What does rest mean to you?

I've been thinking about rest because I'm doing a self compassion workshop in September, and I've been trying to find the way in to talk about self compassion, as I'm not covering it all in 50mins.

I have some self care activities for people to take away and do, but I wanted something new, so why not how we rest.

There's a book called Sacred Rest by Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith, who posits there are 7 tyoes of rest:

1. Physical

2. Mental

3. Spiritual

4. Sensory

5. Creative

6. Emotional

7. Social

What I like about this is that it shows the breadth of what rest can look like. We have an idea that rest is sleeping, or sitting quietly. While those things are restful, they're not the be all and end all.

If you find resting difficult - when you lie down to sleep your brain decided to recite various ways you've embarrassed yourself over the years, or just generally goes miles a minute - finding restful activities might help you.

If you find yourself re-watching favourite tv shows or youtube videos, or reaching for old favourite books, that might be because you find them comforting and restful, even if you don't fully realise. In fact, a sign for me that I need to focus on rest or realising that I'm going through a time of high stress is that I'm unwilling to watch or read new things. It's a sign that my brain isn't quite feeling capable of dealing with unknowns right now.

Crafting is similar, and it's why adult colouring books were so big a while back. It's a gentle activity that allows you to be creative, with less pressure than making something from scratch. It's easy to start and put away, and it's not something that easily becomes a side hustle.

Similar to my self care pockets diagram, where you can think about self care in terms of looking after your body, mind, and emotions/spirit, you can follow Dr Dalton-Smith's list to think about different ways to fit rest into your life. It's about making the hurdle as low as possible to make it easier to make rest happen.

Have you heard about these types of rest? Have you read the book? (I've not yet but I should). I'm interested in your experiences with rest and working out what it means to you.