Patty has a great guest joining her on this episode. Octavia Raheem has received national attention for her work training yoga teachers and diversifying the yoga and wellness industry. She’s the author of Gather, A collection of soulful sayings, poetry, and flashes of insight woven together into a single sacred garment.
Her latest work is Pause, Rest, Be: Stillness Practices for Courage in Times of Change. Patty met Octavia when she saw one of her social media posts. It really spoke to her, and Patty wanted to know more.
Why is rest important?
Octavia shares how she came to rest, kicking and screaming. She describes a perfect storm of exhaustion that required her to be hospitalized. From that place, she reckoned with the fact that her physical issues were related to her inability to pause, to be still, to stop.
Shifting from hyper-productivity was something she recognized that had to change. She was already a yoga teacher focused on the athletic movement. Her first restorative class didn’t go as planned, but it was step one in her path to healing. Hear how transformation happened for Octavia.
What is the value of stillness?
In a culture of productivity, stillness isn’t something we associate with value. Hear how Octavia explains the shift and how stillness is truly the path to being creative and productive.
“When we resist rest, we resist God.”
Octavia explains how she brings a practice of rest and stillness into her day. Rest allows us to leave room for something greater than us. It gives us a space to remember who we are, and where we come from.
Hear how you can implement a rest practice.
Patty and Octavia discuss what it means to rest, and how to be mindful. It’s not just about activity (or the lack of activity) it’s also about the spirit and quality we bring to our practice. Hear how she explains the power of both/and.
“Rest is a practice of receiving.”
What if we all laid down to rest and allowed? We might receive healing, creativity, and a much-needed moment of nourishment.
What is liminal space?
It’s the space of no longer, and the space of not quite yet. It can feel like nothing and everything. It’s the space in between and unknown. For many, the unknown can bring feelings of uncertainty. Octavia suggests that it could be a place of possibility instead.
We can choose to pause, to linger. We don’t have to rush to the next thing, instead, Octavia encourages us to allow the pause. Be present with the possibility.
Patty and Octavia end the podcast with a lovely call to acknowledge your own pause.
Connect with Octavia
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0:00:04.3 S1: Welcome to the space for magic podcast, where people who are led by their hearts come to learn the secrets to receiving all the gifts the Universe has for us. I’m your host, Patty Lennon. I’m an ex-type a corporate banker turned intuitive coach using a blend of common sense brain science and just a dash of magic. I’m here to help you create abundance in every area of your life and business. Welcome. Hey everyone, welcome to this episode of the space for magic podcast. I’m your host, Patty Lennon, and today I have a guest that I told you about would be coming on the show that I’m so excited for you to hear more from. Octavia Raheem is a mother, author, yoga teacher and activist, she has received national attention for her work, training yoga teachers and diversifying the yoga wellness industry, she is the author of gather and her most recent work is pause rest be stillness practices for courage in times of change. We need that now. And you know how I found this work was actually one of the blessings of social media, I think so often now it’s… We’re getting overloaded with things that don’t help us, but I saw a social media post from this author just shared by a friend, and her words immediately helped me to feel more at peace in my body, and since then I’ve been following her work and watching what you write and was so excited when this book was finally released.
0:01:50.4 S1: So welcome, welcome, welcome Octavia, thank you for being here.
