Rest

 "When you rest, you catch your breath and it holds you up like water wings". Ann Lamott 

In Bali, they have a holiday that occurs in their  New Year which is considered a day of rest.  The Balinese are not allowed to operate cars or turn on lights. All businesses are shut down for twenty-four hours.  People are expected to rest, relax, and only engage in quiet activities that regenerate their energy.  In the past few years, they have even begun to shut down the internet and phone service to facilitate a true rest.   There are other countries that continue to incorporate rest into each day. In Spain, there is a noon time Siesta which encourages their citizens to rest, and nap for up to two hours.  In Italy they have Riposo, meaning rest, and is also an extended lunch break.  Sweden calls their rest time, Fika and is a coffee break for gathering with friends and taking a rest from work responsibilities.  Sweden as well as other Scandanavian countries practice Hygge in the winter months which also incorporates deeper rest, a slower pace, and time to regenerate and rejuvenate. 

These practices are very different then what we are used to with extended work hours and people's continued access to work with internet connection and work environments being switched to home. The language used with words like grind and hustle in reference to our work lives leaves no support for rest either.  Many of us are now expected to work, rest and sleep all in the same environment and it can be a challenge.  I think we often get confused in the west with the difference between rest and sleep. When we are preparing to sleep we will need to be in a restful state or space first but if we are going to rest, we do not always have to sleep.  Sleep is needed for our overall health and the prevention of disease.   Rest is needed for our physical, mental, and spiritual well-being.  We need rest from sensory input and we need it for creativity, and regulating emotions. Rest is like a dimmer switch on our thoughts and actions.  Our body is run by the ground control of our nervous system and many of us spend a great deal of time with our sympathetic nervous system activated in the fight or flight.  It is our parasympathetic nervous system that is the state where we rest and recover. It can take at least twenty minutes to activate this system so saving our rest time until we fall into bed at night is not really the best option.

Talking with so many teacher friends this time of year, with the endless to-do lists of wrapping up another school year and preparing for new students while dealing with little people who are ready for less structured days and endless play, the conversation often comes to how tired they feel. Some will say they are not able to get to sleep, others can't stay asleep and many more say they are getting sleep but continue to feel tired. All of these issues are real and are not exclusive to teachers in June of course. We can't begin to dissect the complexities of sleep outside of our own experience but current realities have created such a culture of exhaustion, along with stages in life with young children, later in life with changes in hormonal balance, and the increased demands on everyone's productivity. But if you are feeling tired or struggling with sleep, it seems that it would make sense that we rest.

How often when you see someone at the end of the day, do you ask what did you do today or how often does someone ask you this question?  We have become so programmed to think of productivity as our purpose in life or at least what makes us worthy of having a life.   It would seem strange for someone to ask how did you rest today but it really would make so much more sense.   We need this reminder not to put more pressure on ourselves that now we have something else to do, like rest but to notice if we are giving ourselves sufficient time to do nothing and let our bodies and minds regenerate. Rest may look different for different people and though engaging in self-care or leisure activities can feel restful, especially if you have had too many family or work demands, this is not always the rest that brings our nervous system into balance. Rest is ceasing to engage, full stop.  It is not active and it is different from a pause which can be just for a breath or a thought and can mean just disengaging from one activity and engaging in another.  Rest is not glamorous. It doesn't let us share stories or offer feedback on our value or our contributions as a person.  The science is there though to support that without rest there is no regeneration and we need to regenerate our thoughts to be creative, our bodies to perform,  and our spirit to connect. We all know that time we were lying outside in the sunshine and the solution to a problem we weren't even thinking about came to us. Or that Sunday morning we committed to staying in our pajamas and we felt more compassion towards a difficult relationship. When we felt comforted by the support of blankets, pillows, and deep breaths and a creative project idea came to mind that had been eluding us for months.  When we learn to rest we can still be tired because there are just too many things in our modern world that we are tired of and from. Some of these are beyond the scope of rest but we can recognize that without rest habits we may become unconsciously over-engaged, stimulated, or embroiled in issues or situations which will eventually lead to burnout. 

Summer will arrive in a couple of weeks and many will begin to plan trips, spend more time trying to fit in all the things because there is an urgency with summer, as it seems short and fleeting. Back in December, I saw a post from an office that said stopping for winter rest and the dates included were for several weeks. I can remember thinking what a wise organization and wouldn't it be great if everyone had that same mentality and opportunity. I do recognize the privilege involved in rest. For some it may just mean lying down while your baby is napping, closing your eyes in your work break room instead of scrolling for a brief moment, sitting in the car while your child is in piano and putting the chair back in stillness, or deep breaths and eyes closed wherever you can make space. But what if we started a rest reciprocity to support those who are only able to find a minute or two or none? It makes me think of the quote by Ram Dass that says," I can do nothing for you but work on myself... you can do nothing for me but work on yourself." What if we thought of this in terms of rest ? If we  have the privilege to make time for rest., then when we are rested, we are in a place to be of service. Now we can serve up rest to someone who may not have the opportunity. We can offer to watch someone's child while they take a nap, we can have lunch with an older relative so their spouse can rest,   offer to help in some way to reduce the load of a caregiver and the list goes on. First, we must rest ourselves like the old metaphor of putting our oxygen mask on first, and then we are able to offer our most rested self. As summer moves in and hotter temperatures prevail, we need to follow the lead of those countries that deal with extreme heat, and recognize that it is not a time for us to continue to focus on productivity at full speed but to take time to lie back in the closest hammock, put our toes in the sand of a nearby beach, take an afternoon nap in the breeze, turn off or shut down technology for a period of your day, enjoy restorative yoga postures and linger in them awhile, wrap yourself in comfort and listen to your favorite song. take longer with your lunch, sit in nature and just soak it in and make space in your mind to daydream. We can normalize rest for ourselves and then share that rested self,  in our own homes which is more than enough but every now and then we can extend that reciprocity of rest to allow someone else to turn down their thoughts with the dimmer switch so they can light their own way again.