Practicing Rest
Did you know that there are 7 kinds of rest? Physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, social, sensory, and creative. There’s been a lot of talk about rest in our society lately. Some people have called rest ‘revolutionary.’ Some say it is wealth, or can be a kind of reparations. Whatever you believe about it, every one of us needs it, and many of us don’t get enough.
Last winter, I made a commitment to deep rest. I aligned my vacation days, my children’s winter break calendar, and my employer’s office shut down to allow myself for two solid weeks of not reporting to work, keeping my commitments limited to self, family, writing and slowing down to a stop as often as I possibly could. During what I call my Hibernation Time, I didn’t know about the 7 kinds of rest list, but I offered myself all the hours of sleep my body desired, all the laying in bed reading and coloring I wanted, all the books I wanted to read, all the warm tea, soft comforters, and breakfasts made slowly and lovingly with no tasks, no meetings, no need to run toward any event with a piece of toast in my mouth and a cold cup of coffee in hand. For the better part of two weeks, I took time to figure out how I wanted to be treated, and I treated myself that way. In hindsight, it looks a lot like seven kinds of rest. Deliberately slowing down and protecting my rest was uncharted territory for me. Black women are not encouraged toward leisure. We are expected to take care of everyone and clean up messes and save elections and be inspiring and dignified and refuse to back down and never appear angry about any of it. Anything else runs the risk of being called lazy or unmotivated, which are historically punishable offenses for people who look like me and live in this country. So Hibernation Time was actually difficult to get started with. But once I got into the groove of it, it became transformative. That time changed me, and I have not been the same since.
Fast forward to June 2022, when I had the joyful experience of seeing my first book published — a collection of poetry and meditations, titled Incantations for Rest. This was a big deal for me and I committed to celebrating my accomplishment instead of playing it down. This, like resting, was also quite challenging. Self-appreciation is also not encouraged in people who look like me.
I planned two book release events, starting in April, and while I had been wonderfully fortified by the time I took to practice resting, life is what it is, and eventually, my rest reserve waned.
I felt it most acutely when my first book release event was just about to begin. As we finalized the set up, I realized that I was doing the thing where I think to myself (tell me if you’ve heard this one before): “They’re not gonna do that the way that I want it done, so I’ll just do it myself.” Or, this great time-saver: “Explaining how to do it will take a lot longer than just doing it myself, so I’ll just do it myself.” It felt like there was so much to do, I was keenly aware of a feeling in my body of the clock bearing down on me.
Ultimately, thanks to my family and amazing community, the event was a success. Still, I had a little nagging feeling afterward, feel guilty about getting stressed out, and then I felt guilty about feeling guilty about it. I was thinking, “What happened, Atena? You did such a good job learning how to chill—three months ago, you were the mistress of chill! Now your Auntie Anxiety! How did this happen?!” This is a pretty human thing that we do: we put great effort toward learning a lesson, practicing the learning, and working towards getting it right. We feel proud of ourselves. And then after some time, pretty inevitably, we find ourselves at the bottom of the hill, looking up at that looming lesson yet again. And feeling terrible that we did not “learn our lesson,“ saying, “What’s wrong with me? How could I forget it all and have to start all over again?”
I was listening to Brene Brown’s ‘Unlocking Us’ podcast recently, and she said something that resonates strongly with the point that I’m trying to make: it’s not about having a knowledge base; it’s about practice!
It doesn’t matter how many books you’ve read (or written) about rest; What makes it possible for us is practicing it. It doesn’t matter how many retreats you’ve gone to in the past; are you practicing yoga now? It doesn’t matter if you have a masters degree in it; are you engaging in best practices currently?
So I don’t have a revelation, just a reminder: keep practicing.
Whether it’s a matter of enough sleep, enough time to play, occasional vacations, or a season of hibernation, rest is a human need. To think of it as a privilege or revolutionary tells us how far we have strayed from practicing rest in the ways we need and deserve. Rest is not revolutionary, but being able to practice rest in a racist, capitalist, ableist hetero-patriarchal society is rare and transformative. The revolution may lie in creating conditions where Black and Brown and Indigenous folks have equitable access to those seven kinds of rest as anyone else. The revolution will need us to claim and practice rest for ourselves and each other.
- Practicing Rest - December 1, 2022
- In Darkness, All Things Are Possible - December 1, 2022