0:01:55.8 S2: Thank you for having me on. I’m excited to be here…
0:02:00.4 S1: So in the book, before we started this interview, we talked about that there’s so many incredible stories in the book and that those are there to be received by the reader in whatever space that reader finds these stories, but I think it’s important for people that understand a little bit about your journey of what it looks like for you to finally understand the need and the role that rest was going to play in your life, can you talk a little bit about that as
0:02:33.1 S2: I can… I teach about rest, and I’m a practitioner rest, and I hold a lot of space, as a practitioner of rest and a whole lot of space for people to rest, via restorative, yoga meditation, the yoga nidra are just simply doing less, and I didn’t come by this pathway on a leisurely stroll, so to speak. To use a metaphor, I came to rest kicking and screaming, and after a lifetime of overworking, over-identifying with my work with what I could produce, over scheduling, over working out, all of those things came colliding in creating a perfect storm of pure fatigue and exhaustion, about 12, 13 years ago, when I ended up hospitalized for a condition that literally amounts to over-usage of muscle, dehydration and fatigue, and it was actually in that place of encountering this Physical breakdown of physical illness related to my overworking and over-doing that I had to finally Reckon with that the physical was really a manifestation of what was happening in my mind about Harland, perhaps even my spirit, but I didn’t come to that reckoning or that realization alone. I’m in the hospital, I had a woman to his name, I don’t remember, but now I call her just my angel, she was my nurse.
0:04:15.5 S2: My night nurse there, and the first night I was there, she came in and said, What are you doing? What are you running from? And I’m like, Well, you’re talking about running him in the hospital, because I do not see… She saw through my, I’m so high achieving, I worked so much for feeling whatever blank I was feeling at the time and she just said, why are you functioning like this in such a dysfunctional way, and she gave me this scripture Psalm 46:10, which is what I walk with in my heart, pretty much all days, and that is be still and know. And so she met me where I was in this hospital bed, completely exhausted, completely overwhelmed by life, but also not willing to accept that I needed to fire despite resisting upon me rather violent me through this illness and she administered my spirit. As she administered medicine, she also administered my spirit and saying, You know what, you have to find their way to pause, to be still, to rest, to stop running, to stop chasing whatever it is you’re chasing, and even to consider that what you’re running after might just be looking for you to pause and be still, be still and know.
0:05:36.9 S2: And so that is to say that was a moment, the moment of a turning point for me, and it was an instant that I said, okay, I digress. it was what planted is this seed that ultimately have taken really deep root, and I’ve nourished it now through my study, in my inquiry, in my practice, but from that moment of being knocked down by total and sheer exhaustion, and ultimately what I understand is like just a fear, ’cause I believe that on so many levels, we don’t rest, we fear to pause, we fear the slow, we fear slowing down, and what we’re ultimately fearing is what we might encounter within the stillness and within the quiet are if we go back to the original scripture my nurses shared with me to be still and knowing, this deeper knowing, ’cause some things that once we start to… Once we know that we can’t un-know them and they’re gonna change the trajectory of our path, and so if we wanna stay the same, we avoid the things that will ultimately change. And so for me, I left when I was released from the hospital, which I thought was gonna be a day ultimately turned into four or…
0:06:53.6 S2: So I knew that I couldn’t go back to living exactly as I had because it had cost me for so much great painting, and I’m armed with the singular scripture be still and know… And at the time, by the way, I’m already a yoga teacher for years, at that point where I was teaching a lot of extremely athletic yoga, I was in constant pursuit of the perfect head stands, our hand stands and really actually using my yoga practice as a place to punish myself on my body, try to control my body into a shape or into something that maybe you didn’t want to be versus a place of being… Well, now, I don’t think that’s what everyone who does hyper athletic, yoga does but… That’s what I was doing. Right. And so coming from that point, I knew more stillness, they sell just like restorative yoga, like me in yoga nidra, I even had a meditation practice that just kind of felt… I had experienced the deep that happens in meditation, but I also think that’s why I was like, Okay, I’m gonna just keep avoiding that kind of practice, but I knew enough about yoga to know that another way of practice is just it, and it was a slow process of whereas, my practice and my work looked like five to seven days of really athletic yoga, I started adding in one day of that, the two days of that, three days of that, and then instead of over-privileging my home practice to be hyper athletic, and very work out driven I started meditating first before practice and after I only meditated, and so I say all that to say that ties our life-long journey and practice and shifting from hyper-productivity and the things that keep us in this endless cycle of…
0:08:57.7 S2: I’m just so tired, I’m just so tired. I can’t even think Clearly, I’m so tired, for me it’s something I have to wake up and choose and be deeply intentional and mindful of every single day…
0:09:11.4 S1: Yes. I love that I was actually… Similar to you, I didn’t do power yoga every day, but I was doing every other day, a type of power yoga, and then the other days I was doing kick boxing, some levels of activity, and I ended up finding out I had a fracture on my spine, I had to stop all of that and finding other practices, slower practices. And you say something in the book about, I don’t know if it was the first time you did Restorative Yoga but it was certainly new to you, being annoyed with all the props…
0:09:48.8 S2: Oh man, I really was. It was the first time and I was in a yoga challenge actually I was the queen of challenges then.
