There are seven types of rest depending on how tired we are

Sleeping for many hours is not the only form of rest, especially when the fatigue is mental and not just physical. It happens, in fact, to sleep up to nine hours a night for several consecutive days, but to always have the feeling of feeling exhausted.

For this, Saundra Dalton-Smith, a doctor specializing in internal medicine, after having tried burnout on her skin, wrote the book Sacred Rest: Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore Your Sanity in which it identifies seven types of rest, each indicated for the different forms of fatigue that afflict.

Physical rest

When we think of rest, we mean passive, which is the act of sleeping and experiencing quality sleep. For Saundra Dalton-Smith, physical rest also has an active form, to be put into practice through holistic disciplines such as yoga, stretching exercises or massage sets that relieve tension and prepare the body for passive rest. Most often, back pains are symptoms of active sleep deficiency.

Mental rest

Feeling tired but unable to sleep. It happens when, resting the head on the pillow, the mind begins to wander with anxious thoughts. The need for mental rest also manifests itself with the difficulty of remembering very simple things, such as losing the thread of speech, forgetting what to buy at the supermarket … or with the lack of concentration and the impossibility of paying attention to the things said by others. These are the symptoms of a probable information overload, to which we are continually exposed. Thanks to the imperative of the digital world that generates information overload, a process that results in a greater sense of loss, the inability to form a true opinion based on knowledge and not on mere raw information, and to experience the present which is the reality. This is why the philosopher Byung-Chul Han calls information non-things: it is not objects, but information that predispose the world in which we live, but they do it in a completely elusive way.

Social rest

We spend most of our time together with people who expect something from us, a circumstance that creates in & out fatigue, that is from the inside out and that leaves that feeling of not having time for oneself, and of being drained by requests from others. Social rest is to carve out a personal space or to share with people who do not ask, but with whom to simply enjoy each other’s company. Social rest is a moment of completely selfless pleasure to be experienced with the right people.

Spiritual rest

Spiritual rest is based on the universally shared need to participate in the fulfillment of a greater good. When there is a lack of confidence in the value of what one is doing, then it could be a symptom of the need for spiritual rest.

“If you feel your work has no meaning, it will lead you to burnout. Find a way to stay connected to your desire, to fill what you do with meaning, be it through community, a culture of work where you feel like giving, or a culture based on faith. We all need to feel a sense of belonging, and to know that what we do is recognized as a source of value by others, ”Saundra told Goop.

Sensory rest

We are constantly bombarded with external stimuli that involve our sensory sphere: the lights of the devices, the sound of notifications… stimuli that can lead to sensory overload. The way most people respond to sensory overload is through irritation, agitation, or anger. And so, people with a sensory rest deficit may find that they feel good in the morning, but cannot understand why they come to the end of the day with a very high degree of irritability.

Emotional rest

Emotional rest refers to the sense of well-being we experience when we feel we can be real and authentic in the way we share our feelings. Many people tend to do a lot of their emotional work privately, without sharing what they feel. This attitude is due to having a very introspective character or to the nature of certain situations that do not allow others to weigh their emotional fatigue. For a long time, the fact of keeping everything inside does not give the opportunity to process the feelings and therefore to find a form of cure. Symptoms of an emotional rest deficit are the feeling of always having to keep your emotions under control and the inability to feel truly free to be authentic, being able to manifest what one feels in a given moment.