Seven types of rest – what do you need in order to recharge right now?

Deep rest and relaxation, or a parasympathetic nervous system state, are a prerequisite for your body do be doing its amazing cleansing, repair and maintenance processes to keep you healthy and alive for a long time.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t experience stress – a healthy nervous system knows how to be flexible and move through ALL the states, from the highest tension to the deepest relaxation. That means it’s essential to counterbalance stressful times with relaxing ones.

When you think of rest, what comes to mind?

Very often, it’s something like taking a nap or laying down on the couch. But rest doesn’t necessarily mean physically doing nothing.

If you lay on the couch, but your thoughts are racing, or you’re scrolling through socials, or watching an action movie, this may be physical rest for your body, but it’s also not quite relaxing for your nervous system.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith has identified 7 different types of rest that each human needs – of which only one is sleeping or napping ;-)

Here they are in no particular order:

Physical Rest

Physical rest includes sleeping or napping, basically refraining from physical activity.

But physical rest can also be active, in the form of gentle, restorative yoga, giving your body a good stretch or receiving a massage. Even massaging yourself can be extremely relaxing to your nervous system, as self-touch is often healing.

Sensory Rest

In today’s world, we are constantly bombarded with stimuli: the “pings” of incoming messages, phone calls at 10pm, flashing lights of billboards, and all the news of war and “life hacks” and things we’re supposedly wanting to buy. So much is vying for our attention.

Sensory rest means reducing stimuli in your surroundings, maybe turning off notifications, muting your phone after a certain hour and watching the news very selectively. Creating moments of sensory “deprivation” allows your nervous system to relax and settle and not be on alert all the time.

Emotional Rest

Emotional rest means learning to be with and express your emotions authentically and in a healthy, or safe way for yourself and for others.

It means grounding yourself, allowing emotions to surface and looking at them curiously, as the messengers they are. Sometimes, the charge of an intense emotion needs to get out first (like pillow punching or roaring for anger, crying for sadness or grief etc.), and once it has been expressed (very often the intensity lessens after about 90 seconds), your system is ready to enter into a conversation with it, to learn what it was here for.

Emotions aren’t “good” or “bad”, “positive” or “negative”, they’re simply energy-in-motion and need to have space to move through and out.

Social Rest

Depending on your personality, being with other people recharges your batteries or drains them (which doesn’t mean you don’t enjoy the time with people).

For an introvert, you will probably recharge best through time alone, being with yourself.
For an extrovert, you will probably gain energy from being around other people and spending time on your own feels like a punishment ;-).

It may also depend on the situation and your capacity what you need in any given moment, so sometimes you will need time alone and at other times, being in community can be highly energising.

Just make sure to be in healthy relationships when you are with others.

Creative Rest

Creative rest means doing creative work (from drawing and painting, to knitting and other handicrafts, all the way to cooking, gardening or decorating your home), for the fun of it.

It’s not about “painting to create a perfect portrait” or “having the loveliest front yard in the neighbourhood”, it’s about letting go of the outcome, letting go of having to achieve a certain result and just enjoying putting paint on paper or getting your hands into the earth.

Mental Rest

Mental rest does NOT mean not thinking anything ;-). It’s more about how you relate to the chatter of the mind.

Observing the thoughts that run through your brain on a daily basis, examining their underlying beliefs and seeing if you can talk with yourself more compassionately. Can you be your own best friend, lifting yourself up and cheering yourself on?

And also, sometimes stimulating your brain with something like a meaningful poem or an intriguing podcast episode can also be mentally restful and help you disengage from looping thoughts.

Spiritual Rest

Our body-heart-mind-and-soul system needs spiritual rest to feel tapped into something greater than just our small humanness. It’s about finding something where you feel held and grounded, which is different for different people.

It can be religion, it can be connecting with spirit guides or the Universe, or simply being out in Nature, allowing her soothing presence to calm and ground you.

Reflection Prompts

As you can see, there’s a lot more to rest than just napping or not doing any physical activity ;-).

So here are some reflection prompts for you:

• What has this brought up in you?
• What has changed about how you will approach rest in the future?
• How can you integrate more of all these types of rest into your day-to-day?

I would love to hear what you think, so if you’re willing, reach out and send me a mail!

Have a restful day :-)