Why Resting is totally BADASS
Resting is badass, right?
If you’re like “Um no, it’s boring and a waste of time” then I GET YOU my friend. This is how I felt for a long time.
But having travelled to the lowest valleys of exhaustion and the highest peaks of anxiety, I return with tales to tell of the badassery of REAL rest.
In this blog I’ll cover:
What is rest
What is NOT rest
Why being able to rest makes you a badass
Or, for a quick summary, watch this video!
WHAT IS REST
Rest is when we allow our bodies to go into the “rest, digest, and repair” state. More technically speaking, it’s about getting the nervous system to switch over to the parasympathetic state, and out of the sympathetic state (which is “fight, flight, or freeze”……or “fuck”).
We need both for survival, for health, for wellbeing, but our world is built up to serve and proliferate the sympathetic state, and a lot of us might spend very little time in our parasympathetic states.
What this means is the STRESS hormone cortisol running amok through your body, causing inflammation, and hindering all the systems of the body from functioning properly.
Are you a member of Move With Adell yet?
Join my method for staying on track with feeling good, in your body and your mind.
Get unlimited access to a growing library of classes, workshops, workouts, tutorials, and a supportive community.
Broken right down to basics, I define rest as an activity which:
1. Allows you to breathe fully and calmly
This is because when we breathe fully through the nose, allowing our bellies to relax and the diaphragm to expand downwards, we activate the vagus nerve, which is the momma nerve to the parasympathetic nervous system.
This part is easy enough right? But in my definition of rest, an activity must also:
2. Allow you to be alone with your thoughts
Ehh….not so easy.
If you think about it, in our world today, we can easily be distracted from our own mind CONSTANTLY. Think of all the distractions around you — social media, TV, podcasts, THIS BLOG. Even our yoga practice can be a distraction.... Speaking of which....
How many times have you thought, “I’m bored!” And then grabbed your phone or a magazine? When’s the last time you took a bubble bath and didn’t read a book, listen to music, or have some “background noise” on?
At this point you may be saying, “Adell, I’ve tried, but I know that facing my inner thoughts head-on is ANYTHING but restful! That’s gonna stress me out!”
I get it. I didn’t say that resting was easy!
But think about it: the reason we don’t like to be with our thoughts is because so many of our thoughts are unpleasant. When we give ourselves just 2 or 3 minutes (hell, it may only take some of us 2 or 3 SECONDS) suddenly we’re like “who even AM I?”
Maybe the thoughts that arise are fearful, dark, questioning. Maybe they expose all of our doubts in ourselves, make us reflect on past decisions, or lead us to recount memories we’d rather forget.
But here’s the thing: that stuff didn’t just SHOW UP OUT OF NOWHERE. It was always there.You’ve just never dealt with it. Instead you scroll through TikTok, binge watch Netflix, or put on some beats and go pound out a run on the treadmill.
Distraction.
Here’s the OTHER thing: sitting with those thoughts is like the part of an airplane journey where the plane first takes off and is going up through the clouds. But if you sit with those thoughts for a little while, you’re like the airplane when it breaks through and goes above the clouds into the clear blue sky.
And that….ahhhhh….THAT’s when you break away from the silly inconsequential thoughts that really don’t matter but which somehow manage to rule your life, and you begin to see life with more clarity. Guess what that experience does to you? It RELAXES YOU.
So, with that being said…..
WHAT IS NOT REST:
Rest is NOT just being “lazy”.
Resting does NOT equate to “not moving”.
You can stay VERY MUCH in a sympathetic nervous state (the fight/flight state) while sitting in a bubble bath surrounded by candles and ambient light if you’re on social media and getting fretful about how some girl you see on there doesn’t have fat rolls where you do.
K?
Got it?
Pop quiz:
True or false: Sleeping is rest.
K, this is KIND OF a trick question, because sleep is of course VITAL for how our bodies will recover and rejuvenate. But as I mentioned before, I personally define rest as 1) where you can breathe fully — and this may not happen in your sleep if you have bad breathing habits which show up in your sleep (a common issue), and 2) where you can be alone with the thoughts in your head.
So, in my opinion, sleep does not count as rest. This means we need to build rest into our WAKING lives.
WHY BEING ABLE TO REST MAKES YOU A BADASS:
If you scrolled down to this and haven’t read the above sections, then just go read the above sections. I feel like it should be obvious by now.
Resting ain’t easy! But it CAN be pleasant.
I would say that going for a solo walk somewhere out in nature, (without any music or audiobooks in your ear!) is a fine example of rest.
Getting a massage is equally splendid.
Sitting at your window and staring out at the birds and clouds is rest.
Besides being restful and pleasant, what else do these things have in common? —They’re all deemed by our society as “luxuries” at best, or “lazy” at worse. They’re seen as “unproductive” or “a waste of time.”
But are they?
If you’re going non-stop, working all day and then going for your workout; then getting stuck in to a thriller series on Netflix while dulling your senses with a couple glasses of wine and finally going to sleep, you not only haven’t rested, but you’ve potentially spent an entire day running on stress/cortisol.
Take it from anybody that’s had a burnout, whose stress levels lead them to getting seriously ill, or just from yours truly — you’re a lot more productive and efficient in your job, your relationships, your fitness, and life in general when you give yourself time to relax.
It may take a mental shift. It did for me. If I tried to sit and stare out the window, I had this niggling thought in my head saying “there’s so much I need to do! I don’t have time for this!” Sometimes my body would ache from day after day of working out, and I KNEW I needed a rest day for my muscles to actually develop any strength, but my mind kept saying “you have to exercise today or you’re lazy!”
So I gave myself some mantras, which I’m happy to share with you:
“Resting is Badass”
“Today my workout is to relax”
“I’m boosting my productivity by taking a break.”
“This [insert restful activity] is my mental workout”
“Do you even rest day, bro?”
Thanks for reading this! I hope you've found it useful! Now go take a bubble bath!
Love,
Adell