On the morning of my thirtieth birthday, the streets were eerily quiet.
It was March 2020, and I was in Ubud Bali. I’d just finished teaching a yoga retreat with my long term boyfriend and we sat, alone, in a cafe that was on any other morning, packed to the rooftop with shoeless, spiritual people talking about past lives and rising signs. We’d roll our eyes when they hugged for too long or touched their palms to their hearts over smoothie bowls and said I hear you with eye contact that could be felt, like an erotic charge, halfway across the room.
That morning I missed the crowds, dearly.
It was a time I remember vividly. Not only because turning thirty feels significant. Not only because it felt like the world was ending. Not only because when we arrived home just days later we signed a document that stated we were physically unable to leave our home for two weeks or else we’d be fined $10 000, something that felt like we were living in an alternate reality, surely, but also, in the lead up to my birthday I’d been doing a lot of thinking. A lot of journaling, a lot of reflecting, a lot of meditating on what I actually wanted to call forward into this new decade.
The word at the top of every page was Freedom.
At the time I had been teaching yoga for about five years, with more success than most. I had a full schedule, well attended classes and workshops, and at least a dozen local and international retreats under my belt. I loved my work, and the people I met though it, obsessively. But I couldn’t shake the feeling I was being restricted somehow. I couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t it, completely.
Mostly, I felt an overwhelming amount of guilt for wanting more.
What I had come to realise, just weeks before we all spent more time in our homes that we ever dreamed possible, is what I really desired, above all else, was the ability to work and travel, at the same time, without losing my connection to people and community.
Groundbreaking, I know.
But this sarcasm is already a trap. The trap of shaming our dreams because there are already too many people doing that or it’s too ‘cliche’ or ‘unrealistic’ or whatever the story is.
As we were plunged into what stretched out into years of restriction in our movement (in Australia, at least) I was in many ways given a gift — almost as soon as I realised it, I had to be unattached to this dream. I had to be patient with it, because it actually was, at that time, as close to impossible as it gets.
But still I still fantasised about it every night before I slept.
Travelling has inspired my work well before I was self employed. All my writing assignments in high school were about our family trips to Thailand and New Zealand as a kid. Back in 2010 I used to write a travel blog called My Melon Soda (and yes, I took the website down) detailing all my ‘like a local’ spots in Japan. In 2012 I hosted a live online poetry reading from Osaka and in 2014 I self-published a book with my good friend Shirley Cai (who I just spent a week with in Paris) about our safe places: our homes away from home. Flick through this substack and the journal on my website and you’ll see the theme continue.
For as long as I can remember, holidays were my research tips. Notebooks and camera rolls would be filled. I’d leave even a ten day trip, one where I had shopped and partied and walked a million steps a day and still, somehow, found more time that ever before to come up with handfuls of new ideas and work I was ready to create.
Even as I wrote the words on the page, work and travel, I felt a thrill, an electricity at the thought of them coming alive and true. But the second that feeling ran it’s course through my body, in came the cloak of guilt, the shame, the how could you possibility think that would happen for you?
I know I’m not alone in feeling this.
I know I’m not alone in the guilt, especially when the world is the way it is right now.
But what I have come to realise, to know deeply, is this:
Your dreams are yours for a reason.
Your dreams are on purpose.
Your dreams cannot be too much, or too cliche, or too common, or not enough, because they are unique and specific to you.
I have started re-writing that thought, as soon as it appears.
I have started to turn who do you think you are? into something new:
With all the privilege I have in this life, who am I *not* to do this?
Three years later feels all at once like a century and a heartbeat and yet, here I am, temporarily back in Australia after almost six months of solo travel, work and study.
I have so much to say about this time, but it’s so recent, and so huge, I feel like I’m still floating within in it, without the necessary space to draw out the stories and reflections I want to share.
But there is one feeling that hit me, hard, almost immediately after I arrived:
Why didn’t I do this so much earlier?
Why did I believe this to be impossible for so long?
I am someone who has always felt comfortable saying I have no regrets in my life. ‘
Yes, there are things I would do differently.
