Rest, Restorative Activities, and Healing
Rest and Sleep are different and both important. They also have a relationship with each other. We all know that we need adequate hours of sleep but we also need good quality sleep. Rest improves our quality of life and is a bridge that gets us to sleep better. It’s also so much more than what we think of as “relaxing.” There are actually 7 different types of rest including, physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, sensory, social, and creative.
It might feel counterintuitive when you’re tired or wired - but often using Restorative activities and movement can be far more restful than other passive forms of rest (scrolling on social media for example). Restorative activities (meditation, reading, gentle movement, gardening, art) improve our quality sleep, our physical and mental energy, have a regulating impact on our nervous systems and support our brain as it integrates everyday life. Good rest and good sleep also enables us to process stressors and past traumas more efficiently.
Clearly, there is a huge benefit to examining our rest deficits and being intentional about how we spend our sacred free time.
Takeaway: Rest and Sleep are different and both important in processing and integrating daily life and past experiences. Rest is the bridge that gets us to better quality sleep and offers a more immediate regulating effect on our nervous systems.