Welcome, welcome to Whole Body Upgrade. I’m Rebecca Shisler Marshall, and I’d like to start by welcoming in the directions I welcome in the great direction of the east and the south and the west and the north. I welcome in the direction that is above and below, and I welcome in the great direction that is within. I welcome all of the helping compassionate spirits that are here to support us, to guide us, and to give us not necessarily what we think we want, but what we may need. And welcome in the ancestors who have lived well and died well.
And I ask that whatever needs to be heard, be heard, and whatever needs to be said, be said. And I acknowledge that I am on the land of the creek in the Cherokee and what is now known as Athens, Georgia.
Welcome. I had this great desire to speak with you today about a place to rest. And from the very specific standpoint of this is the community that I offer a place to rest and why we need a community and this place of rest–why do we need a place to rest? Why do we have to have this space that hasn’t really been created before? And I wanna talk to you about that today because I feel like so much of stuff that is out there in the world, we don’t really understand all the different layers. And for me, I know that’s true sometimes, you know, when I first started A Place To Rest, I thought, well, I need a place to sit in stillness.
I need to be able to embody stillness, which I still feel is true for myself. That stillness is so important and there are reasons for that. Why does stillness, why is stillness so important? And this is something I’ve actually been teaching for several years, so I want to talk about these (at least) three reasons. There’s at least three reasons that came to mind that I was like, oh, like this is so important. So as I mentioned, there’s this stillness that I was called to offering this community. And if you don’t know, A Place To Rest is a monthly community. We gather every week for an hour. All of the recordings from since the beginning in April to now are available for anyone who joins. You can join for a month, you can join for six months. You can come back, you can go away. It doesn’t matter. All of that is possible. I just felt very strongly that there was a place, and more specifically, I created this space for women.
Why did I feel like it was really important to have this space? Well, the first reason is that I wanted to have a place to rest from societal expectations. What do I mean by that? Well, if you’ve listened to any of the other pieces on the podcast about rest, you know that there is this incredible, I don’t even know, it’s like a phenomenon that has happened in our current society and lives, it actually has been happening for thousands of years, is there is an invisible labor that is specifically falls on women. These expectations of how women are supposed to be, what they’re supposed to do in the world. And a lot of that centers around home and family, which is invisible work, and that it’s expected that women are supposed to do these things.
That women are supposed to manage the home and take care of the children and send the Christmas cards to family and buy the gifts and take care of the appointments for the kids. And even if you’re not a mother, there’s still this expectation that women are the caretakers, the nurturers, and yes, some women enjoy that and some women don’t. Some women don’t want do that. Some women don’t, not only don’t want to, but don’t excel at that. It’s not their skill. So they are these invisible labors and these expectations that are there primarily that come because of the patriarchy. And if you don’t know, the patriarchy comes from white supremacy ideals. So women and especially women of color, have to deal with this expectation that’s there of being the caregiver, the caretaker at the expense of their own selves.
So women specifically, and I think this is becoming more and more true for men too, is that we aren’t taught to rest, right? A lot of the narrative around women is, well, you know, it would be selfish if I took time out to go learn how to paint or took a nap, right? Well, I should take care of my kids first. Well, after I get the laundry done, then I can. I gotta clean the house first. Yeah, we aren’t taught to rest. It’s not included, “Hey, take care of yourself first.” That is not the primary message that women receive. The messages that come from society are that in order to be worthy, you must be productive, right? We think it is true that we need to be productive in order to be worthy, but that is, again, that is the white supremacy, patriarchal culture that has been handed down that productivity equals worth.
It’s just like productivity. It is then who you are. So it becomes really important then that we have a space, that we have a place where we can just come and NOT do. And that’s what a A Place To Rest is about, is having a place where you are not doing anything except receiving. like I feel so strongly about that. I feel like it’s so important and it’s so critical. And we are, we’re just not taught that it’s not only is it not okay, but we’re not taught how to. So there can be a lot of resistance to that.
So let me talk about that. That’s the second one. The second reason we need a place to rest is so we can rest the nervous system. Oh my goodness, this is coming up so much for me so often. Why? Because we are bodies that have been traumatized either in this particular body or throughout cultural ancestral expectations.What I mean by that is that in the past, let’s give the example of my grandfather. My grandfather lost his mother before, I think he was six months old, not his grandmother, I’m sorry, his mother before he was six months old. Now that even if you don’t know at that time, that can be a traumatic experience. And then if you go back even further, if you start to think about the trauma of what happened, his father was the first father to come over was the first person to come over to the US on that side of the family. So the trauma of leaving an ancestral land, right? So we aren’t taught to rest our nervous system. I mean, really it’s just become more we’ve become more aware of nervous system dysregulation. This is the space, this community is part of what I’ve created so that we can regulate the nervous system.
