Radikal Life Podcast S1E15: Rest with Marina Patrice Vare
Sun, Nov 13, 2022 6:41PM • 1:13:02
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
rest, people, yoga nidra, life, practice, folks, happening, work, created, space, resting, workaholism, needed, fertility journey, module, related, place, colonialism, person, moving
SPEAKERS
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP), Andrea Durham (she/her)
Andrea Durham (she/her) 00:05
Hello everybody, I am Andrea Durham, and welcome to the Radikal Life podcast. I am the guest host today and we have Marina Patrice Vare who will be telling us about her module today. Well, so would you like to introduce yourself?
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 00:26
Thank you. Yeah. So yeah, I’m Marina Patrice Vare my pronouns are they them and MP. I am the co-creator of the Radical Life project. I also generally host this podcast. And my professional work, in addition to that, I am a yoga therapist and a Daring to Rest Yoga Nidra facilitator and my private practice Sweet Perfection yoga Therapy, primarily work with folks who are feeling disconnected, disengaged, or disembodied. And I really love to serve folks that are working through milestones and transitions, folks that are healing from interpersonal trauma, and folks during their family building journeys. Specifically, I’m passionate about working with queer and trans folks during their family building journeys. That’s a little bit about my professional work. For this particular project, I’ve created the Rest module.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 01:26
Okay. And would you like to tell us a. little bit about the rest of module but then b. about yourself and your social location?
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 01:34
Sure. Yeah, I’ll start with the first question there. So the Rest module is based on the Daring to Rest phases. So Daring to Rest was created by Karen Brody, who is the person that trained me. And it unfolds in three parts. So Rest is the first part, which is related specifically to physical rest and alleviating exhaustion in the physical body. So that’s the Rest phase, then it progresses to the Release phase, which is related to mental and emotional exhaustion and alleviating mental causes of stress, and, yeah, and how they deplete us. And then the third phase is the Rise phase. And this is specifically related to alleviating what Karen calls life purpose exhaustion, and which I sometimes refer to as spiritual exhaustion. So that’s the Daring to Rest model. And that’s how this module is created. It’s each is each class in the module has a short teaching component, and then is followed by a yoga nidra meditation as well. So this is really a practice based module where I encourage folks to practice the new nidras, you know, over time, in order to really get a embodied sense of what it means to rest. And in terms of my social location, I’m queer, I’m white, I’m larger bodied, which feels important to name as a person who practices yoga because I don’t think it’s necessarily what we envision when we have this idea of someone who’s a yoga teacher. I am neurodiverse, I am transgender and non-binary. Another identity that has been important to me is that I am a later in life parent and that has shaped my journey in significant ways as well.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 03:36
Okay. You know, I’ve I’ve known you for a long time, I think it’s really important to talk about what brought you to yoga nidra and Daring to Rest and rest in general.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 03:52
Yeah.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 03:52
Tell us about that.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 03:53
Sure. I’m just I’m trying to think about where I want to start with that journey. So I have been practicing yoga since high school. I first began to practice yoga asana, when I was recovering from mono. And I, shortly thereafter, I had been taking Iyengar style classes. And I don’t know a couple of months in I learned about restorative yoga, and I attended a restorative yoga class, and I loved it. And then, you know, I sort of practiced asana intermittently throughout college, and I sort of came to this like, place in my mid 30s, where like, just there was a lot happening. And I remembered how grounding yoga had been for me, and I returned to yoga and also, you know, the physical practice didn’t serve me in quite the same way as it used to. So I had had gone back to practicing restorative and I was in a restorative class where someone taught a yoga nidra and I was like, Oh, wild, right. And, you know, and then still didn’t quite like sink into the level of like, oh, I have to do that. And then when I was, you know, struggling with my marriage and, and moving through divorce, I went back to practicing yoga really extensively and went to yoga school to pursue my 200-hour. And then decided to study further to become a yoga therapist. And really, in that sort of therapeutic model kept returning to this place of needing to rest myself. And also feeling like everyone around me could use more rest. And so in addition to my yoga therapy certification, I decided to dive deeper into practicing rest. And you know, you may remember in 2016, I was very sick, I ended up needing to take a long term medical leave from my job. And at that point, I rediscovered yoga nidra and started practicing daily, and really, like carried that forward, through, you know, through many years of my life, right, before I decided that I needed to get certified to be able to like, share this with other folks. Yeah, I feel like there’s a lot more I can tell you there. But that’s the
Andrea Durham (she/her) 06:16
Well, I do have a couple of follow up questions. And one of the things that you mentioned is you thought that many people around you needed rest. So how, how do you think this can support other people?
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 06:32
How can yoga nidra and rest serve others? Yeah, I mean, I think, I don’t know anyone who couldn’t use more rest. And I, I know a lot of people like myself who are recovering perfectionists, maybe are not even recovering yet, maybe are still just perfectionists, that really have gotten down to like, drive do, do, do. And they’re, they’re really skilled at executing in that way. And, and that can be a really scary place to have someone mention rest, right? There’s, I think, for me, rest was something that I considered fearful, right, and a place that it took me a long time to really settle into, and there are still times where I find myself resistant to rest. And so was was the question of sort of, like, how can rest be of service or? Yeah, I mean, I think that it is a place to slow down, it’s a place to really be able to hear and like, listen to that internal voice. For me, it’s a place to connect with the universe in a big way. And it also is a place of reflection. And and I will say also, it’s just a place of practice, right? And so I think that it is I love this about yoga in general, and all eight limbs of yoga, is that like, there is no way to perfect it like there is no way to like win that yoga, right. And so for me, it really is a place that I return to for practice, without the expectation of getting better at it, right. And so I think an invitation to a rest practice is really just an opportunity to show up and like, lower your expectations in a way that I think can be of service in the just down regulating, right, like just the, yeah, just having it be a place that can be a soft place to land. And, for me, it has taken me some time to be able to be like, Oh, I have a soft place to land inside myself. And so it was, it was an opportunity to cultivate that as well. And I think I will just say it can be a different way of learning and being and doing to rest. And so that journey is also I think a lot of the the juice of what can happen with yoga nidra. And I guess I’ll just take a moment to specifically offer what yoga nidra is for folks that are not practicing or not have not practiced or heard of it before. It is a guided yogic sleep meditation. So it unfolds in phases and moves through very specific like components in order to bring you into a deep place of rest and connection.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 09:48
Okay, and you talked about the juice of it.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 09:51
Yeah.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 09:52
Can you tell me a little bit more about the juice of it?
