Rest as a Radical Act: Redefining Productivity for Soulful Living with Joy Taylor
Episode #21: Show Notes
Today I had the absolute pleasure of chatting with Joy Taylor, a spiritual mentor to leaders and companion guide in awakening. Joy has a fascinating background in health, holistic healing, and personal transformation, and she weaves body, mind, and spirit into her retreats, courses, and women's circles. With over two decades of experience guiding people through growth, healing, and renewal cycles, Joy helps people awaken to their vitality, deepen self-trust, and lead with authenticity.
Our conversation centered around a topic that's become increasingly important in our go-go-go culture: rest as a radical act and how to redefine productivity for soulful living.
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Joy's Journey into Holistic Healing & Transformation
When I asked Joy about her journey into health and holistic healing, her answer really resonated with me. As she put it, "I just felt like I came in this lifetime to be a healer, to be involved in transformation." But like so many of us in the healing arts, Joy's path was born from her own struggles.
Joy has a sensitive body and developed scoliosis, which meant she had to develop tools to take care of herself from an early age. She described it as "a lifelong love affair and at times frustration with this physical form." This personal challenge became the foundation for helping others, which is something I hear constantly in our field. We're often helping the people we used to be, and that's when we're truly in integrity.
What I found particularly interesting was Joy's upbringing. She grew up in a Unity church, which is very metaphysical, with a father who was "dreaming of past lives and looking at the stars" and encouraging her to think for herself. Her mother was a nutritionist who was cutting edge back in the seventies with rice cakes and tofu. Combined with her scoliosis pain, this exposure led her to massage therapy and chiropractic care early on, which sparked her desire to give that healing to others.
Joy's first career was in massage, though she's evolved into mostly doing energy work and transformational mentoring. As she beautifully put it, "It's all body, right? It's all connected, and we gotta take care of these temples for them to be of full service."
Rest is Radical in Our Productivity-Obsessed Culture
This is where our conversation really got deep. Joy explained that she found herself in a pattern that I think many of us can relate to: productivity defined as achieving, to the extent of overriding how she felt, overriding her body and emotional wellbeing, just driving through it. This happened mostly in her forties, and eventually led to exhaustion to the point where her body was telling her she had to rebalance and rest.
So why is rest radical? Because when we think about success, we typically think about achievements and getting things done. But Joy introduced this beautiful concept: while in the visible, tangible realm it might look like doing something gets results, in the intangible realm, the invisible realms, our relaxation and ability to rest sends out a call. It allows us to be more present and therefore emanate and shine and be more attractive for the opportunities that are for our highest good.
This is radical because we're taught to look and see and have proof, but rest is an invitation to trust, to relax and to receive. As Joy explained, this is all in the feminine energy that we all have (both men and women), but our culture tends to be more focused on the masculine side. We're shifting, though, and Joy invites people to be students of rest and experiment with it rather than just taking her word for it.
Overcoming Guilt Around Rest & Self-Care
One thing that really struck me in our conversation was when Joy talked about the guilt so many of us feel around rest. We're conditioned from childhood to receive praise when we do something. Teachers gave us stars when we did something right, parents said "good girl, good boy" when we accomplished tasks. But as Joy pointed out, "Nobody said, 'Nice job,' when we took a nap."
This conditioning makes it challenging for people to prioritize rest without feeling lazy or unproductive. Joy's approach is to bring awareness to this pattern, because anything we bring our awareness to, we have the opportunity to be at choice about and be deliberate in experimenting with.
The 2-20-2 Formula: Incorporate Rest Into Your Daily Life
Joy shared a practical framework from her book that I think is incredibly doable: roughly two minutes every hour, 20 minutes every day, and two hours every week in receptive mode.
Now, this doesn't necessarily mean lying down in bed, because some people do that and their minds are still busy and anxious. The renewal could be dancing or swimming, but it's anything that puts us more in a state of not being the doer, but allowing energy to circulate in our body and nervous system.
Joy encourages people to try this formula and keep a journal to see what happens. The key is to find those occasions where you become aware of when it's a push versus when it's relaxed. She teaches people to focus on the energy from which we create, not what we create. Imagine focusing on a more grounded, peaceful joy, a more easeful energy. Imagine producing from a more restful place where the energy becomes more important than the form.
