I chanced upon an intriguing article today, about the 7 types of rest. According to Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith, author of Sacred Rest: Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Renew Your Sanity, humans need these 7 different types of rest:

1. Physical - for the exhausted body, like sleep, yoga
2. Mental - rest for tired brains can be taking breaks, meditation 
3. Social - socializing can be draining, so being alone, or being with safe friends or your tribe helps
4. Creative - creativity is a wellspring, and it can dry up if you use a lot of it at work, especially if you are, say, an artist or creative professional. Top up on inspiration, or read a book.
5. Emotional - expressing emotions healthily after an emotional event, like venting to a willing listener
6. Spiritual - feeling lost and adrift in the world means it might help to get some spiritual rest, through religion or some personal practice to reflect on or find new context
7. Sensory - with screens, noise and people everywhere, sometimes the senses need a break too, like taking a walk in nature, or spending less time on smartphones.

“Most people, when they think about rest, they have a very one-sided approach—they lounge around, don’t do anything, and think that’s what rest is…We try it, and then when we’re still rest-deprived we think it doesn’t work.” ~ Dr Dalton-Smith

This was pretty illuminating and timely, as it helped explain what I’d been doing the past 2 weeks. I was a little exhausted from hammering away at coding my app in September, so much so that I started October on an already-depleted tank. My brain’s logic boards are fried, and they needed downtime. Basically, I needed “#2 mental rest”. And so that’s what I did. I spent a week doing other stuff, researching for my next productized service business idea that I felt more curiosity and enthusiasm for. 

I followed where my energy flowed, and avoided where my energy stalled.

And this week, when I felt more ready to look at my app again, I didn’t start out on the development part of the coding (which used my logical brain), but just played around with the design - layout, colours, white space - which engaged my visual and aesthetic side of the brain. Interestingly, that compartmentalisation worked, even though I used the same brain. 

All that thinking and making takes creativity as well, and I was definitely feeling dry on inspiration. So I went on to get a bunch of books that I feel drawn to at this moment - wealth creation, business, psychology and even left field ones like lost civilisations in America. In fact, I got to go get this book Sacred Rest too! Just looking at that stack of books made me look forward to starting my work day everyday now, because that’s how I begin each day - reading for an hour or so. I feel more energized creatively already, even though the counterintuitive thing is that reading actually takes some effort! *shrugs      

I guess what’s rest to one might be work to another, be it different parts of the brain or different people. And seeing these 7 types of rest made me realised how resting is something of a skill as well, something we’ve not been taught much about, in school or life (even if some of us intuitively know and do this already). As the author said, “Staying busy is easy. Staying well rested - now there’s a challenge.” How true! #firstworldproblems