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 09:55
Yeah, I mean, I think that Yeah, so for me, it really has been a place of transformation, it helped me to reach quiet in a way that I have not personally been successful doing with like a stillness meditation. So there are many folks, right, who can sit down and just like sit in silence. And you know, I have a pretty significant trauma background. And so trying to come into a meditative state from there that was not accessible for me. And so it was really exciting to find a kind of meditation where someone guided me through. And I think that the some of the juice there for me is having an experienced guide take you, right? For me, it’s, it’s a container and it it’s holding. And to be honest, like these days, I listen to my own recordings, right. So like, I have been teaching, you know, this particular kind of yoga nidra for several years, I have many recordings. And in the last several months, I’ve actually been using the recordings that I made for this project for my own practice. And there’s something that’s really lovely for me to be held by myself in this like space of rest. So, for me, the juice is like what unfolds in that process of coming into rest is there’s a particular component related to Daring to Rest, where we listen for a soul whisper and we, you know, track those soul whispers and then use them for particular, like, intention setting and things over time, that I really think it’s just a beautiful method. And so some of that also is just the way that I have come to practice this particular like, lineage of yoga nidra, that has been meaningful to me as well. Yeah.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 11:48
Well, I think the best advertisement that you can give for anything is that you use it yourself.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 11:53
Yeah, sure.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 11:54
And so, you know, I appreciate you saying that you use your own recordings, because that’s a really powerful thing. You know, you’re drinking the juice you make.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 12:05
I think it’s this idea of giving myself permission to rest, right, which is a thing that I give other people so freely and easily, that it does help me to hear myself say, like, Here, have this gift.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 12:18
And actually, that’s my next follow up question. Tell me about permission.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 12:23
Oh, yeah, sure. So I think a lot of us have really received negative messages about rest over the course of our lifetimes, right? I know in my family, my father was a workaholic, really like got up early was drive when there was a lot of narrative around the myth of meritocracy, right. The idea that, like, people who are doing well in the world are doing well, because they’re working harder than other people. And they’re, right, they deserve what they get more than people who are not working hard in this way. And so, uh, you know, I think that there was, and also, I mean, I’ll talk about even like, my life with my mother, right. Like, we were just sometimes struggling to even like, get by, right. So there’s also like, a exhaustion that happens there when like, you’re just really in the like, drive of like, trying to, like, you know, make the parts of your daily life happen, right. And so in that, like, I really developed this mentality of like, I’ll rest when I’m dead, right? Like when I when you start unpacking those messages that you have, right. And so we have these messages about being a good person, if you work hard, right? About being weak, if you need to rest about if, right, like, so there’s a lot of like messages there. And it took a while to like, give myself permission to like, put down those messages and try to seek a different narrative. And, you know, ask, like, well is this the only way to think about rest? And like, what if rest is really also a, you know, a form of deep repair, right, that can really help me to unpack the messages that I literally received from my parents, but also like, you know, they received those from their parents and like, right, and they’re, they’re the messages that I’m getting at school about working hard and drive and right. And so I had to sort of recognize that I was caught up in a system of storytelling of a narrative, that was not one that I created and was not what I wanted to be generating, in order to give myself permission to rest.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 14:29
Yeah, and I particularly appreciate that because in the book, The Four Agreements, you know, Don Miguel Ruiz talks about, you need to be able to separate what’s yours from what’s out there and what’s been given to you, as you know, the model of living or who you should be. And I also appreciate in your module, I’m forgetting the woman’s name now when she talked about her mother and the messages that she got from her mother because her mother was a physician. And what did they call her? The white flash? Was it?
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 15:02
Oh, so this is yeah, this is my dear friend, Theresa Conroy, who is a yoga therapist, and her mother was a podiatrist. And I’m trying to remember it was, it might have been the white flash. It’s something related to her, like always being on the go and in her doctor’s, right? Yes. Yeah, it was. That’s a really powerful image in there. And I. And I think that, like for a lot of folks that are what I will call overachievers, right, that there is someone in your life that you can that you can look at and say like, this is how they were the person I modeled my life on, right, or their values were a thing that like, really were deeply ingrained in me.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 15:46
Yeah. And I also appreciated it because she talked about the situation where her mother was talking to her sister or her aunt. And basically, the sister said, Oh, well, I’m just resting to, you know, the mother says, What are you doing today? And her sister said, Well, I’m just resting today. And her mother’s like resting. She’s just resting today. And it was the whole idea that there was something wrong with
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 16:14
Yeah.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 16:14
resting.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 16:15
But I think that I mean, there’s a large cultural narrative around that, right that like, we rest when we’re sick, we rest when, you know, we’re injured sometimes, right? But that the idea that we might rest as a practice of rejuvenation, or as a practice, a spiritual practice, right, a practice of resistance to all sorts of, you know, ideals, capitalist ideals, like white supremacist ideals, like the idea that we might come into this as a place of generativeness, right, I think is really contra to the messages that I know I’ve received over my lifetime.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 16:57
Well, you know, it’s interesting that you mentioned spirituality there, because the whole idea of the Sabbath, or the seventh day is all about rest, or even, you know, in the Old Testament, where they were required to let their grounds lie fallow for a particular amount of time, so that the earth could rejuvenate itself. And so that concept is in no way new. But yes, you know, what, what I see. And what I personally know is that somehow those messages get kind of toned down in the message of doing, you know, work all the time, seems to be the thing that’s, that’s really at the forefront right now.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 17:41
Yeah.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 17:42
And then that actually takes me into the next question that I have for you. Because when going through your module, you know, one of the things you talked about as well, as well is shame.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 17:51
Yeah.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 17:52
And so could you tell us about that?
