Rest as a portal to imagination

As the days have been getting shorter, I find myself doing a lot more slow-cooking, reading, and generally lazing about. As early as 5pm I'm already basking in the lamp-glow of my darkened living room, my body welcoming this change of pace.

And I'm beginning to remember how abundant and alive the slowness of this time of year can be. But before I discovered this aliveness, I stumbled upon my old friend, boredom:

That moment where netflix, instagram, tidying, busywork, email, and everything else that likes to creep in to ‘fill in the space’ gives way to just… nothing – a pause, stopping everything and remembering my perennial cycle of breath, allowing my eyes to wander around my little living room, remembering what's here.

Turns out… so much! And I'm not just talking about all the tchotchkes and trinkets I've accumulated over the years (a lot)… I'm talking about the quality of attention that arises when we experience and move through boredom towards something like, creativity… or perhaps, imagination.

Yes, imagination. In other words, what you make out of the space between what's here and what, seemingly, is not.

In John O'Donohue's book on Celtic Wisdom, Anam Cara, he shares that:

“Everything in the world of soul has a deep desire and longing for visible form; this is exactly where the power of the imagination lives. The imagination is the faculty that bridges, co-presents, and co-articulates the visible and the invisible."

Winter is the time of year to allow our imaginations to run wild, to pay attention to what we thought we didn't have time to earlier in the year, to work and play in the realm between the visible and the invisible.

But the imagination, like a garden, needs to be tended to and nourished. It doesn't just come to us without care and work… unless you're a kid, of course. For us adults, there is quite a bit in the way. And I believe that carving out time for genuine rest is the key to recovering and nurturing the full scope of our imagination.

If I've learned nothing over the past few months, it's that true, genuine rest is hard. It is uncomfortable. Not intrinsically, but rather because of the way our culture has taught us to live in a constant state of speed. So if we want to develop our creative capacities, to allow our imagination to bring form to what's inside… we need to slow down and rest.

But what does rest and imagination have to do with herbs? Oh, so much. I see foundational aspects of health like rest, circadian rhythm, sleep, slowness, and genuine self-care as portals to deeper connection to our bodies and earth, of which imagination is a bountiful, creative, and generative aspect, which we will need to call upon to step fully into our lives and address the many challenges we face as humans.

And our herbal allies, the plants and fungi, continue to offer myriad virtues to support rest, creativity, and imagination.