0:10:00.4 S1: We wait, so even in the midst of heading towards this rest… You challenged yourself.
0:10:08.0 S2: Well, so here’s the thing, I was in a Yoga challenge and I didn’t… I was moving pretty quickly all the time at that point, and I just looked on the schedule, I saw that there was a class, I didn’t actually read what kinds, and because my mentality was like, quick, fast, yoga’s a series of ashtanga and all these things at this point, ’cause I actually had taken restorative yoga before, one time before I had this kind of physical breakage, and so I guess… And so that’s part of how I was able to come back to me so quickly when this moment says be still and know, and I was devastated ’cause you have been hospitalized in that moment, like My Workout, my movement, all of that was so much to me and I still love movement, but I was devastated. I was like, I have this thing now, will I be able to use my body the way I have been… And so anyhow, I have taken one restorative yoga class and it kinda came back to my memory and I was like, is that the kind of we’re practicing now, but your point is in the book, I talk about going to that first class walking in and saying, there were only two or three people in there and they had so many props, and if he just said, Grab your props.
0:11:30.6 S2: And I said, Oh, I don’t use props. She’s just like, This class is about the props, she just starts getting my props and I’m completely annoyed because in my mind, I’m like, Well, is it a proper cure to have this whole pre-ableist also mentality around the use of props… Now I see and I teach using props as a way of using support, but also being in relationship with what is our… How do we relate to support… I think using props is really an empowering aspect of the practice, but the first time I was at a restorative yoga I just was very annoyed with the propage… To doing nothing. The silence, all I twisted, I turned, I wiggled so much, and I also had this transcendent moment of just crying in this release that happened that I didn’t understand till years later, you know that my nervous system was like, Oh, thank goodness that this lady has finally stopped doing stuff and we can start to process and release some of the baggage she’s carrying, and so it really is… I don’t have deep compassion when I teach brand new to stillness their students, because I’m like I was that woman wiggling and scratching looking at the clock and huffing and puffing in that first class because as deeply resistant to being still and to resting and to ultimately having more full access to the still small voice in me that was whispering, but I kept it loud so I didn’t have to hear it, you know, ultimately he listening to that voice are creating room for that voice to emerge.
0:13:34.0 S2: Shifted my career path, shifted how I do business then shifted so many, so many big and small things, and that’s why I say that to be still take courage, ’cause you were going to hear or perceive something that has been waiting in like the galley of your heart and soul for you to see it, and it’d be really close enough. It will shift you. I have a friend, we were talking about the conviction that can come to us in stillness and just post-conviction that another way is possible and we ought to get on about the business of that way. So yeah, your question was, you asked me about that first restorative class, but I definitely didn’t enjoy it and realize that I needed it, but I still didn’t go back for years, and it was a crisis, that sent me back to restorative yoga. We… ’cause I was like, What is the value of stillness… Right, we don’t live in a culture that privileges or teach or values stillness, we value product to getting, we value what you can show me that you can do, we value… And even I use productivity in air quotes, ’cause I’m like, What does that even mean? And why does productivity have to be an external show…
0:14:59.0 S2: ’cause for me stillness, it actually had quit is actually profoundly generative, every book i’ve written has been received and quiet and stillness, and so best is to spend the word product to be on as he is it only this kind of outer show of things. But yeah, I definitely sat through that first class thinking Wow, what a waste of time. About how the reports of the class and then the last one, fourth of what, half a… So I was like, it’s transforming me, but I got… I just got scared. I was like, What is happening to me? What is this release? I feel, who am I? If I’m not what I do, who I… If I’m not what I can do for you. Who am I if I’m not all of me? If I’m not my degree, my title, my relationship, my house, my car, my stuff and that, that was the feeling I started to kind of descend upon me that I was resting is just release of some of this cumbersome-ness, but I quickly picked it back up ’cause you can carry something to so long you’ve adapted to that way you’ve adapted to that weariness, you’ve adapted it to that belief system.