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 17:54
Yeah, I mean, I think it is, in many ways related to permission there, right, is that we have these messages about when we’re when we’re supposed to rest, right? Like, when we’re sick, when we’re dead, when we’re at, right, that otherwise we should be engaged in, in doing doing doing a lot of the time and, you know, what happens for folks when they reach a place of burnout, right. Or when they reach a place of, you know, illness, or they reach a place of just like, spiritual breakdown from the like doing doing doing is that there can be shame around needing to be a person who rests, right. And I think that that is sort of like my mission to, like, counter that right to be like, it really is it is a joyful gift to be able to give yourself space to integrate things right and to like, find, mmm, find your way into like, your own needs and meaning and, you know, and, and to like really name that like that. Going, going going really has been for the benefit of capitalism, right? It really has been to advance a narrative where we become, you know, idealized workers, right. And what we can produce and create for others becomes more valued than the way that we are caring for and moving through the world and caring for ourselves. Right. And so I do think of rest as a form of self care. But I also think of it as a form of family care and of community care, right? Because if I’m so depleted that like everything I do, right, diminishes my life force, there becomes a point where I don’t actually have any connection, life force, anything to build with other folks. Yeah. Yeah. And I think of as you’re talking, especially about family, and I do have some questions for you about that later on. But yeah, you know, I used to work in daycare when I was younger. And the most disturbing thing to me, especially when we’re talking about living in an industrialized country in a quote unquote, first world country is, I remember that we got two, three week old babies, two. And both of their moms were required to go back to work three weeks after giving birth. And, you know, I was teenager at the time, but I thought in what world does this make sense? I think about how long it took you to make that person. Right. Like, I feel like you need at least that long to like, integrate the fact that now that person is outside of your body and the way that your relationship to everything has shifted. Yeah, three weeks is, like, honestly, I would call that a crime.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 21:03
And I certainly agree with you there. And and what I remember is, the fortunate thing for that daycare center is we had a couple of older women who had had children of their own. And I remember we had these big giant windows, and they would sit in rocking chairs outside, and they would sit in the rocking chairs at the windows and rock these babies.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 21:27
Yeah.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 21:28
And I sincerely believe that those young, they were both girls. I believe they’re not sociopaths today, because they got that connection that they needed, because their mothers had to go back to work and wasn’t even, like, they couldn’t even make the choice to stay home with their children without losing their source of income.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 21:49
And like, think about just how exhausting and depleting it is, in general, to be the person be a person that works full time. And then layer on to that, that your body has had this huge transformation twice. Right. Like, I just yeah, it’s I think that the state of paternal leave in this country is is criminal.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 22:14
Yeah, I, you know, really, if there’s one of I champion many things, but that’s one of them, because I just thought about those poor women and having to go back to work when you’re so exhausted to begin with.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 22:27
Yeah.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 22:29
So you know, moving out of shame, one of the things you also mentioned was that you are a recovering perfectionist.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 22:37
Yeah. I often joke that I am spending my adult life trying to become a type A minus. I mean, I think that there are a lot of carrots and rewards to being a person who expects perfection, is an is an overachiever, is always sort of moving on to that next thing, right? I have a lot of things I could say about perfectionism. So I want to make sure that I didn’t like cut off your question there.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 23:08
No, I please. No. And that’s why I left it open ended.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 23:11
Yeah,
Andrea Durham (she/her) 23:11
because I know, you have a lot to say about it.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 23:13
So I mean, I think
Andrea Durham (she/her) 23:14
I’m one myself so
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 23:15
Yeah, right. I mean, I think this is the thing. I mean, for me, I will say it is I think that pursuit of perfection is the single most life stealing thing that I can say, has happened over my lifetime, right? Is this belief that you can earn your worth externally, right? And that you can only do that if you do things perfectly, right. And that even when you manage to pull it off, and do something that other folks perceive has been done perfectly, it creates this, I think addiction to then have, what’s the next thing I can achieve? What’s the next thing I can do? What’s the next right? And I think that it really, you know, we’ve been through many years of therapy and one of the things that my therapist, you know, said to me about my relationship to perfectionism was what do you think it’s doing to the people around you? Watching you have these impossible standards of yourself? What do you think it’s doing to the people around you? Like, what do you think it’s communicating to them about their worth, and their right? And like, what do you think it’s doing to your relationships, trying to always achieve these unreasonable ideals? And that was a thing that I spent many years unpacking before I decided to have children, right, was like a place where I was just like, Okay, I have to, I have to believe that I have worth, right, outside of the things that I can achieve and do you know, and I want to be able to give that to the people around me And I can’t do that until I’ve cultivated that sense in myself. Yeah.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 25:06
Anymore, or?
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 25:07
I think I’ll pause there. Like I think I mean, I could say more, but I don’t know that it would add anything that hasn’t already been said.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 25:15
Well, I also want to kind of take a component of that.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 25:19
Yeah.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 25:21
And in terms of workaholism,
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 25:23
yeah.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 25:23
And the idea that it is one of the acceptable forms of addiction,
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 25:29
oh, my gosh, for sure
Andrea Durham (she/her) 25:29
in this society. Can you speak to that at all?
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 25:33
Sure. I mean, I think that. Yeah, I mean, I think it’s a place where we even treat it like it’s not an addiction, right? Where there is so much reward. Right? Like, if we, if we think about like other addictions, right, there is a lot of stigma around them. And I think that that is not true with workaholism, because we have these ideals around being, you know, the work ethic and being a hard worker and the myth of meritocracy, right, this idea that, like you’re doing well, because your behaviors are getting you there. And I think that it is an invisible addiction in a lot of ways, right, like people may be able to see that you are working too much. Right. But very few people will say to you like, oh, that’s harmful. Right. And I also I think, I feel like the need to name that there are a lot of reasons why people work what I would call too much, right. And, and a lot of them are economic
Andrea Durham (she/her) 26:44
yep,
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 26:44
right. So like, I don’t want to diminish, right, that component. But I also want to layer on top of that, that there are some of us who derive our worth, from the status of our work, right, for the reach of our work from, you know, what we earn for our work, and also that there are some of us for whom the current achievement is never enough. Right? It’s, it’s like you do the thing. And then Okay, what’s next? And what’s the next pinnacle? And what’s the next pinnacle? What’s the next promotion? What’s the next, right? And that, like, we’ve been trained into that, at least here where I was raised in the United States, like from the beginning, right, be a good producer, be a good, you know, cog in the machine do the things well, right. And then I think they are very closely related workaholism and perfectionism, because you get rewarded. Right? For, for doing the things well, right. And I think that yeah, I mean, I have a lot of, sort of conflicting feelings around that, because in many ways, like I have the life I have, because of the things that I have done, right. And in some ways, I also feel really, like I probably would still have an amazing life, if we had, like a universal basic income. And like right, everyone had the ability to take care of their fundamental needs before the you know, deciding what their work in the world was. And I, you know, I have this, like, I think imagining of like people really being more in vocations and avocations, right, then in careers and work because, like, that’s what they’re good at, right? I’ve done a lot of work over my lifetime that I was skilled at and good at, but that brought me very little like joy to do, or that the pieces of it that brought me joy were so diminished by the other components and the bureaucracy and whatever else that was happening where I was working, that that that addiction to work still, like actually rarely ever brought, like the high that we think of with addiction. Does that makes sense? Does that square at all with your experience?
