Prioritizing Rest in 2022, Focusing on These 7 Key Areas
On my first day back to the office in the new year, I was commuting to work from Carson City to Reno and I put on a podcast that I had no idea I needed to hear.
It was a “Heart & Hustle” podcast and they were talking about burnout. I thought: “eh. Should I skip this one? Doesn’t feel like me… I’m not at all in a state of burn out. If anything, I’m in a state of ‘not warm enough’!” But I decided to listen through and they referenced an earlier podcast: Episode 077: The 7 Key Areas of Rest with Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith. It sounded interesting… but again, for “someone else” out there, surely not for me.
I’m sure you can tell by the presence of this post that it was, in fact, for me.
I became fascinated with the concept that humans need rest, but not all rest is created equal. According to Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith, there are seven key areas where we need rest and “Netflix and chill” didn’t make the cut… (the descriptions are from Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith):
Passive and Active Physical (passive being sleep and active being restorative physical activities like walking, yoga, and massages) — The chance to use the body in restorative ways to decrease muscle tension, reduce headaches, and promote higher quality sleep.
Emotional — The freedom to authentically express feelings and eliminate people-pleasing behaviors.
Mental — The ability to quiet cerebral chatter and focus on things that matter.
Sensory — The opportunity to downgrade the endless onslaught of sensory input received from electronics, fragrances, and background noise.
Social — The wisdom to recognize relationships that revive from ones that exhaust and how to limit exposure to toxic people.
Spiritual — The capacity to experience God in all things and recline in the knowledge of the Holy.
Creative — The experience of allowing beauty to inspire awe and liberate wonder. Below are your personal rest deficit assessment results.
To really understand what goes into all these categories, I’d recommend either reading Dr. Saundra’s book, “Sacred Rest” or listening to the Dhru Purohit podcast from May 2019, which goes very in-depth.
But certain categories take a considerable amount of effort and time in order to achieve rest there. Creative rest often comes when you gain new inspiration, that could be going to a museum, travelling to a new place, or spending time in the mountains… whatever inspires you, specifically. Sensory rest, on the other hand, may mean unplugging for a period of time.
So, I had this idea. Instead of carving out small bits of time throughout the day for rest, what if during one set day, you focus on one set type of rest. I’ve been meaning to establish a consistent sabbath in my life and now seemed like the perfect opportunity.
I decided to take Dr. Saundra’s “rest quiz” at https://www.restquiz.com/quiz/rest-quiz-test/ to discover which area needed the most rest so that I could establish a starting point
My results were:
Physical Rest Score: 20
Mental Rest Score: 27
Emotional Rest Score: 24
Spiritual Rest Score: 11
Social Rest Score: 20
Sensory Rest Score: 21
Creative Rest Score: 26
So for the first sabbath of the year I decided to take a “mental sabbath” given that my score was the highest in that category. Every week I’ll rotate through one of the rest areas until I’m through all seven, and then I’ll start again.
I am so, so excited for the potential of this new rest system. I’ve always struggled with taking the weekend off anyways because I felt like all I was doing was being lazy and I entered the week more tired, and less inspired, than I ended it. It makes so much sense to me that travel is a form of creative rest and having a girls night is a form of social rest and going to a yoga class is a form of physical rest.
Rest isn’t a one-size-fits-all formula… and by recognizing the specifics of what we need, we’ll be in a much better place to fill our cups!
What about you? After taking the rest quiz (or doing some personal reflection), which of the seven key areas of rest do you need the most time in?