0:16:28.3 S2: Yeah.
0:16:30.0 S1: So what I love about that is, we talk here about the space for magic is really that space in between human effort and divine manifestation, meaning there’s only so much you can do to have yourself manifest within your life experience what the divine wants for you. And then there’s a gap, and you have to surrender on the edge of your own where your effort meets divine intervention, and that point of surrender is scary because you can’t do anything, you’re no longer in charge, this illusion of being in charge. And what I love about what you’re saying is you’re offering a way of processing that vulnerable space physically.
0:17:28.9 S2: And it’s why Restorative Yoga with all of the… I don’t tell people to just lay on the floor, it’s like No let’s put blankets underneath you, let’s put soft pillow, and I just kind of creating a cocoon to… To lands. And so the support, the physical support of this practice that I’m talking about is really necessary for the kind of surrender that stillness is causes into or that when I’m teaching or share, I’m inviting people into, I think is really beautiful. What you said about surrender and being at the edge of what we can do and the divines, intervention or support, and the… Is something I wanted to say about that. It just kind of escaped me. But one thing I’ve realized for myself, and it just came to me one day when I was just putting more things on my list to do before I rested, which is rare, ’cause usually I wake up and I rest…
0:18:40.8 S1: I’m gonna stop that. I wanna stop you ’cause I want those are listening to really hear that, you wake up and then you rest, because there are two different things… Go ahead.
0:18:53.9 S2: Yeah, sleep is a biological media in francoist at some point, sleep is pretty involuntary unless you’re being tortured in someone’s making you stay awake, and the body the food of sleeping so I call it. And what I mean by a wake-up and the rest, I wake up and I do it slowly, I try to pay attention to moving out of the deep sleep state to now my eyes are opening. The other day I had this glorious experience where the light was streaming through the window and maybe my room was posted, but they were part of us of light streaming in. Resting for me is moving slowly up and out of sleep. And then I also just lay there and I have a prayer that I say to myself before my feet even hit the ground, and the simplest of it is, thank you, thank you for this day. You know, thank you for divine grace. Thank You for holding me Thank you for my family. Thank you for loving me. No, I say a prayer of gratitude and then I lay in there 5 more breaths, okay, now I’m gonna get up… ’cause I have a five-year-old by this time, hello mother. And so to me rest is also, it’s an intentionality, it is what really restores us on all the layers of our being done to simply body.
0:20:29.5 S2: And so I also mean, very specifically, I wake up, I do the household things I need to do because I’m a mother and my own person, I’m also a wife, a partner, and then I meditate, but on this particular day… I don’t know, maybe I was in the bad mood, I’m not gonna rest her a to do this or whatever was going on with me, I had a lot of resistance to being still that day, and then when I finally sat down and to do my more structured practice of stillness and rest. I said, What were you what was all that resistance about? And basically, the word that came to me were to resist the rest when we resist rest, we resist God, you know, I laugh after it, and so I wrote those words down as I said, okay, that’s an interesting thought, but he also felt like more than I thought it was just like reverberation through me, and so that was a few weeks ago that those specific set of words came to me, and I’ve been thinking about it and just resting with it and kind of walking with it, and we just… resist rest we resist god, and when you said surrender at the edge of, You know what we can do and then What great the experience can support us enjoy…
0:21:55.2 S2: It reminded me of bathes supports us. We rest tells us, allows us to leave more room for something much greater than us, to really support our business, our hopes, our lives, and even to hold us within our fears and… Yeah, so like resisting, rest is just like resisting, time to myself, ’cause for me it is in that rest were I love more of the essence of my own being creation and really remember who and where I come from, and so that is… The big stuff I think we’re resisting when we’ve not
0:22:43.1 S1: resting, and I think for me personally, part of it is also, at least I’ve just gone through this period of deep pause, I wouldn’t say I was always in our spirit of rest, but I was definitely a spirit of pause, it’s just this idea of, okay, but what is going to be asked of me inside that space, what is the new thing I’m going to have to let go of? And do I have the courage to follow that calling right now when taking care of tasks just is so much easier.