Andrea Durham (she/her) 29:02
I think it does. But the other thing that you know, and you’re speaking to an immigrant, yeah, like, full blown immigrant.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 29:09
Yeah.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 29:10
So, you know, in immigrant communities work is a very, very important thing. I also think, just going back to shaming for a bit, how colonialism affected those things, because, you know, whether you’re in the Caribbean where I’m from, or but particularly in the United States that the people who did the most work are shamed and called lazy, you know, and I don’t know if you’ve ever walked through a sugarcane field or been in a cotton field. They’re not pleasant places. And the people who did the hardest work and the most work and produced you know, the, the means of the economic supremacy that happened with colonialism. Were then shamed for doing all that work and God forbid I know there was a time in the Caribbean, both among enslaved people, but then later on indenture, where once you stopped producing, if you could no longer work, there were laws that would not allow people, they would not feed you, the people you work for, or if you were enslaved, the owners would not feed you. But there were laws that forbid other people to feed you. So you could die of starvation, did die of starvation. Juxtaposing it with the workaholism where people are, you know, in those situations, whether it’s indenture or enslavement, you are forced to work, yes. And then your value is you just keep on that treadmill. But then it translates into the colonialists pushing that even for themselves in a very different way. But, you know, creating that mental paradigm of work is worth.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 31:00
Yes.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 31:00
And not work. As in, okay, we need to do the things to survive and even to thrive, but working yourself to the point of death.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 31:09
Yes.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 31:11
I don’t know if you know, this statistic. But Monday mornings are the number one time for heart attacks in the United States.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 31:18
I did not know that. But it doesn’t surprise me. Like I would say I would guess that you know, most people’s depression, like, you know, situational depression peaks on Sunday evening, right? Yeah. And that anxiety and stress of having to get up and do it again, that doesn’t surprise me at all. I really appreciate the piece that you’ve brought in about colonialism and about how, you know, I’ll talk about it from from a whiteness perspective, right about how, you know, white people have really harmed and driven other bodies to exhaustion and human inhumanity in a number of ways. Right? And that somehow, then this has also created this ideal around work being some of the ways that we are reinforcing white supremacy, right, like, even among white people, right as as a way of training people to think about their worth and other people’s worth. Right. And I think that it’s I think it’s pervasive, and I think it’s not a thing that we talk about enough, right? The ways that capitalism and colonialism are are like, I mean, they’re interwoven, right, but they’re just
Andrea Durham (she/her) 32:38
They’re married to each other and sleep in the same bed.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 32:41
They’re like, deeply reinforcing. Yeah. And then, you know, the, all of these ways that, you know, Americans don’t want to talk about race, right. But it is an economic driver. And it is, you know, we’ve seen over, you know, hundreds of years really, at this point, what happens with generational wealth or doesn’t happen, right. And one of the things that I think a lot about when I talk about rest, right? It’s also who has access to rest, who has access to leisure, right? And how do we talk about these things? And I’m still practicing, right? I’m still learning this and unlearning this, right? How do we talk about these things in ways where everyone can go, Oh, that’s for me. Right? And, and we can make rest accessible? Right? across, you know, particularly I’ll talk about across like, economic status, right, because we know that there are people who don’t ever have space to rest, or I won’t say they don’t have space to rest, because I think people make a lot of space for themselves and things that, that they’re not granted, like, but I think that it that we have designed our economic and social systems to make sure that some people are always in the hustle and the grind. Right? And that other people are benefiting from that. And I think that the the turn of workaholism there is interesting, right? Because you have people that are, you know, basically continuing to enslave economically, other folks, and then are also driving themselves very hard as well, like we have, you know, a small sort of owning class at the top, but like, the vast like, middle, and, you know, are still folks that we are reinforcing that for themselves in the values that they’ve internalized.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 34:34
Well, I mean, if we look at our political situation, and I’m not talking about either side, here, I’m talking about the underlying things, look at the pandemic, look at who had to keep going to work.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 34:46
Yes.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 34:47
You know, look at health care, look at who has it and who doesn’t.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 34:52
and how many people have to keep going to work to maintain their health care.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 34:55
Right. Um, you know, or you know, as I mentioned earlier, it is criminal to put a child into daycare at three weeks, their immune systems haven’t even kicked in. Let’s let’s just talk about general humanity.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 35:12
Sure,
Andrea Durham (she/her) 35:12
You can’t do that in other places. And so, yeah, I do believe we’ve been trying workaholism. And we can call it many different things. And even the whole idea of kind of twisting it and enshrining the hard worker, but the hard worker that is still making $15 an hour, you know, in a market where housing is impossible to find, if you make that, and even me growing up, I, you know, my parents both sometimes worked two jobs. And I’m the oldest. So that meant I had to do
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 35:51
Right,
Andrea Durham (she/her) 35:51
a lot of the parenting and a lot of the things, but it was
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 35:54
Right, that you had a full time job as well.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 35:56
Yeah. And so, you know, just survival and what that means in the overall economy and in the overall space. So I really do appreciate this and appreciate looking at rest as something that we need as human beings, you know, and that, as much as we want to enshrine the things that come from capitalism, and of course, colonialism. The truth of the matter is, you know, we’re still the people dying at nine o’clock on Monday morning, both men and women, because I think that’s, um, you know, and all of how people are gender identified, it actually doesn’t matter. People are still dying.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 36:38
Yeah, that there that there is a pervasive harm that is happening. Yeah.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 36:45
Yeah. I want to switch gears just a little bit here. And how has yoga nidra and rest affected your identity? Can you tell us a little bit about that journey?
