We recently came across an article from @the.sagesociety that looks at a theory from Dr Matthew Edlund, M.D., a psychiatry specialist and Director of the Centre for Circadian Medicine, that explores the concept that ‘we’re not just sleep deprived, we’re rest deprived’.

The premise of the theory is that being constantly busy, always on the move and pushing ourselves to the point of burnout, does not give our brain enough time to slow down and therefore your mood, performance and health suffer as a result. Instead, they discuss that by taking time out of our day to actually rest, we can help ourselves to get ahead in the long run.

To explain, they used the analogy that we would not expect our bodies to function without food, so why do we expect our bodies to feel replenished without rest? They then went on to outline four types of active rest that we can incorporate daily to help build more rest into our lives.

 

The four types of active rest are: Physical Rest, Mental Rest, Social Rest and Spiritual Rest. To give you some ideas, here are a couple of examples of how you can easily incorporate these fours types of rest into your everyday lifestyle:

 

Written by Renee Cotey.

Renee is a mother of two young girls, and is our Studio Administrator