Ep 13: Resisting against rest

Episode Summary

In this episode, Elaine explores our relationship with rest and the resistance many of us have towards it. She shares her own journey of learning to embrace rest and the importance of balancing busyness with rest. Elaine encourages listeners to have an honest conversation about their relationship with rest and to reframe the idea of deserving rest. She emphasizes that rest is the foundation for success and caring for oneself and others. The episode concludes with a reminder to constantly listen to our bodies and adapt our forms of rest as our circumstances change.

Key Takeaways

• 0:59 - My own resistance against rest, even as a child

• 2:02 - Guilt and resistance against rest unless we have “accomplished” something

• 3:42 - Balancing busyness with rest is key to personal growth

• 4:53 - How I learned how to rest

• 7:51 - Taking a deep, honest, internal look at why I, and us as a culture, resist rest so much

• 9:33 - Different types of rest that you can give yourself

• 10:24 - Key questions to ask yourself about your relationship with rest, and how to learn to embrace rest

Rest is a novel idea, an unfamiliar practice

Isn’t it funny to think that, as a culture, we resist rest even though we are always complaining about how tired and exhausted we are? Busyness has become a badge of honor of sorts, and it seems as if we are constantly competing with one another on who has the fullest schedule or who is the most sleep-deprived.

I invite you to take an honest look and have an honest conversation about your relationship with rest. I know for myself as a fact that for a long time, I resisted rest. Even as a kid, I used to think that sleep is boring and “unproductive.” (This was me as a teenager, and we never hear teenagers say that!) I was very much a busy body. I didn't feel like I needed rest or deserved rest unless I have accomplished something.

Through my observations, I know that today I am not alone in this when it comes to rest. Many of us feel guilty about resting, as if we don't deserve it unless something's been accomplished or a milestone has been reached. Many of us don't rest until we've actually ran ourselves to the ground — underground, even —and even then, we still resist rest.

We are constantly moving our goals up the rungs of the ladder, so that as we are finally reaching that rung we have set out for ourselves, we intentionally move it again to reach even further. Our high-achieving selves create goals that are moving targets so that there are never opportunities to rest.

Resisting rest as a culture

It has been ingrained in us through our culture to work hard and rest later. While it is a virtue to be a hard worker, we must balance out the busyness with rest for our bodies and minds in order to continue to grow as a person.

In episode 9, my guest and sister Irene Oyang quoted from the book, Peak Performance:

“Stress plus rest equals growth”

In other words, without rest, all the stress and busyness that we put ourselves through would come out to stalled growth (personal, mental, emotional, physical).

Learning to rest

It is weird to think that we, as a people, need to re-learn how to rest.

Rest, a most fundamental and instinctive human thing, and we have become so disconnected with ourselves that we have forgotten how to properly rest.

I learned how to rest through my yoga therapy trainings. Prior to encountering yoga therapy, I was practicing a dynamic, physically demanding form of yoga. I loved the intensity, because I, myself, was quite an intense person. Little did I know, what I needed was to slow down and rest more to resolve many of my health issues at the time.

When I was forced to slow down my practice during yoga therapy trainings, I would feel so restless and antsy. It didn’t feel like I was doing anything, like nothing was happening. Yet it was through this slowness and these uncomfortable moments of forced rest that true healing and transformation started to happen.

“It was through these moments of slowing down and rest that I realized how utterly exhausted and depleted I was. ”

I took an honest look with myself:

Why do I resist rest so much? What is it about rest that I avoid?

Through deeper inquiry, I realized a lot of the resistance came from my upbringing and culture. I was taught from a very young age by my parents that we needed to work hard, succeed, then may we rest. Yet the targets of success would always be moving, encouraging us to shoot higher every time.

So I grinded. I hustled. Until I realized one day that if I were to run myself to the ground, completely depleted, stressed, and sick, how would I even enjoy the fruits of my labor?

Since having these deep dives and honest conversation with myself around rest, I've embraced rest. I have started to recognize why my body is speaking to me that it needs rest, and when possible, I’d allow myself to rest.

Rest doesn’t necessarily mean sleep either. It could be a couple minutes of just shutting your eyes, tuning everything out, putting away the phone, blocking out our senses for just a few minutes in a world of continuous sensory overload. Rest could look like a few minutes of a breathing exercise that you like or listening to a meditation recording. It could be a few minutes of stretching.

It could be any type of rest, physical, mental, emotional, that you need.

A deeper inquiry

I encourage you to have this conversation and explore your relationship with rest. What is your relationship with rest and nurturing yourself? Do you enjoy it? Do you feel guilty? Do you feel like you don't have time for it?

And secondly, what does rest and nourishment look like for you? What do you feel like you need physically, emotionally, and mentally to feel rested? Everyone's answers are going to be different. Yours are yours alone uniquely.

I also encourage you to reframe this thinking because many of us will ask, what have I done to deserve rest? What if we reframe it as:

“What deserves my absolute attention and care now that I have rested?”

Can we change the script around? Let's change the recipe.

What deserves my absolute attention and care now that I have rested? Because we know that when we have rested, we are more capable of directing our care and attention to people and things that are important to us. When we are worn down, tired, and exhausted, running on short fuse, we are not as kind to ourselves or other people, nor are we as effective as attaining a goal.

So rest is actually the foundational recipe to success, to getting closer to your goal and to showing others that you care.

If you feel called to, I would love to hear what your contemplation and responses are to these questions to yourself. I would love to hear from you and reframe what deserves your absolute attention and care now that you have rested.

This again requires us to listen in to our body, to our body's wisdom, to our self, to our own wisdom.

And my dear friends and listeners, I hope with this practice, I hope with this episode, you can set aside five minutes to rest in whatever way, shape or form that feels like is beneficial for you today, tomorrow and every day. Your form of rest may change daily, weekly, or monthly. It may change a year later, 10 years later, depending on your life situations. This is why we constantly listen in to our bodies, because our bodies and life circumstances are constantly changing as well, and with these changes, so do our forms of rest.