0:23:26.3 S2: Yeah, that’s… Thank you for naming that, ’cause we both keep talking about the revelations that come in Ras and what you hear and see the thing you can’t un-hear, and un-see and that… This is why I say rest. For me, it’s a really generative space, and sometimes I go to a purposely because I’m like, What is here for me, what’s within the pregnant pause that is just stating and wants to be birthed. And sometimes I just go there and it’s just us kind of blank space there, nothing’s not always that way. Right, I’m just saying, I think it’s really important to leave space in our life, or to use your word for magic to emerge, but also for the rest is how do I live and be with the mundane task of my life too, and what I mean by that is a rest practice on time people go, Okay. I say, If you give me a practical rest practice that’s not a yoga-based, if those things aren’t practical, but I also understand it ’cause I’m like, I definitely am that kind of person, it definitely used to be that kind of person that private to whatever things I would call practical or…
0:24:48.7 S2: Actually, now I’m like, Well, that was a early… It’s pretty impractical and unsustainable the way most people live, and you think about it… Right, rushing from place to place. Eating in the car allies, I’m like, Actually, we break that down distant to say, how long do we actually live that way? But a really accessible, I say, rest-like practice is more… I call it one thing at a time, meaning I’m chopping carrots – I’m chopping carrots, I’m having this conversation with you. And you know, I have my windows, someone might look out the window and then my mind might start to wander to something else, and I just keep grinding it back, so I’m talking to Patty… It’s just one thing at a time. I go pick up my son the afternoon carpool queen, and I always know I usually talk to my sister on the way there, and once my son gets into car, I’m like he’s gonna wanna tell me all about his day, and I repeated the same stories 15 times, and as a next month. And as much as I’m like, Well, I wanna do this someone through that, I wanna listen to this other thing, I go, I just wanna be…
0:26:01.8 S2: It’s actually really restful for me to just decide that I’m just gonna sit here and listen to them in any one, I’m like, Okay, now for the story, I’m gonna ask him very kindly most days, sometimes not. Okay, let’s have some quiet time, or Let’s listen to a podcast or our other… And I’m saying all of that to say is, most of the time we are like obsessed, or how do our multi-tasteless of blogs, 10 ways to multitask and to me I’m like multi-tasking is distracted tasking and it makes things take longer and it creates more fatigue. And so for me, a Baccarat practice is ten to one thing at a time, and deeper presence within whatever I’m doing… Right, okay. So we have to do list ’cause we are householders, we live in the physical world, and we’ve chosen or be blessed to have partnerships and family and community, and we tend to those things. And also for me, I’m just like, How can we invite the Spirit of rest even into what we do by choice and also what must be done… Do you understand what I’m saying? I’m an advocate of the lay down the path to lay on your couch and just listen to the birds outside your Window like what I’m talking about, rest, I’m talking about that.
