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Part of the Rest Series.
As a person who doesn’t see movies alone often, I made a spontaneous solo trip for Hayao Miyazaki’s new film The Boy and the Heron (How Do You Live? is the Japanese title) as a tribute to the previous time I’d seen a film of his in the theatre. It has been more than 20 years and I am still stirred by Spirited Away.
After listening to a new favourite podcast on which this film and Miyazaki’s oeuvre are discussed, I have been thinking about those who are surviving, dying, and grieving in Gaza, and my therapy clients who have shared their struggles and grief with me in sessions in the past months as witnesses to the atrocities.
How do you live after having experienced something terrible? How do you live when the something terrible is ongoing? And how do you live knowing senseless murder and violence is happening on an institutionalized, inhuman level, in many places, all the time?
How do you (possibly) rest?
The democratization of knowledge and expression through social media has expansively changed the landscape of activism and education. For many, platforms like Instagram and TikTok have become crucial places for participation in social justice.
I’ve noticed a binary mindset among some of my clients in their gestures of care that sustains burnout. Capitalism-induced binary mindset gets in the way of rest by making people feel they shouldn’t get to when others are suffering. Those clients of mine have taken on the role and responsibility of doing what the victims of large-scale military violence have expressed they need most from the rest of the world. They are staying on top of the news, monitoring social media in any spare moment, sharing updates, organizing, so on and so forth. They are also, naturally, miserable, exhausted from empathetic extensions, existentially confused, more irritable—symptoms of hanging out mostly in hyperarousal.
Many folks who have been active in organizing against the ethnic cleansing and military occupation of Palestine find themselves in the fight-or-flight mode during downtime. Feelings of needing to defend their positions and justice roam in, simultaneously wanting to run away and wishing that all of the violence and ignorance would just disappear. There is a dissonance in being safe.
Injustices happening elsewhere are connected to injustices everywhere. For some, recent events ignite a change at our core: the realization that we are and have always been connected to humanity means we shall never look away again.
Momentary reliefs for one’s nervous system are important. For the safe and survivors, this can look like taking breaks, centering one’s joy, grieving with compassion, and holding contradictions. While setting personal boundaries around what one consumes and is exposed to and that neuro-bio-emotional regulation do not mean collective liberation, these elements of rest are imperative and can only be beneficial for the marathon that it is.
The value of pausing
What is rest at a time like this?
Rest can feel like a luxury of the privileged; a well-adopted capitalist narrative that intends to divide, isolate, and exploit the “free”. The scarcity logic of capitalism has managed to evoke shame in some who dare to rest when a genocide is happening.
Numerous attempts have been called for a global strike for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza by local activists and journalists. Among those who have been using their voices on social media, I’ve been noticing a hopeful nuance in posts that offer tips on how to strike that considers various capacities, realities, and particularly self-referential in naming how we can adjust our relationship to social media at this time.
Stay woke
“Opting out” of knowing and witnessing for the sake of mental health is a topic that has undergone its own journey from “self-care” to, for the lack of a better word, privilege. I think the bottom line is that we’re past thinking of ourselves only. While unpleasant, feeling depressed, confused, dissociative is an appropriate response to an insane reality. It’s only mental “illness” when there is stigma and a lack of access to and education of care.
I believe we’d been sold the idea that individual efforts are insignificant in the context of social and environmental change. This capitalist agenda benefits from the addiction and trauma of power-hungry people, many of whom are major decision makers and world leaders, at work pushing the fiction of change under their governance and control. We are not encouraged to pause even when a genocide is happening. The message is clear: the economy is more important than certain human lives.
However one stays informed, opting out completely perpetuates systemic oppression’s strategy that benefits from people’s burnout from exposure to human-human violence and the palpable felt sense of powerlessness. Only if we paused and broke from business-as-usual globally to redirect efforts—with serious concentration—on aiding and harm reduction when atrocities happen, regardless of location and geopolitics, then would we truly be prioritizing our humanity.
@for.the.wild
Rest in the motivation of collective liberation
I used to think that revolution doesn’t happen on social media, rather it gives us the illusion that we’re doing something. After writing emails to ambassadors and political representatives, donating to urgent relief and media justice, reading information from different sources and communities, planning further on how I can support my clients… doing something, whether or not it feels illusive or futile, is meaningful after all.