Practical Rest Strategies for the Workplace
Since many people work in environments that don't naturally lend themselves to rest, I asked Joy about practical strategies for someone working in a cubicle or office environment. Her advice was beautifully simple:
Breathe, breathe, breathe
Look out the window when possible
Go for walks during breaks (Joy had one of those jobs for about six months and made sure to take all her breaks)
Stay hydrated (which means bathroom breaks, and hydrating is good anyway)
Decorate your space and make it your own sanctuary
Bring essential oils or other sensory items that matter to you
I added the suggestion of bringing nature indoors with plants or flowers, especially if you can't see out a window. When I had office jobs, if I couldn't see a window even in the distance, it really affected me. Having something natural nearby made a huge difference.
The Science and Wisdom of Rest Found in Nature
One of my favorite parts of our conversation was when we talked about nature as a teacher. Joy lives in Mount Shasta, California, surrounded by nature, and she's in it all the time, whether swimming in lakes, hiking in hills, or snowshoeing. I have a small forest behind my backyard that I walk in every day, and we both recognized how nature teaches us about the importance of going dormant, having times of growth, day and night, the seasons.
As Joy put it, nature teaches us that on this planet, it's important to do both action and rest. There's new research coming out about the measurable benefits of being in nature for our physiology, but for those of us who have always felt drawn to nature, we didn't need science to tell us this. Ever since I was a little girl, the way I found peace was to get out and play in the woods.
Setting Boundaries With Technology and Social Media
Our conversation naturally turned to the challenge of living in what Joy called "a pretty bombarded busy, noisy reality." There are so many inputs and so much technology coming at us that this work of rest is also about having clear boundaries with ourselves.
Joy and her husband take tech-free days, maybe two a month, where the phone and all technology are just off. I shared that I recently went an entire day without touching my laptop, which felt amazing. I realized that if someone reaches out to me, they can wait a day, and I didn't miss anything urgent.
I also mentioned that I removed social media apps from my phone about two years ago, which was a really good move. I'd been unconsciously opening my phone and scrolling Facebook or Instagram whenever I had a moment, and it had become a habit. For about two weeks after removing those apps, I kept opening my phone and going "Oh yeah, it's not there anymore," which showed me just how much I'd been using them.
The Connection Between Rest and Revenue
One of Joy's most intriguing concepts is that "rest is a revenue stream." She gets her greatest inspirations during rest, whether it's an insight for a new program or a revelation about how to explain something for the book she's writing with her husband. These downloads come in the quiet moments.
Joy explained that when we're in elevated, happy states (as discussed in the book "Happy for No Reason" by Marcy Shimoff, who Joy actually knows and is certified by), we tap into synchronicity and coincidence. You might decide to go to the post office because you're in a relaxed, receptive state, follow your intuition, and run into someone you've been thinking about, leading to a conversation you've been wanting to have. This synchronicity could show up as making a connection at an event that turns into one of your greatest referral resources or a new client.
Micro Rest & the Art of Receiving
Joy introduced this beautiful concept of micro rest moments throughout the day. These might be unplanned moments like running into someone and embracing each other, where you notice that you're receiving their hug, not just giving yours. Or someone compliments you and you take it in and say thank you. It could be 30 seconds with your pet. We're doing these micro rests all the time if we listen to our bodies.
She shared a quote that stuck with her from when she was 16: "Your ability to relax is in direct proportion with your ability to trust life." When we relax, we get to trust that things will get done, maybe because someone else will help, or because we're creating from a more aligned place.
Transforming Self-Talk Around Rest and Productivity
Joy brought up something really important about the internal voices we carry. We can internalize critical voices from childhood and they become our own voices, giving us guilt trips about resting. But we can also choose to reparent ourselves.
After taking the time for your own self care, like after taking 20 minutes for a walk or meditation, say something to yourself like: "Good job! I'm so glad you went to yoga. Thank you for doing that.” We can easily find ourselves getting pulled into the pattern of checking more things off our “to-do” list (which gives us a dopamine hit). So be sure to acknowledge, celebrate and praise yourself for instead choosing to relax and let the body feel good with oxytocin and serotonin.
