“Who you are; is this vast ocean” – Jeff Foster
“It’s only after we have lost everything that we are free to do anything” – Unknown
“You should think of the word depressed as rest, deep rest; your body needs to be depressed, it needs deep rest from the character that you’ve been trying to play” – Jim Carrey (Quoting ideas created by Jeff Foster)
“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you” – via @enfusejuice
Trigger Warning: I have linked a video at the bottom of this post discussing suicide because it is very relevant to this post.
Disclaimer: If you are struggling in any way please contact your trusted health professional.
Why do we need deep rest?
After stumbling across this wonderful video at the start of last year by Jeff Foster (an oldie but a goodie!). I really wanted to write an article on deep rest. What does it mean to deeply rest?
How will we support ourselves and others to reach a much deeper level of rest? What on earth does deep rest look like?
Life is crazy and chaotic at times and we give very little priority to deeply resting and experiencing how beneficial it can be for our mood, brain, and soul. This past year has been particularly emotionally draining and exhausting for many.
In our lives, we need certainty, stability, and predictableness but the opposite side of the coin is that we also crave a little uncertainty, surprises, breaks from routine, and regular adventures to keep life interesting!
The change in our usual routines, and also all of those little things that we take for granted that bring joy to our days seemingly being taken from us has been challenging for many. We have had to find new pockets of joy in a much simpler life.
Oftentimes when we think of rest we only associate it with ‘sleep’ and ‘getting more sleep’ which of course is important. However, there are many different ways that we can find rest and work towards more deeply resting.
We are all different, so behaviour that one person might find restful could be a bit stressful and demanding for another! That’s the beautiful thing about life we can learn and grow and figure out what is working for us as we go on.
As Jeff Foster discusses in his video on deep rest, many of us simply do not know how to rest, and we have never been taught or shown how to do it.
There is also the idea in our society that we should always be ‘on’, we should always be doing ‘something important and worthy’, we should never just be ‘wasting away our time’.
This thinking can be so damaging. Every single behaviour holds value – work, sleep, rest, and play and they ideally should all be planned out and accommodated for in our weekly routines. We will often strategically plan out our workday but give little emphasis to planning out our ‘play’ or ‘downtime’.
7 Types Of Rest:
I saw on @thechalkboardmag last year this little list of 7 types of rest which I thought was brilliant! And then I discovered the original creator, Stephanie Barron Hall a certified Enneagram coach.
If you know which Enneagram you are, you can then also work out which type of rest is going to serve you best based on the below list. (Tip: you might also be more than one!).
She goes into it in way more depth on her blog plus discusses the different Enneagram types if you would like to learn a bit more about it 🙂
I will run through the adapted @thechalkboardmag list below and expand on it with my own ideas. This past year due to covid and lockdowns it has been difficult to meet some of these types of rest but it’s all about getting creative and regularly building in the rest that you need into your everyday life!
1. Time away:
Although time away can often be frantic in preparations with the packing up, locking up, and leaving your home. Time away can also be highly invigorating and energy-giving and gives us that necessary break in our routines that we all need at times.
Get organised and make things really easy to leave your home and then return again.
What helps me is to have a short ‘leaving home’ checklist and if I am going away I will have this in the back of my mind to start the process of doing these things perhaps a few days before or even up to a week before depending on how busy I am.
Everyone will have their own unique list but my list generally consists of the below items:
- Clean out the fridge: I do this up to a week before, I also try not to go to the Supermarket or do a big shop so that we don’t have a fridge of food that is liable to go off. Once the fridge is cleaned you can then see exactly what fresh food you need to eat or use up.
- Check food situation: Another thing that I will do on the ‘day of travel’ is to check the fridge/fruit bowl to see if there is anything that we can bring with us for snacks if I know that it is just going to spoil in our own fridge.
- Wash all clothing: Again I start thinking about this up to a week before, I try and get everything washed and dried so that it is really easy to pack the day before or on the day of travel.
- Water garden/pots: Generally, I do this either the night before or the day of travel. This is very important as you don’t want to return home to thirsty houseplants!
- Check mail: We rarely get any mail these days so a quick check before we leave is all that is really necessary.
- Vacuum: I also will always vacuum the house before I leave (I always remember my mother doing this before we went away when I was a child and it has stuck with me), it’s so lovely to come home to a tidy, freshly vacuumed house!
We all know that feeling when returning home from a holiday and we are super excited to get back to our home and our lives. Time away also helps you to view your life with fresh, new ideas about what changes you might need to make or new things you might want to bring into your days.
Many of us in the past met our needs of uncertainty and surprise through travel. Travel restrictions might mean that we can only travel short distances or feel the need to get creative in our local area.
When we are traveling we will often explore new places and do things that are out of the ordinary. It is really important that we try and bring this sense of wonder into our everyday lives to keep them interesting.
Pinterest is a great place to create a travel bucket list of places and things that we want to see. Although many of us are somewhat restricted right now as to where we can travel, it is fabulous also to create a board of ideas for your town/city or country.
Although traveling might not always be considered ‘restful’ and often we can be much busier and more active than we would be in our usual everyday lives it still gives us that break from the repetitiveness which can be draining to many.
2. Permission to not be helpful:
It’s nice to feel needed and enjoy helping and supporting other people. Other times however we need to give ourselves permission to simply say ‘no’.
Saying no at times encourages others to learn and complete things on their own, building their own self-responsibility.
Make sure that you are filling your own cup first so that you can continue to be useful and a good support system to the other people around you. If we are burnt out we are not going to be much good to anyone else.
Make sure that you give yourself the time that you need to rest and fit in the things that you want to do each week in order to feel happy and fulfilled in life.