0:27:27.9 S2: And I’m also talking about the spirit in which we do what we do, the spirit of more presence to bring my whole self to this. But here’s the thing, when we are deeply fatigued and just trying to Lesotho Spain, we’re not there, we’re not aware, we’re not there to be project, and that creates is really endless challenge cycle, and you know… And so that’s what I mean, even in even in how to do this, ’cause I love me a good list and the spreadsheet, this is a part of my very human… My personality to make… And my dedicated rest time was… By the way, I think 10 minutes is plenty. Right, or someone to watch them practice. And if someone’s like, I can’t be still for a minute, I’m like, Okay, start with one minute. But that dedication, that dedicated practice really supports me and bringing more ease and spirit of rest and present to everything I do, which is plenty, right? Which is more than enough. I don’t just teach about risk, but I’m a parent in my author, I own a business, I consult with corporations, but how rest can actually support their deepening of their visions and expansion of their missions, so there’s a lot of really meaningful work that I do and the spirit of rest really informs, how I present that and how I show up to and for…
0:29:05.8 S2: So that’s my invitation to people, Patty, is to have some moments of dedicated rest or a moment of dedicated rest built into their waking life, they’re very much to do in life, and also just to start to pay more attention to whatever it is you’re actually doing versus being in one place physically and mentally, all these things, okay, so far is a rushing the… Get to the next name.
0:29:32.7 S1: Yes, as you were talking about your five-year-old son, what was going through my head? You answered the question, I was thinking. Oh God, please don’t tell me she’s gonna say mine or teenagers now, but the idea of listening to a five-year-old story straight through to the end, when that five-year-old decides the stories over that felt like its own little formal… I’m gone really glad to hear there was an exam for that…
0:30:00.4 S2: Oh, there is the exit ramp. Sometimes he’s like, I like talking today and… ’cause this is definitely five years on life, my son could tell us to work for two hours, and I intimated the both, and sometimes I do just sit and listen and I go, Mom, okay, and if you’ll go… When did you say, aren’t you listening? Do you understand… And I said, I am listening, I don’t really understand it, but that ram start over, self.
0:30:35.1 S1: Total obesity is not necessary when listening fully to a five-year-old.
0:30:44.5 S2: And so there is for… I’m very human, and sometimes I’m like, Oh man, I appoint to the story. So there’s that part in my rest helps me to really perceive into he won’t be five forever, and one day I’m just gonna want him to talk to me… It’s like the both and for me, ’cause I think I can actually be pretty impatient, right, is also, but I’m like, I teach that which I need to stay deeply close to a half is very close to this practice it… And it gives me perspective on all things are passing, and so I have… It helps me have patience with my five-year-old actually, and in the stories he
0:31:29.9 S1: Feels… I love that you said You can be impatient because you know, I think we all have… When we meet someone through a work… A body of work. Without meeting them personally. So for you, I was first introduced to you through quotes of yours that were posted, and they’re on this beautiful… I just love your branding is this beautiful coral color and the gold and brown, all the words are just like, I’m like, Oh, there’s an Oracle on the planet. And she is going to give me the portal to this deep connected way of being right, and then I’m reading your book, and there really isn’t, because the stories, they’re there to support the essence of pause recipe, there really isn’t the discussion of the impatience. But you saying that just is a nice reminder of, it is possible to embody this deeply and still have a personality that is called to the world in very typical ways.
0:32:39.2 S2: Of course. And this is a practice, you know as a cliche, but this is a practice not a perfect… And I actually do believe many people, I don’t know if this is true for you, but what I experience a lot of is offering the medicine that I save them and also that they know they need to stay close to, that is… I have an incredible somatic therapist to my personal therapist, and the somatic piece as dance piece, this movement piece, this kind of mindful creative way of exploring a body that she brings into her therapy practice is what really saved her and it also… It feels different. Her offering feels different because they’re such conviction, it’s an body conviction in her body, ’cause she’s like, This is how I lifted out of some of my own dark places and depression, and I just keep experiencing over and over that people’s… Medicine is really pouring out of some of their deepest wounds, and that’s my experience with myself or were so many healers and… Yeah, I un-practice at Taos and I try to treat life like a practice, it’s not a static. Say, I depend a devout, but I don’t wanna hear the rest of your story and why I’m like, This is my thing I can say for every word, because I know you won’t be fine over a lot of time, you’re to…
0:34:24.8 S2: Might just be like, Oh mom, I… I don’t have a story to tell you no more, you know whatever it is. And so I’m a big proponent of the bull and and really affect my humor muscles, I have fear to use, and I think we all do was the means of the structure of what I teach is all about receiving and learning how to receive and…
0:34:55.7 S1: Oh yes, that is… Every other episode I do, that’s just me, is me talking about how I’m not what, I’m struggling with that once again, so I do think we’re called to teach what we need to learn.
