Resisting a Rest

Recently I spent a Saturday morning decluttering. This involved many trips up and down the stairs in my house, and a lot of bending, kneeling, squatting, lunging, lifting, and reaching. It required a lot of mental activity as well: sorting items into Keep, Donate, and Discard piles, with decisions about where to store what I chose to keep and continuous internal queries: do we really need to hold on to this? do I know anyone who would like to have this?  Memories and judgments arose about the stuff, too: where did this come from? oh, I remember this show/trip/person. Why did I let this get so out of hand? This is only the tip of the iceberg, just look at the rest of the house, there’s so. much. more. to do.

I worked diligently for about four hours and made significant progress. By the time I was finished, the room felt about twice as big, and I felt joyful relief in that spaciousness. I followed this by lugging bags of trash outside, and then made a trip to donate what I had gathered and did several other errands that needed doing.

The next morning, Easter Sunday, I made a quiche, assembled a holiday basket of treats, and drove about 90 minutes to visit my daughter. We had a lovely time, and I drove back in heavy holiday traffic.

On Monday I awoke in serious sciatic pain and couldn’t stand for more than a few minutes. I recognized immediately what was happening and why: I never rested once during the entire weekend. This hip and back pain is familiar; although it doesn’t happen very often anymore, it used to be a troublesome issue when it first developed in my second pregnancy. Over the years I learned how to heal it and how to prevent it, using the principles of the Alexander Technique and some yoga-based moves I picked up along the way.

After 30+ years of Alexander work, I know I did all the moves of decluttering and long-distance driving with awareness and as much freedom and ease as possible. I was focused and present as I decluttered, I stayed relaxed as I drove.

But I didn’t take breaks. I didn’t stop and intentionally rest my body-mind system.

There is a difference between consciously resting and collapsing in an exhausted heap after working hard. It’s also not the same as taking a break to check your email or watch TV. Resting in awareness is restorative and rebalances everything; it’s like pressing the reboot button on your computer (remember that?).  Really resting involves your participation.

One tried-and-true way to do this is Constructive Rest (CR). If I had paused after a couple hours of decluttering and done some CR for 10 or 15 minutes, and then if I had rested again either before or after running errands, I suspect my Monday morning sciatica would have been merely stiff and sore muscles rather than the crippling pain that made teaching movement impossible that day. If I had done CR before driving and especially after the trip, I wouldn’t have taken a tight, overworked body to bed that night, and could have awoken in better shape.

I know this. So why didn’t I do it?

There are many reasons we don’t allow ourselves this resting time, but a primary reason is that we confuse resting with laziness. We are conditioned to believe that our worth is measured by our productivity, and if we stop working we will cease to have value. We indulge in pressuring ourselves both internally and from external forces, to do, to make, to accomplish, to fix, to perform. When you wake up in the morning are your first thoughts about everything you have to do? Do you fall asleep troubled by all the things you didn’t get done that day? When you think about resting, what arguments do you hear in your head?

If you are constantly focused on getting a thing done rather than the doing of it, you are end-gaining, as Alexander called it. This pushing forward or leaning in is stressful. It adds tension to whatever you do. The attitude of, “I’ll be okay when I get this thing done” is a trap, because 1) there will always be another thing that you need to do and 2) you are already okay.  In my case, I didn’t end-gain as I worked, I really did pay attention to how I was doing what I was doing. Yet though I wasn’t straining, I wasn’t fully willing to notice the natural fatigue in my muscles or my mind, which could have been a signal to rest rather than continuing on for hours.

My Alexander students receive an audio recording of guidance for a 20-minute Constructive Rest practice (as well as a link to try other teachers’ CR guidance). With few exceptions, they all report that they struggle to find time to practice CR even once or twice during the week. Even when they know clearly that it feels good, helps them, and isn’t hard to do, they still don’t do it.

Often it’s because we simply forget. We set an intention but don’t follow through because it hasn’t become a habit of mind yet. If you want to practice the powerful restoration that comes through intentional resting, here are some tips:

• Schedule it. Make an appointment with yourself for 15-20 minutes of rest. Put it on your calendar and keep your appointment. Don’t stand yourself up.

• Set an alarm. If you get a reminder a few minutes before your intended rest time, you won’t forget.

• Create a space. Choose a special area where you’ll place a mat and have a lie-down. Keep support items nearby, like a bolster for your knees and paperbacks or a folded towel for your head, so you don’t have to hunt for them each time.

• Use a recording for guidance. At least at first, you’ll be less likely to fall asleep or mentally drift off when you can follow the directions from a teacher. Later you’ll be able to be your own guide as you practice.

• Check your attitude.  Notice if you are approaching rest time as another chore you have to cross off your To Do list -- and let that go. This is  nice, it feels good, it can even be fascinating to feel your body-mind changing and rebalancing as you lie there. A cool glass of water when you’re thirsty. A warm hug when you need to feel more connected. A chance to do nearly nothing.

Constructive Rest is a pathway to resilience. Since we are living in such difficult times with challenges both unpredictable and relentless, it is essential to cultivate inner resilience, but it is equally important to know how to love our bodies enough to honor how hard they work for us, how much we demand of our bodies every day.  

It is both kind and wise to rest, to really rest.