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 36:59
Yeah, sure. I mean, I think that a lot of my identity was tied to my job. And you know, and a lot of my worth was hung up there. And then I got sick, right. And I was away from my job for six months, and I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to return to my work. And, you know, and a lot of things have shifted at my work when I right. So I think rest was the place that I struggled against, right. And that really started helping me look at the ways that I was seeking external validation, right? So that I guess there’s one piece there, like, just sort of shaping, like, where I thought my value came from. So that’s, I guess, one piece, I’ll say, and then, you know, in terms of my identity, you know, I developed this desire to build a family and to, to grow our family. And, you know, rest really was the seed of that, right, like it was, it created the space for me to think bigger, right, and to imagine a fuller life that, you know, was was filled with other things. And, you know, so being a parent is a is a big identity for me at this point in my life. And so, that would not have happened for me without rest. And I will also say, like, in my postpartum period, I have still needed what felt to me like a surprising amount of rest. I have a tremendous amount of support in my household from my partner, and my mother in law. And so I felt like I had a lot of space and other folks to care for, for Harper. And I also felt like, I still needed a tremendous amount of rest. And I also had a lot of guilt around that and right and like, what it means to be a good parent and how involved you are and how, you know. So that piece, and then also, you know, in the mix of that also really coming into my own gender affirmation journey, which I don’t think would have been possible one when I was working myself so hard, and two without just the space to like, rest and settle and integrate and, and go, Okay, I’m have, I’ve had this experience of parenthood and I, I don’t feel like a mother and I, you know, I spent a lot of time unpacking that. And, you know, I started to study prenatal yoga, right. And then my experience in prenatal yoga was really jarring. And it made me really start unpacking, like how it was making me feel with my gender identity. And so I’m in all of those things. I mean, those are all sort of identity related pieces. And I will also say that also in my postpartum period, I had an exacerbation of a chronic illness, which then actually led finally to a diagnosis where I understood what this illness is, but even that, like the identity of being a person who is not able bodied, has been really challenging. For me to integrate and is, you know, I will probably for a long time be unpacking, like internalized ableism. And, and so sort of like shifting that identity as well. Like, what if I’m not a person, whoever can work full time on the way that I worked before I was pregnant? And what if I, you know, and my partner was always like, well, that would be great. If you’re not, like, just, you know, like, well, hurray for like that your life has evolved and changed in such a way that that is, you know, not what you’re seeking. But it I mean, it is. Yeah, I mean, I think that it for me, it has helped me to relocate my worth. Right. And that is still an iterative process, right, like that, that shift from external validation to internal validation, you know, is happening in real time and has been happening for a while, and like, will continue to need to happen. And, yeah, and so just, I would say, also, it has brought me closer to feeling an embodied sense of wholeness, which really had eluded me for a long time.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 41:10
Yeah, and that’s a big thing.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 41:12
Yeah, it’s tremendous that I feel like it’s, it’s hard to even, like, name it in like a sentence and like, have the gravity of it, like really be felt. But yeah, yeah.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 41:23
Another thing that you’ve mentioned, and that I specifically want to ask about, because I know, part of your work is about fertility, and particularly non-binary fertility, how how did rest inform that journey, and also the work of it, both your personal and then expanding it out.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 41:44
So there, yeah, there are two questions in there. And I’m gonna, I made myself a couple of notes about it, but I’m gonna like flip so that I can sort of keep it concise. So the first is really just, you know, yoga nidra really was a tremendous tool for me to navigate the challenges of my fertility journey. Yoga nidra was really an anchor, it was a place of, of hope, and faith, it was a place that I could keep returning to, right. In yoga nidra we use an intention, sankalpa, and, for me, it was this mantra about it was I’m filled with vitality and fueled by grace, right, it was really, it was the imagining of, of growing a life and a person, but also, of being filled with this sense of like, universal grace and being held in a space where I was co-creating, but where I was not like the where I didn’t have to be the driving force of everything. Right. And so, yeah, I mean, I would just say that yoga nidra became a really had a different whole layer of importance in terms of the ritual of caring for myself, and, you know, my, my future person, right. And, yeah, and finding grounding there during my fertility journey. And then like, you know, fertility journeys are not easy, right. And so our first embryo transfer was not successful. And it was devastating. Like, I hadn’t really prepared myself for the possibility that like, once we had done all of these other things, and we had created embryos that like, it wasn’t going to just immediately work, right. And so, you know, my yoga nidra practice also became a place of solace, right, it was a place to literally rest from all of the narratives and things that were happening. And it was a place where I really did believe that I was co-creating. And so I still, like, I kept with this mantra, and I just really I showed up in a space of like, believing that I had the internal and external resources to, to bring this dream to fruition, but it was, you know, and I was still, like, I was working a lot. It was really like, stressful. It was, you know, often I would like drive to work really early in the morning to miss traffic. So I could like, lay on the floor in my office and practice my yoga nidra before I sat at my desk and started my day, you know? So yeah, I mean, it wasn’t just like, Oh, I laid down and I rested and oh, wasn’t that nice? Like, no, it was, I like, squeezed it into pockets and I really had to get very intentional about how to organize, you know, the actual, like, flow of where I needed to be when and how. But what I found from where we lived was that if I left like a half hour later, I actually it took me like 45 minutes more to get to work. Right, right. And so I was just started being like, Okay, well, how can I how can I fit this in to what else is happening? Yeah, so like, I guess I would just like integrating this thing. The place of rest was really urgent for my fertility journey. And there was a second part to your question, and I don’t recall what it was.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 45:08
I’ll ask that second question in a second. But because one of the things that that you’re bringing up and that I saw in your module was, you know, that you have to be intentional. And, you know, you can have an intention. But then if you don’t actually pay attention and create
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 45:28
Sure
Andrea Durham (she/her) 45:29
the space for that, and that’s what I hear you saying, yeah, that you were intentional about it. And then you gave the attention to what was needed so that you could have that space to do the rest.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 45:39
Yeah, that pairing of intention and attention. Yeah, I think that’s true. It was. And I think that that pairing for me really was what made me believe that I was in a co-creation process. Yeah.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 45:50
Yeah. And, you know, I know that that’s important. And I’ve known you long enough, but also a little bit about the practice that it really requires you to focus your attention there first you intended but then you really do have to focus your attention there. As if Oh, yeah, I’ll get rest at some point, or I’ll rest when I die.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 46:09
Yeah. No, for sure. And, you know, like, I’m still prone to overwork, I’m still prone to over committing I’m so like, it is lifetime’s work right to like, to keep bringing myself back, you know, and, for me, it really has been I’m so grateful that I have a tool that I that works for me, right, that when I bring myself back over and over again, I have a way to do it.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 46:19
yeah, Right.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 46:33
Yeah.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 46:33
Okay. Yeah. And then the second part of the question, I’m sorry for asking you compound questions like that. So for others on a fertility journey, what would you say about?
