7 Ways to Get More Rest

7 Ways to

Get More Rest

By Elizabeth

It’s a simple equation, right?

If you’re tired, what you need is sleep. If you get enough sleep, you won’t be tired.

Except…what about those mornings when you’re just dragging, even though you got to bed on time and slept a solid eight hours?

Or those evenings when you bail out early on social plans because you’re feeling so depleted, but when you get home and get into bed, you find that you’re totally restless and can’t sleep.

What is that all about?

It's long been clear to me that there are many different types of tiredness, but I’ve never encountered a clear prescription for the different types of rest until recently when I came across the work of Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith.

An internist and kind of rest-focused wellness coach, Dr. Dalton-Smith is all about what she calls “sacred rest.”

On its face, that term can feel a little vague.

But what I really like about Dr. Dalton-Smith’s work is how grounded and practical it is.

I’ve been reading her work and letting it wash over me as I move through my days, especially during the hyperactive busyness of the fall season.

I notice that it has me thinking with more sophistication about how to take a break—and about what kind of break to take—when I notice that I need one.

Here are descriptions of the seven different types of rest Dr. Dalton-Smith lays out:

Physical Rest: Passive and Active

Passive physical rest involves getting seven+ hours of sleep a night and power napping as needed.

Active physical rest involves stretching, getting massages, and other forms of restorative bodywork.

Mental Rest

Make to-do lists. Generate shut-down practices to help shift from work life to home life.

Think of a problem-solving mind as something you turn on and off. Meditate.

Social Rest

Prioritize time spent with people who give you energy. Notice what it feels like when you spend time with people who deplete your energy.

For those on the introverted side of the scale, deliberately build alone time into your schedule.

Spiritual Rest

Whatever this means to you, the key element for spiritual rest is a connection to something bigger than yourself.

Whether it’s volunteer work or engaging in faith-based activities, spiritual rest is about time spent away from the “I” mind and connected to the “we” mind.

Sensory Rest

Given the modern world, sensory rest can involve time away from phones, computers and screens of all kinds.

You can also think of sensory rest as a general downshift in stimulation of any kind.

It’s about consciously building a space that downshifts stimulation, generally.

Emotional Rest

We might need an emotional rest when our engagement with the outside world requires us to perform in opposition to our true selves.

This could be as simple as smiling and engaging with customers or clients at work all day when you’re depleted.

The key to emotional rest is to spend time around people who do not need you to perform in any way, people around whom you can be 100% your true self.

Creative Rest

I’ve written before about the healing powers of beauty. Creative rest is all about applying beauty as medicine.

Everything from a hike in the mountains to a trip to a museum qualifies as creative rest, as do less active forms of beauty-seeking, like reading or listening to music.

Does the notion of different types of rest resonate with you?

Do you notice when you’re tired in one area of life but weirdly not in another? Let us know in the comments below!

Elizabeth is a journalist who has been writing about health, beauty and wellness for over 20 years. She lives in Northern New Mexico with her two dogs and several hundred trees, shrubs, bushes and succulents.