by Dr Rachel Hall, Holistic Dentist, Brisbane

No matter what I was doing, be it working, reading, walking, swimming, resting, chatting with friends or trying to get to sleep, my body always felt agitated or shaky and my mind would be in a whirl, spinning with constant chatter.

I never felt at rest, there was always a tension and a sense of having to get on with the next thing. That there was more to do, better things to achieve, one more hurdle, goal or milestone to hit and then I could rest, be at ease and achieve a sense of completion. But when I reached that goal there was another and another and another to strive for. My restlessness built and built until my body felt wired and my mind could hold several conversations simultaneously without my being even really involved in them.

I needed coffee to get me going in the morning and then several more to make it through the day. And then to help me sleep a couple of beers or a glass of wine or two or three… but usually the whole bottle. When this wasn’t enough I’d work harder and longer than my colleagues, cycle to work, run or swim at lunch time and go to the gym on my way home. I just could not stop – I was in perpetual motion, spinning out of control. I felt like a Newtonian flywheel; the faster I went the more momentum I gathered so I could just keep going. I was the woman who could defy Newton’s first law of motion: an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted on by an unbalanced force. How ironic, as looking back I was that unbalanced force driving myself faster and harder.

I viewed this way of life as my being ambitious, driven, productive and a bit of a ‘go getter’. At first it was a good thing; it got me through high school and University, from one job to a better one and even to opening my own dental practice. It spurred me to travel, meet new people, try different things and emigrate to start a new life. But I never felt at peace, rested or able to take a break. Nothing helped stem the feeling of being restless and going at a million miles an hour on the inside. I tried long soaks in a hot bath, walks on the beach, yoga, meditation, massage, visualisation techniques, Chi Qong, New Age Music, self-help books, the works… but nothing helped. In fact most of these things made me more uptight, on edge and wound up.

A friend of mine gave me a flyer about a Universal Medicine heart chakra workshop – a whole group was going and would I like to come. Now this wasn’t really my thing, I was cynical about hippy trippy new agey stuff – none of that crap worked in my opinion – but when my friend explained it might help me relax I relented and said I’d give it a go.

I listened to this guy Serge Benhayon talk about some stuff, most of which went over my head and decided when the tea break came I was out of there. I didn’t feel relaxed at all, I needed to bolt, the chatter in my head was full steam ahead and I couldn’t sit still.

I became very aware of how completely unsettled I was and realised that this was how I felt every moment of every day, but here in this room with 50-60 other people I had no way of avoiding what was going on in my body.

Serge explained we were going to do a simple meditation. I closed my eyes and breathed gently through my nose. As I did so, something in me changed, the chatter in my head faded away to a quiet whisper and for the first time since I was a little girl I felt settled.

Settled: “to discontinue moving and come to rest in one place”.

That place of rest, the place where I felt settled was inside me; it had been there all the time, I had simply lost my way.