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 46:45
Yeah, I mean, so I would say, from my own experience, and the folks that I know, and have had the pleasure of being in relationship with that many of them are also overachievers. And like, have really, they know in other areas of their life, like, what to do, when, and how and like, they’re the things that like you have gotten skillful at doing right. And that fertility doesn’t work like that. I mean, there are a lot of things that people will tell you, if you eat this, if you do that, if you take the supplement if you remove this, right. But there is no like there is no amount of overdoing, right, that is going to help you achieve that. Right. And so what I think yoga nidra and rest can offer is a container to explore your relationship with having a body, right, we know that not all fertility journeys are successful. So you’re in your relationship of grief, as you’re going through your fertility journey, whether or not you get to become a parent, right? Whether or not you become a parent in the way that you expected, right, that there is a lot that is happening for folks that there is just not a very, there’s no concrete, like, if you do A, B, C, and D, you’ll be successful, right. And so what I think rest offers is a container to hold all of that, what I particularly think that like Daring to Rest offers, as we typically do it and like a 40 day cycle, right? And so it’s, it gives you space to really be with something over time and to, to listen to yourself over time and to see what’s happening for you. And then also to figure out if what’s happening for you is actually in service to what you want to be creating or not. And I think, just personally, it’s really hard for me to hear and figure out if I’m in service to what I want to be creating without creating a dedicated space to step away and turn within. Yeah.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 49:03
And so basically, what you’re saying is a big part of this is also just connecting with yourself.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 49:08
Yes, I think that is true. And I will also say that, for me, part of why I’m passionate about working with queer and trans folks around this is because there are a lot of additional factors related to fertility, and related to in general, like going to a doctor and having to be seen in a medical facility and rarely ever being, like treated correctly or like gendered correctly or right, like just that there’s a whole other layer of stressors that are happening, right? There are, you know, your work, you’re, you’re in spaces, like even like prenatal yoga spaces and things, right, where people are making assumptions about like your partnership and what kind of family you have and what your identity is. And so, for me, it’s also creating a place of like a respite, right, and it’s really offering a space to hold folks both in the rest of practice but also just in their wholeness and, and with someone who, who sees layers of your identity that are not being supported or the other spaces are not being created specifically to hold you. Yeah.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 50:18
Okay. And in addition to that, tell me about the relationship between rest and parenting.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 50:29
Yeah, so I have a really have an important memory related to my pregnancy, it was near the end of my first trimester. It was really busy at work, like it often was, right. And I worked in higher education, finance, so we had a spring break coming up, right, and I was, I was quite sick with an upper respiratory, you know, event happening there. And I was like, you know, I know I’m sick, but like, I only have three more days of work. And then I have this whole week off. And I’ll just spend the week resting like somehow, that powering through that, like we can make up for rest on the other side, which, like, in my own experience has never been true. So like, I don’t know why it’s still here. I was doing this, but I, because I’m also an asthmatic, anytime I get an upper respiratory thing, the concern is that it might move down into my lungs. And so I’m always trying to treat it early. And so I, you know, I went to see my allergy and asthma doc. And my NP said to me, Hey, you know, I hear that you’re like, really resisting, like, stopping right now and resting, and I just like, I know, that, like, your pregnancy has been something that is hard won, right, like something that you have really wanted, and that you have, you know, really been trying to create in your life for a long time. And it took up a lot of space to do that. And it just doesn’t sort of seem like you’re letting it take up the space it needs to take right now. And you know, she was just like, if, if this like progresses into a larger illness, and you need to take medication and a number of things like there are that becomes riskier for both your health and you know, your pregnancy. And she was just like, You need to stop today. Like you don’t, don’t need to work three more days before you can take a week off to rest. Like, I know how important this is to you. And I’m just reflecting that back to you. I’m reminding you that there was no like judgment about like, morally, like you should be doing. Like it was just like, hey, I’m reflecting back to you this thing that like, I know, to be true for you over the course of our relationship, which is that like this a pregnancy is really important. And so, you know, I, you know, I texted a doctor’s note to my boss and to HR and I turned off my phone, and I put my computer away and I got in bed. Right? And, you know, that maybe sounds like, Oh, I just did these things. But like, I had a lot of like judgment about myself and things like what that meant about me, right? And then I chose to believe that what it meant about me was that parenting was really important to me. Right? And so I, you know, I laid down, I practiced nidra, you know, every day, and I don’t know, a day or so in. I had this like really clear insight during my nidra that my job was harming me. In a way that like, I mean, probably everyone around me had seen for a long time, right? But like enough so that like when I got out of bed after my practice, I went down to talk to my partner, and I was like, My job is harming me. And he was like, Yeah, yeah, I know. Like, you know, like, yeah, that’s it’s clear. Like, you know, I’ve sort of been waiting for you to be in a place where you can see this, right? Because I don’t know, if you’ve had the experience of someone trying to tell you something that you’re not ready to hear, right. Thankfully, my partner is well bounded and just like knows, like that this is a you know, and so, you know, in the course of that conversation, like we started making plans, like we were like, okay, like, this is not the life that I want to have while I have a young child, and it’s, you know, you know, really within days of that the pandemic broke out, and we ended up moving our office, everyone from our offices moved to our home offices. And while that brought its own whole set of stressors, what it also opened up for me was the space to spend that time I used to spend commuting, resting and journaling and like really deeply tapping into this vision of like, what does it look like on the other side of this job? Like what does it look like to create and shape the kind of life that I want to have? And you know, I waited quite some time to have children. Right, you know, I was in my late 30s before I met my partner and our twins and then in my early 40s by the time I had, you know, our youngest child and so it’s some of that is that I had because of that right I had put a lot of things in place, right? In terms of my own care and understanding that it really felt possible to go, Okay, I have to make a huge shift. Right? And, you know, from there, when I went back from my paternity from my parental leave, I ended up retiring from a 17 year career in higher education, finance. And that was not an easy decision. It was not like, it wasn’t just like, Oh, I’m just gonna retire. But like, from here, it really, it was an easy decision in terms of the trajectory I was on, and the way that I wanted to be with my kids. You know, my older kids, you know, would often say to me, when I was working from home, I miss you, like I don’t like, right, like, by the time I was, in my third trimester, I was working like 60 plus hours a week during my third trimester. And like, my older kids would say, like, I miss seeing you, like, we were in the same home. And, you know, and that was also like, that’s not the kind of parent I wanted to be, you know. And my circumstances were such that, like, it’s not the kind of parent I needed to be right like that, I had the privilege to be able to make some choices that I hadn’t been making up until that point. And, you know, I will say, my partner was very wise, you know, he already had twins, like he had lived through this. And, you know, he had said to me, like, pretty early on, like, you need to take like, leave two weeks before your pregnancy, like, before your due date, like you really need to give yourself and I spent that time practicing the I was practicing nidra when I went into what I went into labor, right? Like, I spent that time trying to figure out how to find my way into rest as comfortably as you can when you’re so pregnant, right. And then also just, like, really in like, gathering my resources, right. Because they had been so externalize with them, many of them go into my job, that I was really, I’m so grateful that he knew that, like I was going to need that time and space to like, you know, replenish myself so that I could have the experience of giving birth to our child, because that was a was a big expenditure of energy. Right? Like it was like, it’s a real, yeah, it’s a real big thing.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 57:22