Joy described how her internal wise, loving voice comes in, like yesterday when she was debating whether to stop working and take a walk: "You are gonna probably feel so good if you just go out and walk and all of this work will be here for you when you get back and you'll be able to do your work from a more relaxed state."
Joy's Approach to Mentoring
Joy works primarily with women who have a clear devotion to their healing and awakening and are already on a path of growth. They're finding a challenge in life or transition they feel on the edge of, and they're ready for a container, whether group or one-on-one support.
What I love about Joy's approach is that she serves as a companion guide, facilitating and supporting people in their own revelations and choices by asking, listening, and sharing stories. Most of her clients are visionary creators, some building businesses (she also has a business background), and some wanting to create better relationships.
For Joy, awakening means becoming more conscious, more enlightened in our ability to love and speak truth and be in integrity. Life is a spiritual practice, so building a business is a spiritual practice, improving relationships is a spiritual practice, dating and sacred preparation is a spiritual practice.
A Hidden Gem: Happy for No Reason
I have to share this little tangent from our conversation because it was so exciting to discover Joy's connection to one of my favorite books. "Happy for No Reason" by Marcy Shimoff is what I call a hidden gem. It's an older book that you don't hear about much anymore, but it's incredibly valuable.
I found this book years ago when I was literally Googling "how to be happy" during a difficult time in my life. It introduced me to so many concepts that I initially thought were "kind of weird" but that became foundational to my later journey into energy healing and personal development. The fact that Joy actually knows and is certified by Marcy Shimoff, and even taught business modules for her training program, felt like such a beautiful synchronicity.
Creating a More Soulful Approach to Productivity
What I took away most from my conversation with Joy is this invitation to experiment with rest and see it not as laziness or unproductivity, but as a radical act of trust and receptivity. It's about shifting from the energy of constant doing to allowing, from forcing outcomes to creating space for synchronicity and inspiration.
Joy's work reminds us that we don't have to choose between being successful and taking care of ourselves. In fact, the more we rest and create from that grounded, easeful joy that Joy talks about, the more miracles happen, opportunities show up, and circumstances relax.
If you're someone who struggles with guilt around rest, I encourage you to start small with Joy's 2-20-2 formula and notice what shifts. Pay attention to those micro moments of receiving throughout your day. And remember, as Joy beautifully put it, when we stop being the doer and start allowing, we give our bodies a chance to wake up in their own innate ability to heal.
This conversation with Joy was such a beautiful reminder that in our culture of constant productivity, choosing rest truly is a radical act. And it might just be the key to the kind of soulful, sustainable success we're all really seeking.
Meet Our Guest: Joy Taylor
Joy Taylor is a spiritual mentor to leaders and a companion guide in awakening. With a background in health, holistic healing, and personal transformation, she weaves body, mind, and spirit into her retreats, courses, and women's circles. Joy has spent over two decades guiding people through growth, healing, and renewal cycles. She helps people awaken to their vitality, deepen self-trust, and lead with authenticity.
Connect with Joy:
Other Resources We Mentioned:
Alternative Balance - business insurance, training and support for wellness practitioners
Meet Our Host: Jennifer Robin O’Keefe
Jennifer Robin serves as a relatable, down-to-earth, REAL Wellness & Success Coach. She’s not a fancy, perfect makeup, airbrushed kind of woman. She’s been told many times, in a variety of environments, that she’s easy to talk to, and makes others feel welcome and comfortable. Her mission in life is both simple and profound: to make others feel worthy.
Professionally, Jennifer holds several wellness certifications including Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) Tapping, Thought Field Therapy (TFT) Tapping, Reiki, and more. She continuously expands her knowledge in the fields of Qi Gong, Xien Gong, Vibration/Energy Wellness and Natural Health. She also studied extensively with Jack Canfield, and serves as a Certified Canfield Trainer, authorized to teach "The Success Principles."
She’s an active reader and researcher who loves to learn, and one of her biggest joys is teaching and sharing what she’s discovered with others.