0:35:10.9 S2: Because it deepens it can say de instead, I mean, he turns really barley and it’s such a spiral. Rishis not linear transformation is not here. And even hearing me to speak about teaching about versus a pin as a life thing, as part of your hero started to relieve, I understand that, and rest is a practice of the seven… Sometimes I prescribe risk as I’m like resaca, perfect lover. If we IRAS contrary down, I will hold you. And maybe it was kind of intellectual, we were like, Yes, that’s what I want, I could be thought over there is like, Well, actually cannot trust those… Are you really gonna ask me for something else? And I think of rests is like such intimacy with the spirit of reception, with the spirit of the being with the spirit of allowing with such a nursing practice is if we all just went and just lay down and did not think something’s still gonna happen, we’re still gonna experience something, and sometimes that’s something that we get is just energy, it’s a relief, it’s an insight as we’ve talked about, but the best practice is a practice of allowing yourself, one stuff to receive and be
0:36:49.8 S1: Receives. So there was a question that was really on my heart to ask, but this has brought the listeners to such a beautiful place, I don’t wanna go there. I do wanna mention though, for you listening and Octavia, you comment on it in whatever way you feel called to… In the middle of the book, you talk about liminal space, and to me, this concept was the one that just… It shifted something very fundamentally inside of me, which is why I wanna bring it up if you’re listening, but I understand the book is gonna give you the depth of this… The reason I wanna bring it up is because I think it explains why to someone listening who is listening too, is like, Yes, this is what I need, now I get it at a deeper level, I am going to explore this, I’m gonna lean into this. And then they go back out into the regular life and they find themselves back in resistance, and I think it’s because the fear of what that liminal space bring. So can you just at a very high level, talk about what it is and why this practice is so important.
0:38:09.4 S2: So far, why I say that person who’s like, Yes, I have this practice, I had this experience, and then they’re back in the car with their kids screaming though… How human are you? Right, I’d just go… When I have those moments, like how human am I and the liminal space as I define it in the book or talk about it in past, is that place where you can’t read, there’s a past it, a place where you cannot return to, but no longer I call it what’s behind us, it’s no longer in the place of… Not quite yet. And the liminal space is that if we’re talking about just time, an arrest is that place between being forward and sleeping is avoid like space where it feels like nothing and everything, it’s very, right. And it’s also this nectar still hanging from the fruit tree, so to speak, and so I think that the liminal space is that place in between, and a word that we use for it is also very unknown, and thus the unknown becomes this place of uncertainty ends because the liminal space defines definition and boundaries, if you will, in this one sense is a place of possibility, if we just pause right now, we just went in late, right now, we reset right now and kind of deeply relaxed.