And flowing from the parenting. Tell me about,
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 57:26
Oh, you know, I just realized that I didn’t talk about what it’s like, as a parent now. And so I’m going to take a minute and just also say that in order to be in a supportive relationship with my kids, right, and that, like, you know, takes a lot of calibrating and recalibrating, I also really need a daily rest practice, in order to show up in a way where I’m resourced to be in relationship with other people, especially people that like really, you’re shaping their worldview in a way that I think is different than interacting with adults, right? Like you’re, you’re showing them what is important, by the way that you show up. And, you know, so often what I will do is like, I will wake up, and then I will rest before I get out of bed. So I will, you know, I’ll wake up and then I will do my yoga nidra practice, and then I’ll journal for a little bit. And I know for myself, I am better resourced, to be in connection with my children if I do that, before I get out of bed, then often I’ll end up doing it in a different way. And I’ll get up and we’ll walk the kids to school and I’ll do a bunch of other things before I lay down to rest. And I know that I show up differently. If I have fueled myself with rest, before I try to interact. And it’s just a it’s a it’s not even a judgement about myself in terms of sometimes I literally just can’t there’s just not enough time and space to do it before I get out of bed. But rest makes me a better parent. Right. And I think that it it helps me to feel more grounded in myself and then less attached to the way that my children are interacting and behaving. Right. Not in a sense that I’m not like shepherding and like but like that it’s that it’s not personal in the way that it can feel more personal if I haven’t taken the space for myself to rest.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 59:25
So basically, it gives you the internal resources to parent.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 59:29
Yes, I think that’s true.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 59:30
Is that a way of putting it?
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 59:31
Yeah.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 59:32
But well, hand in glove with that is how does it look with your partner?
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 59:39
Yeah, I mean, I think that my partner has always been in the time that I have known him just much better at managing his energy and resting and, you know, my partner is a homemaker and has been for the entire time that we have been in relationship with each other and so I think he just really has a better sense of like how much energy it takes to run a household, and what that means in terms of needing to replenish and care for himself. And, you know, I can say that over the course of creating this project, we both got very caught up in like trying to complete this project. And like, we’re not resting as much. And we’re like, you know, he had a lot less time for his like hobby, which is, you know, I will say, is recreation as opposed to rest, but it is a place for him where he like, really, like comes down, right. And, like, we can see it on each other. Right is it’s like, you just, you see that like, oh, working so hard, without making space to like replenish is not a sustainable way to be. But I mean, he’s also for me, just the way that he moves to the world, like, he inspires me in a lot of ways and his relationship to rest as like not being tied to worth or, you know, in any way, has really helped me to, like, give myself permission to rest more. Yeah. I feel like there’s more I could say there. But that’s probably enough. I also am being mindful of how long we’ve been speaking too so.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 1:01:13
Okay. All right. Well, talk to me about it in relationship to mental health and physical health.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 1:01:23
Yeah, I mean, I think I struggle with mental health. And, yeah, in terms of mental health, right, that’s how I came to rest was like, literally, like, urgently needing to, like, find a way to navigate this health crisis. And I think that for me, it does really, you know, lead me to a greater sense of mood stability, to have certain like rituals and things that I do to care for myself. So like, practicing my yoga nidra is one of them, like moving my body out in the world, like going for a walk and getting to the woods when I can, right, making space to connect with my partner on a regular basis. Like there are a whole series of things that I use to manage my mental health, right. And this one is really for sure, a core practice. And I will say that, like I know, based on the way that my mood moves, if it’s been too long, so like it’s I ideally, I practice daily, and sometimes it doesn’t happen like that. Sometimes it’s been like, a couple of days or a week, and then I go, Oh, I don’t like the way I’m behaving, right. Like I don’t like the way I’m feeling. And so for me, it really is a core practice that helps me to maintain and manage my mood stability.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 1:02:35
So basically, it shores up your bandwidth.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 1:02:37
I think that that’s a great way to say that. Yeah. Yeah.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 1:02:41
What about physically? So because there’s a lot of ableism involved?
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 1:02:45
Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I think that, like, we can just talk about, like, one what it was like to be pregnant, like, I just like, there was no way to not rest more, like, they’re just like, like, like, I just ran out of energy, in a way that I had never known before. But there was like, literally just a point where like, things stop, like I was just like, Okay, I’m just laying down, right, like, I just have to like, right. And that was easier, because I knew, like intellectually, like, Oh, I’m creating a person, like, so I have to be resting in order to have enough energy to do this. I think really, in my postpartum period in the time, particularly since I have been living with an exacerbation of this illness, I’ve needed more rest, and I have still a hard time like, gauging when to rest before I’ve passed, right? Like, in many ways, I think sort of knowing where the boundary is of like how much I can do before I’ve passed that boundary, right. But because there are a lot of things I still want to be able to do, right? One of the ways I have to manage my physical health is to rest and so you know, sometimes that literally means like getting in my bed and putting a pillow under my knees and like, like sitting there with my laptop, if there are things that feel like they really still need to be done. And sometimes it’s really just like trying to figure out like, How can I, What can I do to stop and turn off. So one of the things I’ve done in the last couple of days and it’s really just a new practice, is like there was something happened in my phone that like when they upgraded it like the the sleep thing happens, where when you have it where I have my phone on sleep, it now goes black and white at a point. And you know, part of my neurodivergence is that I have a real like visual and spatial like specific things. So if things don’t look the way I’m expecting them to, it’s really jarring. And so this has actually caused me to turn off my phone, like I have now set my phone so that it isn’t like you know, sleep mode from 9pm until 7am. And so I’m often up much later than that. But what I found is because this is so jarring for me, I will literally turn off my phone and so I it has given me a lot more space to rest. Because it’s like, okay, like, I’m just like I’m powering down and sometimes I do I end up getting on my laptop and doing other things. But I’ve been really trying to figure out like, How can I have more space between my work and my sleep? Right. And so that has also been helpful for my physical health and my mental health really, both of those things? Yeah.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 1:05:24
Okay. Who were some of the influences that you have in terms of,
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 1:05:30
yeah,
Andrea Durham (she/her) 1:05:31
rest?
