Rest: a dirty word

Lazy mornings with toast and marmalade, window-gazing, listening to music. What are the symbols of 'active rest' for you?

Image: Mindy Coe Photography

I still remember breaking up for the school holidays one year, I must have been about 11 or 12, and staying at a friend’s home for a sleepover. We were giddy with the glorious sense of freedom ahead as the school gates locked for two weeks. When I woke up the next morning, my friend still asleep, I just lay there and noticed something unfamiliar. All was calm, all was quiet. When we got up and went downstairs, her parents were pottering around - one reading a book, one sat at the table eating marmalade on toast and gazing out of the window into the garden. To me, it felt so nurturing and cosy. That image is seared into my memory and, for a long time, I didn’t understand what made it so significant.

When life is 100mph, ease and quiet and space can feel unfamiliar at best, or even disorienting and threatening. But it’s what we NEED.  A balance of being among all the doing. If you’ve been to my community classes or followed me on Instagram, you’ll have heard me bang the drum to make space for r-e-s-t. It’s not that I’m encouraging a lack of ‘productiveness’ or a lack of doing, it’s more that rest is entirely counter-cultural so I’m being its cheerleader.

Rest. It almost feels like a dirty word, that I’m championing something shameful. There’s an impulse I notice to explain myself, to justify it, lest I be seen as a lazy oaf.

Psychologist Nicola Hobbs says: “Relaxing is about liberating ourselves from the coping strategies that no longer serve us, that keep us trapped in a cycle of stress, exhaustion and unworthiness.”

It’s so deeply ingrained that busy-ness is worthiness. But, my friend, I’d argue you are worthy of rest. Worthy without condition or justification or reason.

What does it look like to you to experience true rest? Think about the feeling you had with the school holidays stretching out in front of you - the sense of freedom and excitement and space. Space to play. Space to connect with others. Space for hobbies.

I saw a shocking statistic that showed the average person spends their time either sleeping, working or on social media. Let’s play. Let’s indulge in hobbies, be childlike, be curious. Make s-p-a-c-e and see where it takes you.

I’d love to hear what you choose as your act of active rest this week. Let’s be the cheerleaders for ease.