Why We Need Radical Rest

When the entire world is telling you to keep going, resting is a radical act of self-care. When we rest, we let ourselves know that whatever we’re doing, it’s safe to step away.

In the West, wellness is a massive industry, but it’s not always a healthy one. When Silicon Valley tech founders talk about “wellbeing”, they share stats on how little they eat and sleep. Wellness in the West often means buying something and there’s usually an app involved.

I would like to throw that approach to wellbeing in the garbage. I would like to welcome you to a basic truth of wellbeing, which is that wellbeing includes rest.

Pre-pandemic, I saw my self-care as just one more area to be optimized. I tracked my yoga practices, meditations, high-intensity interval training workouts. I was hard on myself when I didn’t do all the self-care I had set out to.

When I took vacations, I still checked my email and scrolled on social media. It wasn’t intentional. After over-working for so long, I’d honestly forgotten how to rest.

Self-care does not always go hand-in-hand with productivity, no matter what your FitBit tells you. Self-care is not always about efficiency.

However, for most of us, when we sense our self-care isn’t working like it used to, we try harder. Instead of taking a step back and resting, we try more. We push, we force, we make an effort to change things.

We often end up overwhelmed and eventually, burned out.

COVID and Rest

I suspect you already know what I’m talking about, because you’ve been living through the last two years of this pandemic just like I have. 

With all the hypervigilance of COVID it’s easy to feel like you can never truly relax. 

No matter how much we’ve tried to self-care, the pandemic has still affected us. The isolation. The risk of illness. The loss. The uncertainty.

I’ve had so many people tell me how their old self-care strategies are no longer working. Here’s the one thing that will always work: rest.

We need to rest now more than ever before.

Uncertainty is exhausting. Adulting in a pandemic is exhausting.

We need to go back to the foundations of our self-care and create time and space to rest. At this point in our journey, it is vital that we know how to replenish ourselves.

It takes an act of faith in the goodness of the world to know that you can rest. To know that the world will carry on fine without you, that things will be okay. We need reassurance that it’s safe to take care of ourselves and be taken care of.

You are doing enough for yourself. You are doing enough for others. Even if there are a thousand ways you want to try harder to feel better, rest. 

The Mirage of False Rest

Have you ever given yourself some down-time, only to spend it doom-scrolling on social media? Or watched a tv show or movie to relax, only it left you more wound up than before? (That was Game of Thrones, for me.)

Social media is engineered to keep you scrolling. Every minute of your life that you spend “on site” is attention that is being monetized by giant technology companies.

Screens are made to trick you into thinking you are resting when, from the body’s perspective, you are not.  

This is why spending all day binging Netflix makes us feel terrible and sleep badly, while spending all day outside makes us feel great and sleep well.

False rest is like fast food. It’s easier to pick up your phone than it is to plan quality time for yourself outside.

It’s easier to scroll social media than to reach out and make plans to see a friend, even though a catch-up would make you feel relaxed and rested.

The quality of rest matters. Our bodies need to feel like it’s safe to relax. They can’t be tricked by distraction. Nothing but real rest will do.

When times are hard, we need to re-learn how to rest. And give ourselves permission to rest, again and again.

3 Ways to Rest (When You Don’t Know How To Rest)

When I mention rest, you may want to dismiss me out of hand. Rest may seem impossible with all the pressures of the pandemic.

If you had COVID, did you take enough time to recover?

Did you give your body enough time to rest? Or did you feel like you had to push through and get better fast, for your work or your family?

It can be really hard to find the space to rest. And when we do, it’s hard to know how to nourish ourselves.

If you're not used to resting and you feel like you don't know how, it’s normal. I’m going to share a few shortcuts that will help:

1. Gratitude: The best way to prime the body to relax is to practice gratitude. Gratitude creates a state of relaxation where it’s easier to rest. By focusing on what we’re grateful for, we shift how we feel in our bodies. The nervous system down-regulates. Gratitude tells our systems that it’s safe enough to relax.

2. Yoga Nidra: This is another term for lying in savasana, flat on the ground with your arms out, palms up, and feet wide apart, with your eyes closed. Starting at the feet, you practice mindfully focusing on and relaxing different parts of the body, moving up the legs and spine, to the top of the head. Yoga nidra is an effective and research-backed way to come home into your body after trauma and stress. 

3. Connection: You’ve heard me talk about this before, but connecting with others is important, so we can feel safe enough to rest. We need to know that we’re not alone and that people care about us.

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It is a radical act to rest when so much is in a state of crisis and uncertainty. With so many other people suffering, it’s hard to feel like we deserve to rest. But we do. 

If we want to be here for ourselves, our loved ones, and our community for the long-term, we need to rest.

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