The Seven Types of Rest We Need

Dr. Saunda Dalton-Smith on the real reasons we're tired — and how to refuel yourself.

Rest is essential to who we are as humans. Yet according to the National Institutes of Health, nearly 40% of adults report falling asleep during the day without meaning to, and as many as 50 to 70 million Americans have chronic sleep disorders. Plus, if you’re a parent or caretaker, you’re likely dealing with additional layers of exhaustion.

Sleep and rest, however, are different. While there is a lot of talk about sleep deprivation and improving overall sleep, we don’t talk enough about rest and why it’s essential for energy. Most people are woefully under-nourished when it comes to getting the rest they need.

In this article:

• The difference between sleep and rest, and why we need both — and why you might have a rest deficit.

• The seven different types of rest nearly everyone needs,

• The difference between active and passive rest.

• Specific ways to get more rest in your life, so that you feel better right away.

If you’re always tired or you’re emotionally exhausted, but sleeping more isn’t helping, then this might hold a clue to the puzzle.

What is rest?

“Rest is the energy, time, and attention you return to yourself,” Jordan Maney, a rest lab creator and radical joy coach told me. Rest is much more than sleep, Jordan explained. Rest is about longevity, resilience, and recovery.

Jordan taught a rest workshop for our women’s leadership program, and joined me to talk about what rest is, and how to build more rest into your life. Jordan’s work on rest spans burnout, ADHD, hustle culture, protecting your mental health, and when you don’t look or act the way that society expects you to act. Rest is essential for justice and equity work, she says, and it can’t be a luxury or an afterthought.

Sleep and rest are not the same thing

Jordan introduced me to the work of Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith, a Board-Certified internal medicine physician who examines the reasons why people are chronically tired. Sleep and rest are not the same thing, Dr. Dalton-Smith explains. Yes, we all need quality sleep. But we also need to “replenish all the ways we become depleted," and getting more sleep does not resolve the deficits that build up across all of our rest needs.

“If your definition of rest is limited to sleeping, or binge-watching television on the couch, then you are leaving yourself open to chronic exhaustion,” Dr. Dalton-Smith says. A chronic lack of energy might not be about sleep—at all.

“Rest is not simply the cessation of activity, the core of rest has to be restorative.” — Dr. Saundra Dalton Smith

Rest is the space outside of sleep where we are able to refuel and recover. It is also essential for creating the deep, restorative sleep we all need. “We are missing out on the other types of rest that we need,” she says in her TEDxAtlanta talk. “The result is a culture of high-achieving, high-producing, chronically tired, burned out individuals.” To be resilient, we need plenty of down time, likely far more than we’ve been led to believe.

Dr. Dalton-Smith helps people identify their rest deficits and figure out specific ways to recharge and build back their energy stores. “Many of us are suffering from a rest deficit because we do not understand the power of rest,” she says. “Rest is the most under-used, chemical-free, safe, and effective alternative therapy available to us.” Sleeping pills won’t cut it if your energy stores are being depleted from every other waking minute. That’s because sleep alone is not enough to recharge our batteries.

So what is rest and how do we get it?

"If you are not purposefully resting, you are not building resilience in your life."
— Dr. Saunda Dalton-Smith

THE SEVEN TYPES OF REST YOU NEED

According to Dr. Dalton-Smith, after analyzing the ways in which people rest, she found that there are seven core types of rest that people need. Yes, we all need quality sleep. But we also need "to replenish all the ways we become depleted," says Dr. Dalton-Smith. Knowing what rest you need is about self-discovery, and identifying where your deficits are. 

These are the seven types of rest:

• Emotional Rest

• Mental Rest

• Social Rest

• Creative Rest

• Sensory Rest

• