You slept nine hours. You woke up tired anyway. You went to bed early all week, cancelled plans, stayed in, and somehow you're more exhausted than when you started.
Maybe your body isn't the part that's tired.
Sleep isn't the only kind of rest
In her book Sacred Rest, physician Saundra Dalton-Smith describes seven kinds of rest we need: physical, mental, emotional, social, sensory, creative and spiritual. Sleep only covers the first. If what's worn out is your attention, your senses or your sense of meaning, no amount of sleep will fix it, just as a glass of water won't help when you're hungry.
Here are the three kinds most of us are missing, and a small way to find each one.
Sensory rest
Screens, notifications, open-plan offices, city noise: our senses rarely get a minute off. Sensory rest means turning the input down. Try this tonight: five minutes in a dim room, eyes closed, no sound. If that feels impossible, start with two. It's often harder than it sounds, which tells you how much you need it.
Creative rest
Creative rest is what happens when you let beauty work on you instead of producing something. Dalton-Smith links it to appreciating beauty, especially in nature and in art. Spend ten minutes with one painting, walk somewhere green without headphones, listen to a piece of music from start to finish without doing anything else. You're not being lazy. You're refilling the well you draw from.
Spiritual rest
Spiritual rest doesn't have to mean religion. It's the feeling of being connected to something larger than your to-do list: history, nature, beauty, other people. A few minutes of meditation, a walk past an old church, a page written centuries ago. Maybe there's no war to fight, only peace to make with yourself. (And maybe we need a few imaginary fights to figure that out.)
This week, try one
Pick the kind of rest you recognize most, and give it ten minutes a day for a week. Notice whether the tiredness changes shape. It often does.
Rest you can open each month
The Digital subscription was made for creative and spiritual rest: recommendations on opera, ballet, books, music and places to nourish you, at least one video each month, photo stories, planners with small practices, and the digital edition of "(meditating) On Art". Not more content to get through. Something to rest in.
Remember to take as much time as you need, and meet me at the next one.
Love, Evi