My weird relationship with rest

how and why it needs to change

I hate sleep.

I don’t say this as someone who gets up at 5am and lives a whole life before the rest of the world wake up for their alarms later on in the morning.

I don’t say this as someone who stumbles in from da clurb at 5am and then showers before jumping on the tube for a full day of work.

And, with privilege, I don’t say this as someone who suffers from insomnia or sleep apnea and has to attach themselves to an IV caffeine drip to keep them functioning during the day.

I say this as a once precocious 4-year-old who stuck her fingers in her eyes to keep them open on long car journeys.

Even though I know it’s not rationally true, sleep always seems like a waste of time to me. If I constantly feel like there’s not enough time in the day to get everything done that I want to (and again, to be clear, by this I mean trying all the different pastries on offer in my area, rather than hiking South America alone or anything) then why would I spend a large portion of my time unable to do anything?

Of course, the answer is: because it keeps you healthy and alive (if you wanna read more on it, I recommend Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker*). But that doesn’t mean I have to like it, and I often wake up with some sort of grumble rather than fresh-faced and spring chicken-y.

I even somewhat resisted sleep when we went to Manchester for my birthday in April and were greeted with the largest, comfiest bed I’ve ever seen in my entire life (Ellie for scale):

look at the bloody size of it!!!

All of that to say, I don’t often feel well rested. But I want to! God, I want to — I couold be UNSTOPPABLE. (Or, even just less irritable would do). Rest has been the elusive white whale I’ve chased my entire life — was it even possible to have a calmed body and an even calmer mind?

I found out the answer was yes, at yin yoga.

(What the world doesn’t need: another privileged metropolitan white woman talking about yoga. What this post is ostensibly about: another privileged metropolitan white woman talking about yoga.)

Yin yoga is a style of yoga where you hold positions for a long period of time - sometimes 5 or more minutes - so that the connective tissues can be targeted. The positions are intentionally chosen but not particularly challenging, as the focus isn’t on being a bendy Wendy with improved skill but on deepening into each pose to create space and strengthen. And it’s as I was lying on the mat, back draped over a bolster that I realised: this was rest too, and god did I feel well-rested and at peace in that moment.

Physical rest doesn’t have to be passive, like sleeping; it can be active, like yoga and stretching. According to Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith, TedX speaker and author of Sacred Rest*. there’s six additional types of rest. Alongside physical, there’s also mental (rest from constantly whirring worries and brain chatter), sensory (rest from screen, lights, overwhelming noisiness and more), creative (the kind that helps us reconnect with our awe and wonder at the world), emotional (rest from people pleasing and sacrificing our own needs), social (rest from the relationships that drain you, to focus on the ones that instead light you up) and spiritual (rest which allows you to connect with something bigger than yourself, like love and community).

drdaltonsmith

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Whilst I think this new reframe of rest is pretty fascinating as is, what I find even more interesting is that it’s helped reframe my relationship with sleep. For some reason, knowing that sleep is just one of the many tools that I can deploy has immediately made me hate sleep a little less. Rather than viewing it begrudgingly, I’m just viewing it grudgingly. It feels less like something I have to do, and more like something I get to do.

What’s your relationship with rest like? Do you love sleep? Let me know!

*affilate link