113 ~ Power of Pausing: How Coasting Creates Space for New Desires

Ever feel like your desire tank is running on empty? After a season of deep conversations, Brenda and Catherine shift gears to explore the often-overlooked wisdom of coasting.

Growth is not meant to be nonstop. Just as nature moves through seasons, desire ebbs and flows. Sometimes the healthiest choice is to step back, pause the practices, and let yourself float for a while.

In this conversation, they share real-life moments of exhaustion and burnout, reminding us that these pauses are not failures. They are part of our natural rhythm. Trees rest in winter. Farmers leave fields fallow. We too need downtime.

The paradox is that when we give ourselves permission to coast, new desires often emerge with more clarity and energy. Coasting is not laziness. It is wisdom.

Episode Highlights
• Growth is not meant to be a 24/7 job
• Permission to coast through seasons of dormancy
• Naming your season: wintering, integration, or simply being human
• Desire sometimes "calls in sick" and that is okay
• Natural rhythms include pauses, like trees in winter or fallow fields
• Breaks create space for new desires to emerge
• Not everything needs to be about growth
• Coasting is not failure, it is wisdom
• Fun and lightness balance the deep work
• Permission slips: nap instead of journal, TV instead of self-help

What's your favorite way to coast? Maybe it's lazy rivers, hammocks, hula hoops, or naps. May your permission slips lead you to many blooms. 

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Chapters

• 1:43 Season Three Gets Deep
• 3:37 Permission to Coast
• 6:21 When Desire Takes a Break
• 9:02 Brenda's August Burnout Story
• 12:21 Permission Slips for Rest
• 14:35 Coasting Is Wisdom, Not Failure

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

Welcome to Desire is Medicine. We are two very different women living a life led by desire, inviting you into our world.

Speaker 2: 0:16

I'm Brenda. I'm a devoted practitioner to being my fully expressed true self in my daily life. Motherhood relationships and my business Desire has taken me on quite a ride and every day I practice listening to and following the voice within. I'm a middle school teacher turned coach and guide of the feminine.

Speaker 1: 0:36

And I'm Catherine, devoted to living my life as the truest and hopefully the highest version of me. I don't have children, I've never been married. I've spent equal parts of my life in corporate as in some down and low shady spaces. I was the epitome of tired and wired and my path led me to explore desire. I'm a coach, guide, energy worker and a forever student.

Speaker 2: 0:58

Even after decades of inner work, we are humble beginners on the mat, still exploring, always curious. We believe that listening to and following the nudge of desire is a deep spiritual practice that helps us grow.

Speaker 1: 1:12

On the Desires Medicine podcast. We talk to each other, we interview people we know and love about the practice of desire, bringing in a very important piece that is often overlooked being responsible for our desire, piece that is often overlooked being responsible for our desire. Welcome back, family friends, listeners to the Desire as Medicine podcast. We are in season three. I'm here with the lovely Brenda. She's my ride or die on this podcast. So happy to have her, so happy to have you. Without listeners, family friends, this we would not have a podcast. So thank you for listening. So, so psyched for that. And if you've been listening, you know that season three has been a little bit different than season two. Season two was like celebration time, come on. We were like celebrating so excited. Season two. What have we learned? What were the top tips? Like what did we get? We were all excited. We were like, oh my goodness, this happened in the self-love series. We were like what? Just balloons, confetti.

Speaker 1: 2:17

Come season three, it hasn't really been balloons and confetti people. It's been like we've been getting in the weeds really been balloons and confetti people. It's been like we've been getting in the weeds like dropping episodes about is it knowledge or is it embodiment, because if it's not embodied, is it really knowledge? It's been super deep. My co-host is like Catherine, check it out. I want something a little bit more fun and light and I'm like, okay, okay, maybe the listeners feel the same. And if you feel the same, then you can write to Brenda and say thank you, brenda, for bringing in a lighter episode, because that's what we have today.

Speaker 1: 3:03

Today we have a little bit of a fun topic. It's like you could look at it like what happens when you can't feel your desire. We have talked about that. But I want to talk about it from the perspective of when you just don't feel like it, like when you want it to be light, you want it to be fun, and when I say it I mean life. You just want to chill for a bit, like not everything has to be an educated moment or education moment, not everything has to be a personal growth moment. We want to give you today full permission for just ease. We want to give you some permission slips today Permission to coast, because sometimes we just want to chill, sometimes we just want to have fun, not necessarily being our whimsical damsel, like the part of us that doesn't want to take responsibility, but the part of us that knows what responsibility looks like and we decided to put the bag down. We just put the bag down and we're just taking a beat and we're just going to be like.

