Have a Favorite Resting Spot?

In places like this, where the morning sun lands perfectly in the hammock in my back yard, I tend to slow down enough to let in deeper thoughts and questions. Not ones that demand answers, but the kind that gently keep me enjoyable company for a while. They’re similar to the questions reflected in the Manatee Love & Connection Cards: simple on the surface, quietly meaningful underneath.

For many people, a question like Do You Have a Favorite Resting Spot? doesn’t come easily. Not because they lack imagination, but because rest itself was never modeled as something sacred, skillful, or safe.

Most of us inherited ways of living shaped by urgency, productivity, caretaking, or constant motion. Rest, if it happened at all, was often something earned after exhaustion, or something tangled with guilt.

Because of that, many adults move through their lives without a real experience of intentional refuge: places where the body can soften, the breath can deepen, and the nervous system can settle enough to hear itself again.

What I’ve learned, through years of practice and coaching, is that rest isn’t passive. It’s not the absence of effort. It’s an active relationship with safety. It’s a way to bring ourselves back home.

When we allow ourselves to create places to land, and to return to them regularly, something subtle but important begins to shift. We become a little more regulated. A little clearer. A little more available to ourselves and to others.

In my coaching work, the container itself is often one of those places to land—a space to rest, to be met in loving witness, and to gently explore what’s asking for attention without having to perform, fix, or rush.

Wherever you are this week, may you find a place to land.

May your nervous system feel a little more supported.

May you create—or rediscover—the refuge your body and soul needs.