May You Be Well - Stories

Stories and rest

Medicine for a weary heart

Dear Rest Friends,

Stories help us find our way, while rest reorients you to your inner compass. One of my favorite teachers and authors, the late Dr. Angeles Arrien, explains that storytelling and lying down meditation are both empowerment tools of the healer. 

Stories can help us change the world—starting with our own. As Dr. Arrien states, “The capacity to attend to our own life story permits us to reopen the heart and connect to the other universal healing salves. This in turn allows us to experience the human resource of love, the most powerful healing force on Mother Earth.”

Hearts and minds can heal with the proper dose of rest and story. I’ll leave you with this wisdom from Brother David Steindl-Rast:

“The heart is a leisurely muscle. It differs from all other muscles. How many push-ups can you make before the muscles in your arms and stomach get so tired that you have to stop? But your heart muscle goes on working for as long as you live. It does not get tired, because there is a phase of rest built into every single heartbeat. Our physical heart works leisurely. And when we speak of the heart in a wider sense, the idea that life-giving leisure lies at the very center is implied. Never to lose sight of that central place of leisure in our life would keep us youthful. Seen in this light, leisure is not a privilege but a virtue. Leisure is not the privilege of a few who can afford to take time, but the virtue of all who are willing to give time to what takes time—to give as much time as a task rightly takes.”

May this long Labor Day weekend give you time to rest your weary bones (and mind and heart).

Love,
Marcela 

Listening/Reading/Learning/Supporting

The Four-Fold Way: Walking the Paths of the Warrior, Teacher, Healer, and Visionary
This is one of my favorite Angeles Arrien books. “Every culture has ways of maintaining health and well-being. Healers throughout the world recognize the importance of maintaining or retrieving the four universal healing salves:  storytelling, singing, dancing, and silence." And here’s a TED Talk she gave before her passing in 2013, “Cornerstones of Wisdom: The Four-Fold Way.”