For a long time our standard answer to the question “How are you?” Was “okay”, or a variation of it. But in recent years – and especially during the pandemic – another answer has become increasingly common: to tell the person who asked that you are “tired” or even “exhausted”.
There is a lot to unpack there, but it can be assumed that many of us are really exhausted all or most of the time for various reasons. Can you remember the last time you felt rested? Yeah, I can’t either.
Well, after Dr. Saundra Dalton Smith, Doctor, researcher and author of Holy Tranquility: Restore Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore Your Sanity, it could be because we’re not getting the specific types of rest that we really need. Here’s what you should know about the seven types of rest and why the right kind of rest can be critical.
Rest is more than sleeping
If you’ve told someone that you are tired all the time, chances are they’ve made some comments on how to get more sleep or improve your sleep hygiene. And of course, that can’t hurt, but how Dalton Smith stated in an interview with a stylist, Rest is more than just sleeping.
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“We like to think that it’s easy – when we go to sleep it should satisfy all of our recreational needs – but unfortunately there are types of rest that sleep cannot resolve,” she told the magazine.
What are the 7 types of rest?
In her own research, Dalton Smith did identifies seven different types of rest that the human body and mind need. So, even if you’ve slept a night that you thought was good, you may wake up exhausted from lacking another kind of rest. And these types are:
- Mental calm: Give your brain a break
- Sensory calm: Take the time to pull the plug and reduce our external stimuli
- Creative calm: Doing something that you find inspiring to take a break from developing new ideas
- Emotional calm: Process your emotions so that you don’t have to hold onto them and you are able to be your authentic self
- Social recovery: Spending time alone when others have drained you
- Spiritual rest: Connection with something beyond the physical and mental (even if it is not religious)
- Physical rest: Sleep and allow your body to slow down or pause to relax
How to find the kind of rest you need
According to Dalton Smith, the key to the kind of rest you need is to first identify the kind (s) you are missing and move on from there. The process starts with some self-reflection, she says, because you usually have to use each of the seven areas throughout the day and figure out where you are spending the most energy.
“What is your day-to-day life like?” Asks Dalton Smith. “Do you spend your day brainstorming and developing new ideas? Or do you spend your day face to face with people discussing tough emotional matters, like a counselor or a therapist?
Once you’ve figured out where you put most of your energy in, she says that “it will have a huge impact on the area you’re most likely to be deficient in, especially if you haven’t thought about what kind of recovery.” what looks like for this position or this job. “