0:39:57.3 S2: There’s nothing there. And this is really a moment. It’s like we can’t go back to a moment. And if we pause, we might think we know what’s next, but we don’t… Right, and that’s the liminal space, I think forging a relationship with that place of what we often call an uncertain, I call for for dinner relationship with possibility. And so there are times in life when we are, we meeting a brutal discovering an ending, and they were pushed into the woman over space in between ’cause nothing’s beginning quite yet, and that can be incredibly… We just wanna know what’s next, we just wanna know, it’s kind of like the summer between senior year Collett, a liminal space, ’cause we… College is the name. We’re calling us Mette have no idea. When you’re in the liminal space is exactly what that’s gonna be. And my call, and what I think often happens is there’s always a space between anything, there’s gonna be a space when we stop listening to this podcast, and we can choose, we can choose to run right into the next thing, or we can post banger in the Lebanon face, notice what kind of ripples and reverberate from what we just heard here, what touches our heart and soul, and we might notice if we linger in the liminal space that I place in between, that we don’t…
0:41:37.0 S2: We’re not quite ready to rush in to whatever is next, and if we just allow the pause or that space in between on that moment of transition to expand around us, possibility emerges where there onshore there one was uncertainty, and what I mean by that, to us of just listening to the podcast as an example, so you listen, we come to the end. And a part of me was like, just go to the next. I just continue on your to-do list path for the time, and a part of you is like, I heard something, I felt something… I choose the polls, I chose to linger in this, and if you do that, maybe even just three minutes, something might emerge that is so like resonate, interesting, juicy or even just a new perspective. That’s the possibility I’m talking about them is an eliminate. And we actually have power to. ’cause there’s a post between everything, right. If you’re taking in air, there is a posture that though, if you’re taking that shelter is a Polish after it, if you open a door, there’s really… It’s not just opening and closing, There is a little wing, there’s a little pause between that, and what I’m talking about is being aware enough to notice that in between and aware enough to then what I need to actually expand the space in the 22, expand it.
0:43:05.1 S2: And you access more possibility within that, but that taste capacity, because to be clear, the moment in between our mom is uncertainty, I don’t know what’s next, and that also means I can call in teas for what I… Sectionals, the place in between. And this Winston that I assertion, we engage really mindful of still practices, is that there’s a deeper place who can drop into or really deep with too, and that is actually the one, ’cause we’ve seen most of our lives on the surface of our Beans and timescales and to death. And that price in between… Yes, which is really just for transition in the pause.
0:44:05.1 S1: I love this and I don’t wanna offer another question into this ’cause I think this is the takeaway, this is the invitation to each person listening on what to do, right after we hit the Stop record button, that being said, is there anything you haven’t shared that you would like someone listening to know or hear… So what I haven’t shared that I wanna share with everyone is one breath, like one intentional breath, and to send people forward into after the Excel, into the pause that is right there. And so if I can pay, I invite everyone, whatever they’re listening, however they are listening, to take one full inhale to notice the past that is there, and then to allow the exhale to feel forward, and so without holding, just notice the organic pause that is there. Let that be what they later in… And jumping forward to stay right here… Yes. Well, this has been so peaceful, this experience, so I thank you for being hair Octavia. If you are interested in purchasing pause RESP, and I highly recommend it. You can find it… Well, first, you can find… Octavia’s work at pauserestbe.com.
0:45:51.5 S1: And TV, do you have a preference on where they purchase your book.
0:45:56.2 S2: Where it’s convenient to her purchase it there? I really like when people support their independent of local bookstores to elevate those people who are on the ground now supporting us as Patty, I just wanna say thank you so much, I really insisting this time with you, and it felt to me like taking a little pause even though we were talking, I felt restorative.
0:46:24.9 S1: Yes, and thank you for that guidance for those of you listening, this was something we contemplated before we hit the record button, so thank you for that leadership, Octavia outwork. Alright, everyone, while you have a new tool, maybe an old tool that you’re remembering in creating space for Magic, and I wish you just so much rest as you go into the rest of your week. Much love, and have a wonderful day. Hey, thanks for listening. If you know someone who needs to hear this message, please share this episode with them, and if you’re feeling really generous, I’d love for you to leave us a review at your favorite podcast app, it helps us reach many more people and it fills my heart with so much joy when I hear what you have to say about what I’ve shared. I’m cheering for your success, have an amazing day. And don’t forget. Always create space for Magic. This podcast is part of the SoundAdvice FM network. Sound advice, FM, women’s voices, amplified
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