Is your rest restful?
It’s time to take a break from staring at your computer. When you get up from your desk, do you immediately grab your phone?
You’ve just gotten home from a stressful day. Do you dive into drama TV?
You’re on vacation. Are you optimizing, multitasking, and overplanning?
Been there, done all that. These habits go with the territory of being a go-go-go New Yorker millennial. But after developing and practicing self-awareness of my body and mind, I noticed these ways of winding down weren’t giving my brain the rest that it needs.
Personally, I don’t just want a break from working, I want a break from stimulation. Social media, notifications, on-demand TV, and the like are designed to be hyper stimulating.
Indulging in the pleasure of stimulation with our phones and TVs activates the parts of our brains that do the fight or flight response. Going from being activated due to a stressful day at work to being activated due to a stressful situation in your favorite crime drama keeps the stress hormones in your body up. And that’s not restful at all.
Having become sensitive to my body and brain, I now know the importance of giving myself the rest I need. Yes, my first impulse after an intense work sesh is still to grab my phone for mindless scrolling. But with practice, I don’t give in to the urge (most of the time.)
Instead, when it’s time for a break from stimulating my brain, I close my eyes, or I take a walk and look around. When I come home wanting to veg out by watching TV, I choose a light comedy or nature documentary. When I’m on vacation, I put myself through the initial discomfort of not doing anything at all. And these practices give me the energy and rejuvenation I need to work, yes, but also to play. Cause at my age, fun takes a lot of energy!
Everyone’s brain is different though, and what might be overly-stimulating to me (like RuPaul’s Drag Race) might be super relaxing to you. How will you know? By noticing how you feel after the activity. Are you feeling well rested? Great. Not so much? Time to pick a new activity for breaktime.
Not able to tell how you feel? That makes sense: we are highly disconnected from our bodies. Case in point: my first draft of this post read “Having become sensitive to my body and brain, I now know the importance of giving it the rest it needs.” “It”!
I might not have even caught that disconnect had I not done the work to connect mind and body, work that I’m now trained to help you do. Want to develop awareness and connection of your body so that you too can rest the way you need? Learn more on a free call with me.