I love running for the ways it has helped me practice deep rest.

Or rather, I love intuitive running (Borden) for the ways it has helped me learn what deep rest feels like.

While rest and running might sound fundamentally contradictory, I don’t think this has to be the case. On its most immediate level, there is rest to be found in time spent outside, in listening whether it be to music or to birds, and feeling– feeling sun and wind on face; feeling connecting to landscape and to seasons, to breathing and to footfall; feeling either ease or effort. 

A few steps deeper, intuitive running also gives me space to disentangle myself from the script of how I am supposed to be, creating space to simply be. 

I think his is what feels restful about it. If you are willing to let go of the metrics of time and distance, then there is no correct way to be inside of a run; there is only feeling, body, movement, sometimes sweat, there is only checking in, noticing, breathing.

There is space for my mind, which is often whirring, to grow quiet. At the end of my most restful runs, I feel infinitely more connected to my vitality, my spirit, and my body than when I started. 

And unsurprisingly, in disentangling myself from a linear, extractive, no-pain-no-gain kind of running, I have found other forms of linear extraction and objectification to feel increasingly dissonant. As if I have become attuned to a different way of being, and this old way feels increasingly off key. 

With this in mind, I continue to pursue intuitive, restful movement, believing it to be a quiet form of resistance. Resistance against what, I am not always sure, but it feels important.