And what that just means is there are two parts of our nervous system. Well, there’s more than that. But to simplify it, there’s a part that is in the parasympathetic is the rest and digest. And the sympathetic is the fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. So when we feel like, gosh, you know, I’m not able to get still, that is a sign that our nervous system is dysregulated. That our nervous system is in that fight or flight. And if you’re still, because you’re in freeze, you don’t feel stillness where you don’t feel calm centered, you feel frozen and anxious usually. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, we aren’t taught like, oh gosh, we need to check in with my nervous system. How is my nervous system? So a place to rest offers that opportunity to once a week come back (and actually through the week with all the recordings) to come back and regulate the nervous system.
We aren’t taught how to regulate our nervous system. We’re not taught that it’s important. And frankly, society is not set up for us to calm and regulate our nervous system. Our society is set up to go, go, go, go, go. Right? What more can you do? How can you do more? Here’s some caffeine, here’s some alcohol, caffeine to boost you up, alcohol to slow you down. And all that’s doing is affecting your nervous system. But instead of regulating it, it’s dysregulating it. Here’s what happens though. When you regulate your nervous system, when you regulate your nervous system, you have the opportunity to have your frontal lobes come online. When your frontal lobes are online, there is more of an opportunity, again, to see the next step in front of you, to plan accordingly, to organize, right? The executive functions are more likely to occur. Now of course there is neurodiversity, I’m a neurospicy individual. All of that can be something that you know, it’s within this kind of range, within this realm. And even if you’re neurodiverse, helping to regulate your nervous system can support you. So when your nervous system is regulated, then you can see like, oh, that’s what I need to do. Next things can become more clear.
That brings me to the third point. We need rest from the energy. When we sit still answers are revealed. When we sit still long enough, my experience is anytime I sit still for long enough and I’m open to receiving, that’s when answers drop in. That’s when I get like, oh, I wonder if I should try that. That is like, it’s like all of this together, right? When the nervous system is calm because we’ve actually sat still because we’ve calmed down, then it allows us to be open to receiving. Our intuition can work at a very different level. So that’s the third part.
The fourth part, which I just realized–then the fourth part is that resting from the energy. Those are actually two separate things, resting from the energy. When we come to a place like a place to rest, the fourth reason I want people to show up there is to remove any energy that isn’t theirs. We are constantly, because again, we’re not taught it in this society how to manage energy. When we have dealt with when we are, when we’re carrying around somebody else’s energy, it’s extra work. It takes extra energy on our part when we’re carrying around someone else’s energy.
And I don’t mean like, oh, I have a lot of energy, but like, oh, here’s my energy body and I’ve somehow gotten some of Sally Sue’s energy body and I don’t want that anymore. So when we have that possibility of energy being removed that doesn’t belong to us, then it becomes a place where we can rest. It gives again, our nervous system, our physical body, our energetic body, a place to relax. When we are relaxed, then our nervous system, our frontal lobes, our intuitive hits get clearer, right? We can start to receive those. We’ve been conditioned to believe we have to keep moving. We have not been taught that there is another piece of energy that could actually be either taken from us or given to us. When we get clear with that energy, it allows all those other pieces to start working together.
When we clear that energy, it allows us to move forward, right? Then we can go like, oh, that’s why it felt so heavy. It actually wasn’t mine. So this is a different kind of rest, this energetic rest. Instead of carrying around the energy of others, we can rest in our own energy. So that’s why I think it is so important to have however you do it, whether it’s in my A Place To Rest community or any other community that you have, it is so important right now in this day and age to have a place where you can rest.
I encourage you, how can you find rest for yourself? How can you find the physical rest where you let your body be still? How can you find the mental rest where you can let your mind quiet? How can you find the emotional rest where you are there for yourself, where you have your own back? How can you find the energetic rest where you aren’t carrying around other people’s stuff? And how can you find the spiritual rest, the rest where you know that the guides are supporting you and walking along beside you?
So I hope that’s helpful. Those five things that I just listed at the end, the physical, mental, emotional, energetic, and spiritual are part of my framework. The centered wellness framework that I’m writing about in the book, whole body upgrade. And it’s the way I approach the shaman work that I do. My shaman coaching is based on those five bodies. I would love for you to come and try A Place To Rest for a month, or you can try single sessions that I’m offering for the month of December. Come try it out. Come see if this would be of help, support for you so that you can get clear, so that you can move forward. These are about making changes in your life, letting go of old patterns. If you’re ready for that, I’ll put the links in the show notes so that you can access those.
And I hope that no matter where you get support or find someone to help you, that you take good care of yourself. Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate you and I’ll see you soon.
Let’s change your relationship with rest. Join A Place to Rest community today!
Find out more about working with me here.
Learn more about energy, rest, self-trust, and how to empower your own wellness on Facebook or Instagram.
Listen to the Whole Body Upgrade Podcast: