Even with so much going on in the world, I keep coming back to my body, to what brings me peace. When I do, I feel more alive, and my nervous system can actually rest. I am learning to trust what my body knows in the moment."

— Nadja, Slovenia

This inward turn is the heart of what we are doing at the Radical Rest Retreat, June 19 to 21. A live online weekend, together wherever you are, with Meredith and me and our guides. Not a weekend of pushing harder toward rest. A weekend of practicing the turn inward, gently, and in good company. You can come with curiosity and simply see what loosens.

Let me know what questions you have!

Be curious, be kind, start with yourself.

With love,

Rebecca