Speaker 1: 4:12

I want to just put on my sweatpants and maybe binge watch some Netflix, and we don't have to be in constant growth. So we could just name the season that we're in. Maybe we're in the season of dormancy, like winter, where things are happening like underneath the surface, like under the snow just burrowing. Or maybe we've just paused, like we're in the season of pause. We're paused for integration, we're letting all of that growth that we've been working towards sort of sink in. Or maybe we're just human and like, if there's a problem, like it can be a problem and nobody dies, like it's fine. What would you say is your favorite season when you don't want to be fully active, adult, adulting, fully active? I want to create this desire in my life, whether it's with these actions or with this sensation. What is yours, brenda, your go-to Like? Is it wintering? Is it chilling? Is it integration? Is it like you just pause and be human? What would you say?

Speaker 2: 5:21

I love this. It's kind of like oh, my desire called in sick today, Like we're just not going to school today.

Speaker 1: 5:29

Desire called in sick.

Speaker 2: 5:30

I love that, sorry. Or like when you're watching Netflix and it says are you still watching this show, and you have to click yes, it's like no.

Speaker 1: 5:42

No, not today, we're no longer participating.

Speaker 2: 5:45

No one right Like life, has a volume knob right. We can lower it and raise it. And so desire is the same. And, goodness gracious, we could treat desire or personal growth as any other goal, where it's becomes perfectionistic and it takes over our life. That's not healthy either. Yeah, we want to grow and learn.

Speaker 2: 6:12

We talk about that all the time here, but you're not going to always be growing and learning. I mean, give me a break. I mean give me a break. Sometimes we just need to enjoy life or play or have a good time or play basketball in the street or cook pancakes, just have fun with our girlfriends and laugh. And what can I do better in this moment? Or how can I communicate my needs? You know, sometimes it's just you don't want to do it and sometimes it's just messy. And also we say that we do all of this growth so that we can enjoy our lives Like it's not supposed to be, like we're in school, 24, seven, learning and growing, reading our books all the time. God, that could be really boring. It's really important to take breaks.

Speaker 1: 7:11

Yeah, I feel you. We got to normalize that. Growth isn't meant to be a 24 seven job, mm, hmm. But I really love how you put it, like we're doing this growth, we're doing this introspection so that we can enjoy those life moments so much more. And so I'm going to give our listeners a little bit of an image. It's like we're floating in an inner tube on a lazy river, an image it's like we're floating in an inner tube on a lazy river versus climbing the mountain on a snowy day. Can we just chill, coast and normalize the? I'm done for now.

Speaker 1: 7:55

And so do you have a specific thought or story of when you like sometimes hit a wall, as I do? Just the other day I hit a wall. I was like whew, I'm working on this and I'm working on that, I'm tracking this. I'm tracking that. Very similar to when I used to say to my therapist like what, why am I doing this again? I said to myself like why am I doing this again? Like what? And it felt so heavy and I just said you know what? I think I'm just going to go out for a walk and I felt so much better off that walk. It wasn't necessarily me floating in a tube on a lazy river. But that walk really did a lot for me to just get some fresh air, get some movement and just be with myself without listening to anything, talking to anyone, just taking a beat.

Speaker 2: 8:56

How about you Really feel that one? You know, august turned out to be quite a busy month for me. I had several weekend plans in a row. I went to a retreat, that it was my birthday weekend. I went away from my birthday weekend, Then I worked at a retreat. These were all three weekends in a row and, wow, I got really tired, even though they were all really fun.

Speaker 2: 9:17

Things that I wanted to do that were all super aligned with my life and my desires and all of that. I just came back from that and I was tired. I had been traveling a lot and my energy went down just because I was like oh, I just want to stay home, I'm sick of packing things, I don't want to go anywhere, I don't want to get in my car and drive four hours. I what are our current desires? And one of mine is to build strength, and I've been really working on that, going to Pilates and pole dancing and planking and all of the things.

