Sleepiness
Last night, my partner and I were sitting by the fireplace - she knitting and I reading a book. As it was getting late, I noticed that her movements changed from being relaxed and pleasant to more agitated. I asked if something had changed for her - or if it was just something that had changed for me - and it turned out that she had been feeling sleepy, and was fighting against it, expressed through the agitated movements.
This is just another everyday reminder of working against vs. working with what is. In this case, there is sleepiness. I know from myself that if I work against it, if I see it as an "other" and an disturbance and try to push it away, it becomes a quite uncomfortable experience. And I often end up with more agitated movements etc. just as for my partner last night.
If I work with it, it is quite different. There is still the sleepiness, but now I welcome its qualities into whatever I am doing. I can welcome in the deep relaxation and so on, in whatever I am doing, and now it enhances it.
So on one level, it helps me experience myself more as the whole beyond and including all the different streams of experiences. And at another level, it helps me do whatever I am doing in a more comfortable way.
And this did seem to happen for my partner as well, after she shifted into trying this way of relating to it.