Yes, I have wasted plenty of time.
I am human. We live and we learn. And I am truly grateful for the life I have right now.
But,
For the first time in my memory, this May, standing in the kitchen of my friends home in suburban Osaka, holding her two year old daughter in my arms and watching the sun set over the concrete, I felt a deep and sweet sense of relief for being back in my favourite place in the world. It was like sinking into a hot, aromatic bath on a long, cold day.
But there was something else.
Something deeper and quieter. Beneath the relief and the joy was a specific type of discomfort. An ugly, knotted sensation.
It was regret.
To be honest, I was surprised to see it there. It was not overwhelming. It was not earth shattering. But there it was, just a tiny slice. And as confronting as it was, I’m so grateful to have felt it.
Because it terrified me.
Acknowledging that regret I held in my body, regret about turning down opportunities to live in this country almost a decade ago, had the effect of opening my world up even wider than ever before.
Because for me, I simply cannot imagine anything worse than reaching a point where it’s too late to even attempt to breathe life into my biggest dreams, into the way, and for me, in this story specifically, the places I truly desire to live.
The key point here is: attempting to breathe life.
It’s not about succeeding. It’s not about it all working out. It’s about giving it a shot.
For so long, I have felt that the way I truly want to spend my life is too much. That it isn’t possible for someone like me.
And yet — what I realised as I sent emails from cafes in Tokyo, filmed classes overlooking the ocean in deserted onsen towns, hosted workshops from the south of France and wrote newsletters from a friends living room table in a quiet corner of Mallorca is that, this is not everyones dream.
In fact, a couple of people even looked me dead in the eye and said: this is so amazing Emmie, but I don’t know how you’re doing it.
Which was both shocking and incredibly healing for me to hear.
For me, it was a dream so big, I had to actively work on receiving it, believing I deserved it. And yet for others, it just sounded like a bit of a chore.
It was yet another reminder of what I have always known to be true.
What we love, what we dream about, what we truly wish for can never be too much or too little. It can never be stupid or a waste of time. When we can release the grip on when or how it comes through, breathing life into those dreams is what we’re actually here to do.
Just because it’s our dream doesn’t mean it’s always going to be fun or come easy but in many ways I feel like the hardest part is believing it’s actually possible, for you.
And that’s why we have The Daily Rest Studio :)
In November, the theme in The Daily Rest Studio is Deep Rest.
Because both individually, and collectively, we’ve all been moving through a lot. We’re all in need of Deep Rest, more than anything right now.
But also because I truly believe the ability to weave the practice and the philosophy, the viewpoint of Rest into our everyday is often, the missing ingredient in slowly and sustainably bringing our dreams to life on the physical plane.
It’s Rest that teaches us how to receive what we actually want.
It’s Rest that teaches us to trust the unknown, the pause.
It’s Rest that teaches us to trust ourselves.
it’s Rest that fuels the body to think creativity, to act intuitively, to actually carry out the (right) hard work of our dreams, regardless of whether that is running a digital studio from a carry on suitcase or growing your own food from seed.
Far too often we reach the end of the year hanging on by a thread.
Far too often I hear people say, next year is my year.
And I know - the weight of the world right now can make us feel selfish, listless even, like it’s pointless to prioritise beauty or joy or the things we love, but I would argue, does this heartbreak, this tragedy not light a fire under your ass to live more like you? (after you’ve cried and screamed and grieved, too).
If not now, when?
If not you, who?
Has there ever been a time on earth where we have been less sure of what is to come?
Something I have been asking myself recently is, in a world so unsteady as one we live in now, what do I actually have to lose?
🎀
The Daily Rest Studio has always been a lot more than a yoga space.
With the new addition of The Soft Business Circle, we’re expanding on this even further.
It’s digital studio, community and school: its an unapologetically feminine space, where living a life of your dreams is *never* at the cost of your values, who you are, and most importantly, your peace. Your ability to enjoy the sweetness of your life, as it is, while quietly calling forward something new.
