Practical Magic | 41 Ways to Take a Truly Restorative Break
"I don't even know how to relax!" is a common refrain. So with the help of The Nap Ministry, here are 41 concrete – and free – ways to take truly restorative rest in your life. You're welcome.
The Ultradian Healing Break
The Ultradian Rhythm is a hormonal rhythm that is running in people of all genders, ages, and creeds. It's a biological rhythm that governs our sleep-wakefulness cycle, and it dictates how much focused attention is at our disposal in a given moment.
One of the most important things to understand about working with the ultradian rhythm is that every 90 to 110 minutes, our brain sends a cascade of hormones through our body that trigger sensations of fatigue, listlessness, distraction, and wanting to get up and move. This is entirely natural and essential to honor for your well-being.
The brain is inviting the body to take a 15 to 20-minute break so that it can clear out the cache. By clearing the plaque and debris that has built up in the brain from so much strategic focus and attention, we can replenish our energy and return to a task with the same amount of energy and focus. Learn more about how to take an Ultradian Healing Break in Episode 6.
What Does It Really Mean to Take a Healing Break?
Scrolling on your phone is not taking a break. Answering emails is not taking a break. Planning ahead or problem-solving is not taking a break. Watching a video is not taking a break. Anything that still requires focused attention and mental energy is not giving your brain and body the break that it needs.
Living in a capitalist society has taught us that our value is in what we produce. We have been taught our whole lives that taking a break is lazy. It can be destabilizing for us to consider spending 15 to 20 minutes not doing anything, not achieving anything, not producing anything, or not getting ahead in some area.
In this episode, I’m sharing what it really means to take a restorative break and for this, I defer to Trisha Hersey, The Nap Bishop. She is a poet, artist, activist, and she leads The Nap Ministry. Since 2013, she has been vocal online, at events, and in performance art pieces that we don't need to rest to be more productive.
We need rest because rest is our divine right as human beings.
It is not something you earn. It is something that is essential for your humanity. I follow her Instagram account, @thenapministry, and I noticed some incredibly insightful ideas from the community about how to take restorative rest. I thought that I would share those ideas here for you here on the podcast.
41 Ways to Take a Truly Restorative Break
Close your eyes for 10 minutes.
Take a long shower in silence.
Meditate on your couch for 20 minutes.
Daydream by staring out of a window.
Sip tea before bed in the dark.
Slow dance with yourself to slow music.
Attend or tune in to a sound bath.
One Sun Salutation.
Take a 20-minute timed nap.
Pray.
Create a small altar.
Take a long hot bath.
Take regular breaks from social media.
Don’t immediately respond to texts and emails.
Deeply listen to a whole music album.
Take a meditative walk in nature.
Knit.
Crochet.
Play a musical instrument.
Make deep eye contact.
Don’t make eye contact.
Sit in a towel post-shower, staring at the wall.
Sit in your car for a few minutes before you go into the house.
Get in a workout while watching Bob Ross and then take a nap afterward.
Sit outside after a long day at work and look up at the night sky.
Put your phone on Do Not Disturb.
Watch your cats sleep and breathe.
Sit in silence doing nothing except clear your mind.
Stare out of a window and feel all the love of the universe directed back at you.
Take a walk while picking flowers.
Get your French press coffee started and then sit in silence while it steeps. Not checking your phone, not answering any summons. Just sitting. Somehow, this morning act feels like an act of rebellion.
Take a slow walk in the woods.
Pause from reading your book to look up and let your attention linger wherever it falls.
Color in a coloring book.
Trim your cuticles.
Close your eyes but don’t take a nap just yet. Feel those seconds of dark and calm.
Curl up in a quiet place like a church, library, or a secluded garden. Silence your phone and sit and soak up the peace.
Chase your cat and hold it in your arms while you smell their fur.
Water the houseplants.
Watch crows outside the city window.
Truly listen to music, not as background noise, but to soak in the beauty and fullness of the melody and the lyrics.
You may have noticed that all of these ways of resting are states of receiving. They are not states of doing: handling, focusing, being responsible. You are deeply surrendering and receiving to an experience, a sound, a sensation.
In Episode 10, Use Everything, I talked about expansion and contraction. Cycles of expansion followed by cycles of contraction followed by cycles of expansion. These are the fundamental building blocks of our universe.
Rest is a state of contraction. We go into our own experiences to heal.
You may have also noticed that the items on this list may be described as wasting time, and that is very deliberate.
Many deeply healing, transformational, nourishing, and powerful states where we can come home to ourselves to soothe our nervous system and remember our own power have been deliberately denigrated, shamed, and shunned as wasting time. That time spent resting, healing, and calming is wrong and dangerous.
Wherever There Is Repression and Shame, There Is Hidden Power
It is no accident that we are kept away from resting, healing, and calming because it keeps us easier to control. It keeps us exhausted, frantic, and frightened.
Maybe just by listening to this, you're already feeling anxious about spending 15 to 20 minutes every day in this kind of ‘time-wasting’ state. It may feel dangerous to you. Maybe you're worried that you'll be bored. Maybe you're worried that you won’t be able to get into these states.
I invite you to sit with that discomfort and reflect on where it comes from.
One thing is absolutely certain. These uncomfortable feelings of guilt, anxiety, shame, and not-enoughness can be overcome because they are not your natural state. No human being on this planet is born shaming themselves. It is something we learn.
There is something that cannot be overcome, powered through, or left behind: your body.
It is a biological truth that in order to maintain the body's optimum functioning, you need to spend 10 hours each day in rest. That's 42% of your time.
Many of us are not sleeping for eight hours each night. But even if we were, that leaves two full hours a day of restorative rest. Pottering and time-wasting have a fundamentally important role in the human experience.
We don't rest to produce more. We rest so that we can hear more, heal more, and feel more. Ultimately, when we give ourselves these three things, we can contribute more on a much deeper level.
Truly restorative, healing rest is the only gateway through which you will ever be able to hear the wisdom of your inner signal. And the connection with your inner signal is the fundamental channel through which you can create a magical life.
Magical Living starts here.
It starts with taking breaks – 15 minutes, 10 minutes, 5 minutes. Whenever your body invites you to surrender, receive, hear, feel, watch, and waste time, you know what to do.
The question is not: Do I deserve this? Have I earned this? Have I done enough?
The question is: Do I want to live? It's that simple.
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