Rest?

“The answer to your problem could be something as simple as slow-down.” Charlotte Preval-Reed

Do you know how many books and research studies I have read on the broad concept of Rest?  Me either, because it is so many.  If knowledge led to action, I would be the most rested, calmest, peaceful person on the planet! But I am not (yet).  As I stated in my first blog post, renewal, the result of rest is an aspirational goal for me.  I grew up in a “daylight’s burning” type of home, where achievement mattered, whether that was in sports or crafts, chores or school.  Achievement brought praise and a sense of satisfaction, so what’s not to love about that?  If you didn’t achieve something, the solution was to just work harder.  That is how I approached everything that mattered to me, running, love and work.  It was a “sin” not be busy (idle hands are the devil’s workshop and all that).  And I still suffer from this mentality.  I remember the first time I heard the phrase in relation to achievement in sports that “rest is a piece of the pie” from my sons’ middle school track coach.  What? Just grinding every day is not the way?  Well, it is a way, to a knee replacement at 60.  Then I got the book - Marathon Training (no longer in print) by Joe Henderson and there were actual rest days in the prescribed training plans.  One plan proclaimed you could even run a marathon on three running days per week.  A former Olympian and college teammate believed this was true as well and so I bought in and guess what?  I could run a marathon on only 3 days a week of training and even qualify for Boston.  So that’s when I started to believe in rest as a piece of the pie in training.  But when it comes to my whole life – it is still just a sliver, not a whole piece, yet.

Here are my top three books on Rest in case you are curious.

Gentle: Rest more, stress less and live the life you actually want – Courtney Carver

Pause Rest Be: Stillness practices for courage in times of change – Octavia F. Raheem

Radiant Rest:  Yoga nidra for deep relaxation & awakened clarity – Tracee Stanley