Balancing Rest With Action
How can I make this body a vessel for strength, vitality, and spirit?
I wonder about how I can best conserve energy. I have to gather energy in my body and keep it from leaking out, so that it circulates and nourishes all my parts.
When I talk to people about my chronic illness and my bouts of fatigue, I often get asked if I take time to rest. Believe me when I say that I do. And when I’ve failed, I promise that I tried to make time for resting. Conserving energy is not the same as rest.
But what is energy, anyway? In English, it's a word derived from Ancient Greek ἐνέργεια (enérgeia) meaning 'activity'. It's a concept with a long history. It's a form of motion.
A brief definition of energy in the modern sense is that energy is the measurable property that is transferred to a body or to a physical system, recognizable in the enactment of work and in the form of heat and light. In physics, the law of conservation of energy states that energy can change form, but not be created or destroyed.
So we may know energy is present by witnessing that activity is happening. Even at levels invisible to the naked eye, subtle events are always underway.
This resonates with my favorite explanation of the Chinese concept of Qi 氣, which is often translated as energy, or life-force, and can't be reduced to the mechanical sciences.
"Qi is what it does." Meaning, energy is observable in its expressions.
I've found that conserving energy in the body is not only about avoiding expending it. Conservation involves cultivation and rest woven into daily life as a practice.
Cultivation is the tending of a garden. It is the acts undertaken each day to nourish the life force. Conservation and cultivation both live in steering clear of dispersal.
The practice is to create a vessel that can hold the energy I’m trying to conserve. Gathering energy into the cauldron, condensing it, and strengthening the container so that more can be condensed with minimal leakage.
I started with a shattered vessel. At age 5 I was diagnosed with a bleeding disorder and blinded one of my eyes. My spleen was removed. I took antibiotics daily for 10 years, and have been hospitalized more times than I can count. I took rare medication for my blood, and NDRIs for clinical depression. I see these as symptoms of scattered energy.
At 23, I began learning to change. I started to conserve energy.
I gather my energy by eating food I make at home with ingredients I trust, and herbal medicine. Since 2022, I’ve fasted intermittently most days on a 16/8 rhythm, and it has improved my digestion dramatically.
I cultivate energy through embodiment practice. I don't do the same thing every day, but consistently devote 1-3 hours a day to a mix of qigong (Chinese movement and breath practice), Hatha Yoga asana, and strength training.
I manage energy by going to bed at a regular time, getting up when I wake up after a night's sleep, and engaging with my practice of prayer and meditation before I let in any information through a device.
I avoid losing energy by having strong boundaries with screen time, internet usage, and consumption. In my teens and twenties, I would play video games 12 hours a day or have 16-hour streaming binges. I was an insomniac night-owl who could not fall asleep for fear of never waking up, whose days and nights were fueled by coffee, alcohol, and cannabis.
Now, sober and only somewhat internet-addicted, I try to turn to contemplative practices or human relationships rather than to the computer and substances.
I conserve energy by learning to ruminate less. My anxieties, the same that used to drive my life to the point of rushing to the ER for fear of haemorrhage, now come and go. They arise, I witness the stress, the pain, the sheer internal freakout, and I lie down to observe what is happening. The wave subsides within a minute.
I was not always the way I am now. I’ve been experimenting. I just hit 3 years without pharmaceutical drugs or hospitalization. To build my vessel, I had to change just about everything.
How do I come about these changes?
Primarily by developing a nuanced capacity for sensing and identifying the many states that I can find myself in, and learning to respond.
I'm doing that through somatic movement education. Somatics is a modern field of theory & practice concerned with the body as an unfolding process of relationships. I'm an eternal student of my own process. All the practices I'm engaged in inform my work in 1-on-1 therapeutic sessions with people who come to see me for bodywork or naturopathy.
I tend to the flow of energy that passes through the body by giving space and voice to the emotions that move through me. By meditation and prayer and singing. By telling my partner what's going on. By talking to trusted friends about the realities of my life. By laughing and crying.
I conserve energy by listening to what my body needs and responding accordingly to the best of my ability, with the skills I have worked to acquire over decades.
And yet, a friend asks: Do you rest, Laure?
They mean the rest reserved for 'sick days' in the working life. You know, where the only priority that day is taking care of your energy? Days not used for running errands, doing chores, or setting appointments. Not used for adventures or outings or training. The kind known in some circles as Shabbat. A day where everything is sorted, the tech stays off all day and you can really hit the Reset button. Real, deep rest. The regenerative kind.
Honestly?
Not in a couple of years.
Maybe that’s why the bruises came back.
But I’m resting more now.
Maybe that’s why they’re dispersing.