The years when millions of people took to the street and physically resisted the beating of the police in my birthplace Hong Kong, I wished I could have been on the ground, doing something beyond keeping abreast and using my voice on social media (admiration to Awni Farhat). At the same time, I noticed how little people around me were talking about what felt and meant to me was a major cultural erasure and colonizing event, I became desperate in wanting my people’s resistance and injustice to be witnessed and acknowledged.
A post shared by @celebrities4palestine
Wherever there is systemic violence, the oppressed deserves to be borne witness. Bearing witness requires breaking from what you’re doing and giving to someone else; it’s an active and intentional shift from the individual to the community.
I’m grateful to the tireless activists on the ground and remote as well as content creators* who have offered guidelines on how to contribute at a time when it can feel absolutely perplexing to be a person in the “free world”. Disgusted and rendered confused by the corrupt systems, we are given opportunities to unlearn many things at once.
The empire is crumbling, even if it’s not yet a dominant sight, not backed by much evidence among the systems. There’s a saying in Cantonese: 紙包唔住火, literally translated to “paper cannot contain fire”. Colonial powers are rooted in greed, power, and individuality (even if it’s disguised as collective gains). For centuries they were able to establish their dominance partially because news didn’t travel fast, if at all, and many people on the globe were rendered ignorant and powerless, not to mention already fighting their own battles caused by systemic oppression. Wilful, privileged ignorance will continue to exist as long as oppression does, but the rest is fire.
An invitation to imagine collective resistance
“Rest isn’t just lying down,” Tricia Hersey writes in her book Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto. “Protests and resistance don’t look one way. It’s what’s really happening on the ground in the small and important details of our lives. It says: ‘No, this isn’t the full story. I have another perspective. I can speak for myself.’ It’s living when someone told you you should die. It’s centering joy when pain and oppression surround you daily.”
Through writing, I’ll offer to guide a somatic visualization. I invite you to follow with however much immersion available to you. The audio narration will help, or ask a loved one to facilitate.
For those who are not visual, try saying out loud or thinking to yourself the visualization cues while paying attention to any bodily sensations.
If you notice any resistance (ha), say, feelings of doubt, difficulty imagining, hesitation… let it be background noise and allow it to fade.
Let’s begin:
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Settle in. Bring your attention to your inhale and exhale.
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However you’re positioned physically, allow yourself to adjust so that you feel even more comfortable.
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Extend your exhale for the next three breaths.
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Visualize a place, real or fictional, where you feel very comfortable and safe.
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Imagine looking down. What shoes are you wearing, if any? What’s the texture of the ground or floor?
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Imagine looking around, what do you see? What do you smell in the air? Are you holding anything in your hands? What do you hear? Do you taste anything?
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Lean into the senses. What is the texture of the air? Do you notice a temperature shift in you?
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Notice the sense of comfort or safeness you experience when you’re in this place.
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Now, think about the injustice happening in the world and imagine everyone stops working and going about their day as usual. You realize in this particular world, no one, including you, is left behind. Imagine different corners of the world: some are witnessing, reporting, listening; some are medically and carefully tending to the wounded; some are having massive cookouts, delivering food and water to the needed; some are sleeping because it’s deep in the night where they are; some are meticulously making arrangements for housing allocations; some are hosting private and collective grieving sessions; some are praying; some are playing…
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Allow whatever else or different your imagination is conjuring of collective resistance and mutual aid to surface. Allow yourself to notice what it feels like to imagine this.
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Visualize a wave of security and ease run through your body, veins, throughout your limbs, all the way to the tips of your toes. Notice any sensations, emotions.
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Bring your attention to the breath. Regulate your breathing if you’re noticing that you haven’t been breathing in the last little bit (it happens).
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Whenever you’re ready to return, you will naturally do so. As you leave this place, remember: you can always return when you want to.
The moments that follow a somatic visualization or “exercise” can be tender. Be easeful and gentle with your movement and self. Look around the space where you are and put your hands flat on surfaces to ground if that feels good.
Finally, thanks for reading. More importantly, thank you for resisting. As one of my clients said, “Bring the humanity forward”.
*Some of the IG accounts I follow for teaching and inspiration:
Lama Jamous
Bisan
Motaz Azaiza
Plestia Alaqad
Palestinian Youth Movement
YK Hong
Seeding Sovereignty
The Slow Factory
Amanda Seales
Sonya Renee Taylor
Upsteam
Intersectional Environmentalist
heavydiscussion
Greg Stoker
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Hiu’s shares her research and experience witnessing and working with the topics of anti-capitalism and mental health via What Can You Do For Me?, a newsletter. Subscribe here and thank you in advance for joining the reflection.
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