Speaker 2: 9:58

Well, I didn't do that for three weeks and boy did I feel it and boy did I suffer when I went back to my dance class last Saturday. It was really hard. Back to my dance class last Saturday, it was really hard and I just had to take the pressure off of myself and just be with the fact that I was out busy enjoying my life for a few weeks and I didn't exactly focus on these specific desires and this practice. I let it go a little bit, which is totally fine. God, the last thing I would ever want to do is not follow things that I'm a yes to because I have to X, y, z, I mean. Sometimes, of course, you do have to live that, but that's not currently the way my life is for the most part. If I said in a previous episode that I cry through all my pole dancing classes, I was so discouraged last week. It was so hard because I had dropped it and I just had to say, okay, this is where we are.

Speaker 1: 11:16

We've lost a little muscle strength over here and this is just where we are today. We're going to get through it, we're going to do what we can and we're going to come back next week. Laughter, more space for rest, creativity, pleasure. We get to let desire sneak back in, maybe sideways, when we're not pressuring it like, oh, I need this to happen. Maybe we even have new desires pop up to the surface because we've allowed for some hopefully, boredom Like, yes, fun.

Speaker 1: 11:48

And boredom has such a big place too, because we get to hear things when we're bored that we wouldn't hear if we were having a great time. And so let's talk permission slips so we can have permission to nap instead of journal, permission to watch TV maybe even trash TV instead of reading a self-help book, permission to not have to make everything about growth Right. And we want to gently, gently, gently encourage you without any pressure, just remind you that we don't need to chase something. We can trust that if we pause, that pausing is part of the process and really leaning into that pause and allowing that pause to nourish us instead of beating ourselves up for the pause, like giving ourselves permission for that, trusting that the pause is part of the rhythm of life, giving ourselves permission for that, trusting that the pause is part of the rhythm of life.

Speaker 2: 12:58

It literally is part of the rhythm of life. Like it's funny that we even have to remember that. I don't want to shame us, but it's funny that we have to remind ourselves of that and we do that. There is a season of winter where things just kind of sit still and the trees aren't growing but they're not doing nothing. Farmers have a fallow field, so they rotate their fields. There's a field that they don't plant anything on it, it just sits. It just sits there and it rests and it regenerates the nutrition. And sometimes we need a fallow field as well in our life. Like, what do you want to do? Even with your kids and your family? You could just put it all down and don't do the dishes and just have some fun. Just have some good old fashioned fun, good old fashioned fun.

Speaker 1: 13:50

I love that yes.

Speaker 2: 13:52

Yes, yes, and bringing it back to fun. You know, at the beginning of this episode, catherine, when you said, oh, we just want to have more fun and we've been really in the weeds in this season, I love it. I love the weeds and this is a desire that we've co-created is to have fun, and something we've been talking about behind the scenes maybe we'll do some episodes on this in the future is fun, like how to have more fun in our life, and we wanted to also bring that here, because we're both fun and funny. So how can we bring that to you and bring some lightness, because it's not going to all be working hard tilling the fields? I don't know what. I'll have a lot of farming references today.

Speaker 1: 14:38

I want to give an image. I want to use trees. When we think of trees like they take a break, they have seasons. If you're in a state that has seasons, or in a country that has seasons, they drop leaves, they look bare, and we all trust that spring will come. We don't go around yelling at trees like why aren't you blooming right now? So we shouldn't do it ourselves to ourselves.

Speaker 1: 15:06

We get to laugh more, nap more and just be in the quiet more. We get to again give ourselves a permission slip, a permission to coast, permission to just be human and be in whatever rhythm we are in and allow ourselves to just take a break. The same way nature takes a break. It doesn't always have to be go, go, go, break. The same way nature takes a break. It doesn't always have to be go, go, go. Brenda, and I want to reassure you that coasting isn't failure, it's wisdom. We want to invite you to smile more unclench and enjoy your lighter season, and we want you to tell us what is your favorite way to coast. Is it lazy rivers, hammocks, do you like to use the hula hoop, like brenda? Or my favorite coast is taking a nap. So may your permission slips lead you to many blooms. Thank, thank you so much, and I hope you've had as much fun on this episode with us as we have had with you Until next time. Bye for now.

Speaker 2: 16:24

Thank you for joining us on the Desire is Medicine podcast.

Speaker 1: 16:28

Desire invites us to be honest, loving and deeply intimate with ourselves and others. You can find our handles in the show notes. We'd love to hear from you.