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 1:05:31
I made a list. Also, just so I don’t like forget some folks that are really important to me.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 1:05:36
Sure.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 1:05:37
So you know, I have mentioned that I’m trained in Daring to Rest with Karen Brody. And that has just the way that that program unfolds over rest, release, and rise has really shaped my understanding of rest. And then I will also say I’m, I’m really influenced by the writing of Octavia Raheem, and her work around rest and then also just the activism and action of Tricia Hersey of The Nap Ministry, just the way that she conceives of communicates rest, but also takes it into community action has was really shapes my understanding in big ways. She’s recently published a book Rest is Resistance. And I’m super excited as we wrap this podcast for the season, like December is my space that I have been holding for myself to, to be able to really sit and have like a nourishing conversation with that book, it means a lot to me. There are also several people that have really shaped my understanding of yoga and my desire to participate in community around yoga. And so some of those folks are the folks that Accessible Yoga, both the folks that work there and you know, serve on their board, but also the folks that they’re bringing into their monthly conversations are really shaping my understanding right now. Jacoby Ballard’s book, A Queer Dharma, has been really helpful for me in terms of contextualizing a lot of things. Yeah, Natalia Tabilo at Yoga for All Bodies has really just I think has a really lovely approach that has shifted my thinking about a lot of things. And then I will also name that just Tristan Katz and their the work that they’re doing, as well as the work that their work introduces me to that other people are doing has been really influential. And then, specifically in the way that I tie all of these things to my thinking about fertility and reproductive justice, I really feel like I need to name king yaa there. Specifically king yaa’s Birthing Beyond the Binary course and Queer and Trans Reproductive Loss Support, but also just king yaa’s their definition of reproductive justice has really expanded my understanding and has really helped me to come better into understanding with myself in terms of intersections of identity, and also then broadening my understanding to other people’s intersecting identities. So those are some of the people that are influencing my thoughts about rest and how they relate to yoga and yoga therapy.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 1:08:11
Okay. Is there anything else that you’d like to share with us?
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 1:08:15
I think I’m feeling pretty complete. I feel like I have. Yeah, I feel like we’ve talked about like a wide range of things. I appreciate it.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 1:08:23
Okay. Well, the final question.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 1:08:26
Ah, yes.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 1:08:27
What is your vision for Radikal Life?
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 1:08:29
Yeah, so my vision for Radikal Life, I had to write this one down, because I’ve heard so many beautiful things, you know, from, from folks over the course of this podcast, right? We’re like 14, 15 episodes in. So I had to sit with this and reflect on it. And I am going to look at my notes on that one, because I really, it took me a while to get like to distill it. So I will say that my vision for a Radikal Life is one where the iterative process of learning, being, and becoming shapes me into a person of faith, and action, and beauty. And that where my life has me skill-building in ways where I’m able to use my strengths to be of service and to be able to do, you know, repair and revision, as needed.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 1:09:26
Okay.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 1:09:27
And, you know, I think that bringing that heart, you know, really to this creation process, right, where people are really offering learning and coaching to help people skill build, right, my hope is that this project will be in service, right that people hear something here on the podcast that serves them that they can take away that they you know, learn something in the module that really shapes the way that they’re being and serving and helps them to build their strengths in ways that allow them to be of service. And then I’m ust gonna look and see if there was anything else that I want to say here. Mmm, I think just that for me, a Radikal Life is also a life where I feel like I’m in right relationship with the people and things around me and where I feel well bounded, and rested, and in awe, and grateful. And, you know, a growing edge for me is and where play becomes more of a core value in like, where you can see it in my lived experience of my values as opposed to my aspirational values? Yeah, I think I think that’s that’s my vision for Radikal Life.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 1:10:39
Well, thank you so much for sharing Rest with us.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 1:10:42
Aww, thank you so much for your thoughtful questions. And, you know, this is our season finale of the podcast. And so also just I’m really grateful for everyone that I’ve had the opportunity to speak with over the course of the season and to the folks that have been listening and viewing and allowing me into their minds and hearts and allowing our guests to help shape their experiences. So thank you all.
Andrea Durham (she/her) 1:11:05
Bye bye.
Marina Patrice Vare (they/them/MP) 1:11:07
Thank you for joining us, head over to our website at Radikal dot Life to sign up for your free Radikal Life starter kit. Our website is R A D I K A L dot L I F E. Today’s episode was hosted by Andrea Durham. The Radikal Life podcast is produced by Marina Patrice Vare and edited by Cassidy Vare. Our theme music was created by Mark MeeZy. Radikal Life is a co-creation with Manjot Singh Khalsa and Radikal Healing. Connect with us on social media Radikal with a K. We’re on Instagram at Radikal underscore Life underscore 22 and Facebook at Radikal Life. Maybe you’ve heard us say that our weekly podcast guest is a Module Leader and you’ve wondered what that’s all about. Radikal Life: The Manual for Optimal Being-ness is a holistic, self-paced learning and coaching program for people seeking an optimized experience of being human. We’ve focused our program around 14 verbs: breathe, cleanse, clear, connect, create, do, intuit, meditate, move, nourish, rest, stretch, strengthen and think. Each of these verbs makes up one module of the manual which was created by a Module Leader who we believe embodies that verb. The Manual for Optimal Being-ness is ideal for people who’ve already done some healing work with a therapist, a healer, or on their own, and who are feeling pretty well-grounded and stable, but really want to grow into the next iteration of themselves. We’ve found that most people have areas of support and skill-building that they still want to cultivate. Our Connect Module Leader has described this as progressing from functional to fabulous. Learn more about Radikal Life: The Manual for Optimal Being-ness over on our website at Radikal dot Life.