Navaratri: A festival of deep rest & aligning with your Self
From Saturday 17 – Monday 26 October is a special Vedic festival known as Navaratri.
Nava = Nine Ratri = Nights
So, this is the quarterly Vedic festival of the nine nights. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar summed it up best:
“Night provides rest and rejuvenation. During the night, you turn inwards through sleep, and you wake up feeling refreshed and rested in the morning. In the same way, Navaratri or the ‘nine nights’ is that time of the year when you get the chance to experience deep rest. This deep rest brings freedom from all kinds of bothers and brings deep relaxation and creativity."
Navaratri is more than just a celebration of getting good shut-eye, though. Night here is representative of the deep place of stillness that is the source of our energy and creativity, the place we tap into when we rest and relax. If you’ve taken the Vedic meditation course with me, you’ll remember this as the deepest part of the ocean – the depths of Being, Pure Awareness and Transcendental Consciousness that resides beneath all the activity of our minds.
Every time we meditate, we dip into this place of Being. When we make regular contact with that aspect of ourselves, we not only gain the deepest rest, but we also infuse its qualities into our everyday awareness and experience of life, enabling us to live a life that feels more connected, joyful, energetic and fulfilled. This occurs alongside the purification of stress, tension and fatigue from the nervous system, giving space for us to embody the wisdom of our deeper Self.
During Navaratri, it’s said that the subtle energies of nature are super charged, and this provides a powerful opportunity to dive deeper in our practice and let go of addictions, negativity, cravings, old ways of being and things that are no longer serving us. These are all the things that keep us bound from having more direct experience of the deeper aspect of ourselves, and stop us from being able to live from that place of energy, creativity and peace. Like the change in seasons, Navaratri is about letting go of habits that have accrued and getting re-aligned with what it feels like to live a nourished life in flow.
If you have been feeling as though your self-care practices have been slipping lately, now is the perfect time to utilise the energy of Navaratri to dissolve the habits and tendencies that are keeping you bound and in a place of stress and fatigue. This might mean:
Getting back on track with your meditation practice, or doubling down on your commitment to twice daily.
Practice Rounding each day if you have learned (get in touch if you would like to!)
Let go of excess caffeine, alcohol and sugar and fill your plate with nourishing, easy to digest foods like kitchari and mung dahl.
Listen to my mantra playlist on Spotify. Listen deeply, sing along if you feel and enjoy the resonance of these powerful sounds.
Spend time in nature without your phone.
Wake up with the sun and spend the first five minutes of the day gazing into its warmth.
Do a few acts of kindness for someone in your community.
Honour your body when it signals that rest is needed.
Enjoy!
Emily x