Why Should We Allow Ourselves to Rest? – Londolozi Blog

“Calming allows us to rest, and resting is a precondition for healing. When animals in the forest get wounded, they find a place to lie down, and they rest completely for many days. They don’t think about food or anything else. They just rest, and they get the healing they need. When we humans get sick, we just worry! Our body and mind have the capacity to heal themselves if we allow them to rest.

Stopping, calming, and resting are preconditions for healing. If we cannot stop, the course of our destruction will just continue. The world needs healing. Individuals, communities, and nations need healing.”

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Where do you find rest?

What environment encourages your muscles to soften, your mind to quiet, your heart rate to slow, and your breath to deepen?

We believe that there is no better place than the African Bush to recalibrate and truly rest. Londolozi has been providing a place of restoration for many weary travellers for nearly a century. We believe we can lead you into an environment where healing becomes not only possible but probable.

The dreamy cocoon of Founders camp rooms, the perfect resting place between game drives

What gets in the way of allowing yourself to rest?

Most of us have had a moment that affects our health – a bump in the road to our wellbeing. A setback, maybe an injury. We have all felt that scratchy burn at the back of our throats and know that our bodies are fighting something. Be it the common cold or a misstep leading to an inconvenient physical injury. In that moment when your heart sinks, where does your mind go? Do you immediately catastrophise the next few days? Or do you allow yourself this moment of being truly human? 

Can you simply be? Knowing that your value is not defined by your productivity.

When we look at the animals in the wild, so much of their day is simply spent resting. Birds cease their songs for the night. Falling silent in their sleep, held by the limbs of the trees. Their song is so much more mellifluous the next morning. Lions and leopards can sleep for whole days. This rest fuels their survival.

The beauty of wild creatures is that they do not feel sorry for themselves. They simply continue to exist with whatever ails them. Moving through from one state to the other without the unhelpful narrative of failure and self-doubt. If they need rest. They rest.

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself ~ DH Lawrence

We always recommend a visit to the Healing House to encourage your body, mind, and soul to still and enter into rest. The wilderness is a very stimulating place; you are experiencing very different visual stimulation from what you are used to. A lot can be experienced in a short space of time. Particularly if you are coming from a city. It takes the nervous system time to down-regulate. We encourage somatic practice – re-energising through tactile activation, reinvigorating, and grounding in the body through physical contact. Our therapeutic massage offering is a great way to facilitate this.

If, however, physical touch therapies are not your thing, we have other options to help calm your nervous system and allow you to be truly present in what you are experiencing in this wild sanctuary.

A daily yoga class is a great way to get back into your body and move any stuck energy.

Intentional rest in combination with PEMF therapy

Our intentional rest offering is also a wonderful way to calm the nervous system, engage parasympathetic rest, digest dominance, and quiet the mind.

We have four Intentional Rest options, each of which is performed on our BEMER mat:

Rest – you will experience an immersive guided yoga nidra meditation

Breath – You will experience a guided breathwork practice

Sound  – You will experience the natural and unique soundscapes of Londolozi

Touch – You will experience a relaxing foot massage

In all these sessions, you will be lying on a BEMER (Bioelectric Magnetic Energy Regulator) mat that uses PEMF (Pulsed Electro Magnetic Field) therapy.

The unique bioelectric treatment provides a gateway for deep rest and relaxation during your journey

PEMF is a therapeutic technology that stimulates healing at every level of the body. While lying on the BEMER mat, electromagnetic pulses of energy will pulse through your body at a cellular level. This pulse works to oscillate the micro-circulatory system (arterioles, capillaries, and venules), which stimulates optimal circulation of oxygenated blood, ATP (the food each cell uses for energy), and waste removal throughout each cell of your body. This process simply enables the body’s natural healing process to occur more efficiently through the circulatory network that would otherwise be sluggish, restricted, or even blocked due to inactivity or poor lifestyle. The beauty of this long-researched and widely used technology is that it simply initiates and supports the self-healing miracle that is your physical body. While this may sound a bit mysterious, it’s actually just physics.

The Londolozi Body Activation Treatment

Our body activation treatment in the beautiful river room at the Londolozi Healing House is truly energising and provides clarity-inducing immersion.

Here you experience contrast therapy with exposure to cold immersion and infrared sauna. This renewing session is booked at the Healing House and lasts for an hour. You have the river room for your own uninterrupted private use, either alone, as a couple, or in a group of up to four.

Bringing Londolozi into your home

We know that not everyone will have the luxury of a visit to Londolozi in the near future. For those of you who wish to be connected to the wilderness and begin adding the art of resting into your daily practice from afar, we invite you to try some of our yoga nidra meditations and podcasts below. Only when we allow ourselves to be truly still can we listen to what our mind, body, and soul truly need to thrive in this world and to be truly present.

Listen to wisdom from the bush with Boyd Varty’s 40 Days & 40 Nights

Stillness is what aims the archer’s arrow. It inspires new ideas. It sharpens perspective and illuminates connections. Be present ~ Ryan Holiday

The gift of presence is a rare and beautiful gift both to ourselves and those we encounter. To come – unguarded, undistracted – and be fully present, fully engaged with whoever we are with and wherever we are at that moment. When we are truly rested, we allow ourselves the opportunity to authentically enter into presence.