This Month, in The Daily Rest Studio:
New Moon Rest Workshop
The Soft Business Circle (we had *overwhelming* feedback about the last one, a week later it’s the most watched class of the month by a mile)
Full Moon Rest Workshop
Guest Workshop with Diana from Sophron Notes: Herbal Teas for Sweetness & Ease
& Daily Practices for building Receptivity & Softness into your everyday
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A note: as part of the new studio platform, we are offering a six month membership option for the rest of the year. With the six month commitment, you receive an entire month for free and the ability to truly anchor this work into your everyday over time. I did some ~girl math~ and this membership option brings the studio price down to approx. $1.6 AUD ($1 USD/day) which is cheaper than buying a single coffee and croissant, once per week.
Why not treat yourself to both? ☕️🥐
The November List
This month’s list is all about comfort. Below, a selection of my favourite films, series, books and recipes for when I’m craving a cosy space and a warm hug.
🩰 For When You’re Craving Comfort
Ghibli Animation is visually the ultimate soother for those of us who are drawn to it, but let’s be real: some of those films are emotionally, a lot. My personal picks for when you want to be immersed in a cosy world are Kiki’s Delivery Service, Whisper of the Heart and From Up On Poppy Hill. The last two in particular are incredibly underrated, in my opinion.
If you’re more in a series mood, The Makanai is perfect. Directed by my favourite sad movie maker, Hirokazu Kore-eda, The Makani skips all his usual focus on family tragedy and peacefully zooms in on female friendship and really good food. This show delighted me completely. Just be warned: it will make you hungry.
A good friend lent me Before The Coffee Gets Cold years ago when it first came out and I initially passed on it because the writing felt too simplistic - it was a time I was exclusively reading non fiction (I feel so bad for that version of myself 😢) but picked it back up again late last year and now I have devoured the whole series. I love it. It is tearjerker for me, but not in an emotionally draining way.
I am someone who is deeply comforted by cooking. I have this soup on my list to make later this week (all anyone needs to say is yuzu kosho and I’m in) and I’m also determined to re-create the chocolate walnuts cookie from my favourite Tokyo coffee stand, Shozo. As a side note: don’t miss this teeny tiny cafe and store if you’re heading to Tokyo soon. Try the cafe au lait, the matcha scones and pick up some fire roasted light beans for your home cafe too!
Below, soft pop music playlist for gentle mornings reading fiction, tidying your space, making coffee, folding clothes or drinking an afternoon matcha in the sun.
The Taurus rising in me could talk my comfort faves all day (yes I am *exactly* the same as the people I roll my eyes at in Ubud cafes) — please share yours in the comments below too!
As I spoke about in class earlier this week, 2023 has truly felt like a year of heartbreak.
It has been a year of polarities.
Of deep release, unknowns and uncertainty.
Of unimaginable expansion.
So much incredible connection. So much time spent learning to love being alone.
The phone started ringing louder early this year.
Thank god I finally picked up the call.
Loved this and had such a laugh at the opening paragraph about the Ubud stereotypes. I lived in Ubud for a while in 2015 mostly and a little early 2016. Ah I have the best memories from being hot and sweaty on the yoga barn dance floor on a friday night. Also it was my first exposure to THIS sort of spiritual community. The eye contact. mainly haha. Having me squirm in my body back then. So many beautiful elements of it all AND so wildly stereotypical I always feel like there's a secret club of us EX ubudians roaming around giggling at the same things.
Oh this is everything I needed to hear 🦋 I’ve always carried a little pearl of shame for my huge, insatiable, hungry dreams. Watching you live yours gives me (and many others, I’m sure!) so much courage. That maybe (just maybe!) I will one day have the flower farm, the dog, the writing shed, the published manuscript, the tight knit community and the hot hot cowboy loverrrr 😉.
As for comfort? I’m covering everything in glitter, drinking my coffee slower, sipping on orange wine (memento mori’s fistful of flowers is a beauty) in the park and booking in lunches, dinners, breakfasts and coffee dates with the women I love. 🎀