Founder of The Daily Rest, A Soft Business Mentor, & Writer.
Emmie is the founder of The Daily Rest, a Soft Business mentor and an over-enthusiastic writer, forever falling in love with life and holding tight to the belief that it's not only okay, but essential, to practice living and working gently in a fast paced world.
What does your own long term relationship with rest look like?
I initially had to be very disciplined with my rest practice: doing more felt natural and easy, doing less felt terrifying and wrong.
Almost a decade ago, I committed to taking twenty minutes of rest *most* days and held myself accountable to it. The medicine of this practice was both immediate and impossibly slow: I realized how much more creativity, focus and appreciation for life I felt after practicing, even if the time spent resting was challenging. The deeper benefits, which were felt in my hormones, skin and overall perspective on life took a little longer to come through. One day I realized I had changed completely, and was flooded with relief and gratitude.
These days, Rest feels very alive in my life as a whole. I still have my daily yoga and Rest practice, but it also informs the way I run my business and move through the world. Even when the world tries to convince me otherwise, I know that doing less is often more, that spaciousness is truly fertile and afternoon naps can be the most healing wellness practice of all.
What are some initial steps for someone who wants to be able to rest but only thinks of rest as something they have to “earn” in a reward-like relationship?
Start small and find a community who is also committed to changing this perspective. Join a rest class in person or online. Practice along with someone else. Start with five minutes most days. Keep coming back to it. Let it be deeply imperfect. Know in the beginning it will be confronting and sometimes it’s difficult to see what the point even is. You can only change your relationship to Rest through actually practicing it. Only then can we see how flawed and truly devastating our ‘rest as a reward’ based thinking is.
What are some guidelines you have chosen to run your own business?
Ah so many! I have a deep commitment to my community and creativity, for prioritizing joy, facing my fears and doing things slow. But core pillars are the below:
There is no rush
In the online business world this is radical to the point of being seen as stupid. There truly is an obsession with rapid, unending growth and sadly, many believe they don’t ‘have what it takes’ simply because the work is taking her sweet time to grow. Due to the noise of the outside world, I remind myself daily, I am in this for the long haul. I don’t make choices from a place of urgency or fear and I prioritize how I want to FEEL within and alongside the business as it unfolds. Faster is not always better.
My business is cyclical and seasonal
As a follow on point to the above: my business does not have to be constantly in a phase of expansion and growth. With my Soft Business clients we use the phrases The Root, The Bud and The Bloom to pinpoint three distinct phases of business we tend to cycle between. You can have a wildly successful business and still have quiet months, hibernation phases, dips in engagement and total expansion and rebirth.
What are 3 things Japan has taught you? Why do you feel so akin to this place?
Since I first stepped foot in Japan as a teenager, I fell in love and strangely, felt completely at home. I feel very privileged to have spent so much time in this country over the past fifteen years. The land and the culture have been incredibly healing for me, and have impacted my lifestyle and my work very deeply.
It was in Japan I first learnt to celebrate and honor the seasons. That quiet and stillness is always available, even in the nucleus of the city. That both imperfection, and the attention to the smallest most mundane detail are what creates real beauty. Japan is a place I really feel I can soften into myself, and find the wildest appreciation for the simplest things.
What are your morning and evening rituals at the moment?
At the moment my morning practice looks like morning pages (three pages of free writing from the book The Artists Way) incense, music, our monthly practice from The Daily Rest and hot, pour over coffee.
I have spent the last six months traveling and what has brought me so much sweetness during this time is spending evenings cooking, eating, talking and laughing together with friends. Sometimes in our endless pursuit of wellness and healing we forget the real joy and beauty lies in time spent with people we love. But a candlelit bath and a good skincare and stretch routine help too ;)
Paint the scene of your favorite meal for us.
It’s Autumn in a tiny, mountainous onsen village. I’m sitting with my best friend and her young children around a low table in our room, flushed and moisturized after an evening outdoor bath under the stars. We’re eating fresh local vegetables, pickles, fish and seaweeds, laughing and talking until it’s way too late and we collapse into our mashmallow-y futon beds into a deep, peaceful sleep.