This may mean that you don’t always attend every event that you are invited to. Other times it might mean that you need to do more delegating or even hire people to help you with your responsibilities during the week.
Try to let go of any guilt during this process, you simply can’t be all things to all people.
The beautiful thing about getting older is that each year you come to know yourself more and your life is increasingly refined to what is essential. Regularly reflect on how you are spending your time.
3. Connection to art and nature:
This seems like a basic way to increase restful thoughts and actions but it is often overlooked within a busy week. Focusing on something creative or doing something with your hands can be highly restful.
Creating something tangible with your hands can also be extremely rewarding as many of us often spend large amounts of time each week in front of a computer screen or only creating things online.
Painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, baking, or even home DIY projects can be highly restful as we are giving our brains that mental break that they need from outside stimulus.
During lockdown when my kids were home from school my daughter transformed our dining table into the ‘art table’ and my kids did some art each day along with school work.
I am thinking that it would be great to keep this going and have materials always set up close by for art-making.
To get started for yourself you could simply purchase a beautiful adult colouring book and some high-quality coloured pencils. Once you have gotten into coloring you can then build in plenty more art-making projects from there.
Did you know that spending time around trees and nature can boost your natural immune function and increase your levels of ‘killer T cells’? Forest bathing or ‘Shinrinyoku’ in Japanese is a practice of regularly spending time in heavily wooded areas likening it to a type of ‘aromatherapy’ for the body.
A study was done that measures the effects of a 2-3 day trip to a woodland area on a person who usually works inside during the day. Amazingly natural killer cell activity increased on the days spent during nature and over a month following.
They also measured the adrenaline hormone which decreased along with mood states like anxiety and depression. A little bit of nature built into our days and weeks is going to have a big effect on reducing stress and inducing feelings of calm!
4. Solitude to recharge:
I used to really struggle with spending time alone. Constantly going out and being around people is an easy way to distract yourself from any unresolved ‘junk’ floating around. When we are alone we are forced to work through negative emotions and feelings.
Time spent by yourself can also be really beneficial to get to know yourself on a deeper level. There is a misconception that if you spend time by yourself it is because you are sad or lonely. When it is quite the opposite, it takes quite a strong person to be perfectly happy in their own company.
Cal Newport (the author of Deep Work) did an interview with Lewis Howes back in 2019 which discusses how important solitude is for our brains to decompress and process everything that we have experienced or learned.
This lack of ‘processing’ time could be linked with an increase in anxiety and stress.
5. A break from responsibility:
As adults, we have many responsibilities bestowed on us (I love this list and point of view!).
Make a list of all of your responsibilities that you have in your life and then think about how you might take short breaks from each responsibility so that you don’t reach burnout and are regularly refocusing and taking time to meet your own needs.
If you are a parent it might mean that you figure out a way to take regular breaks from caretaking to grab some baby/child-free time. If you are an employee it might mean that you take the leave that you are owed and you plan trips away into your year so that you can give yourself a break from the work that you are employed to complete each year.
6. Stillness to decompress:
Create small pockets of stillness daily to remove any build-up of external stressors. Constantly being connected to the news, app notifications, and social media can be highly emotionally draining.
You can easily check the wellbeing settings on your phone to see how long each week you are spending on each app (the results may be surprising!).
Cal Newport recommends doing one activity each day that doesn’t include your phone! Or if you don’t want to leave your phone at home while you head out for a walk, flight mode can become your new best friend! Regularly flight mode to take breaks from the constant connection or set up the do not disturb settings on your phone at regular intervals throughout your week.
For a large percentage of people, the first thing they will do each morning is to check their phones. What you then can come across might then dictate how your spend your precious morning time which puts you in a reactive state rather than creating a proactive and intentional morning.
Make sure your media and content consumption is intentional and planned. Set yourself a limit as to how much media you will consume each week. A good daily limit might be half an hour to an hour depending on your circumstances.
Make a list of all the amazing things that you like to do and wish that you had more time to do each day/week. Some of these things might need things that you wish to learn. Build these small moments of extra happiness into your day.
An intentional morning routine might include getting up a little earlier than you need to, doing something active like a walk/yoga, making a green juice or a big smoothie, getting outside in the light for 10mins, journaling, reading, listening to music, or doing something the is going to help with your personal development like an e-book/podcast.
7. Alone time at home:
I think now more than ever before we are all looking at our home spaces with fresh eyes. After spending so much more time at home this past year, we have all come to realise how important our home space really is for working, relaxing, and spending time with loved ones. Our home should be a place of refuge and relaxation from a crazy outside world.
Carving out alone time at home can be really important to help reset and focus your time.
I recently started following MuchelleB on YouTube and I love her Life Admin day concept, where she regularly sets aside a whole day to kind of do a big brain dump of her life and catch up on all of those niggly to do’s that she may have been putting off.
She also does self-care days (which sometimes start the night before!), where she basically just does all of the things that she really enjoys in one day in order to give back to herself.
I love this idea and think that you could also make it a monthly regular. I like the idea of scheduling it towards the end of each month so that you are then giving yourself a fresh, well-rested start for the following month.
Keep a running list throughout the month of the things that you might want or need to include in your self-care day.
Block out a day each month for self-care and rest and fill it with the things that you don’t usually make time for in your busy days. Happy resting xx
Resources:
Jeff Foster on ‘Deep Rest’
Jim Carrey on Depression
Krystal Aranynani on Suicide – a must-watch for anyone struggling
Cal Newport on ‘Quitting Social Media’
10 ways that you can improve your Digital Wellbeing
‘Forest Bathing’ study from Japan
(Photo by Vilu Photos on Unsplash)
Great content! Keep up the good work!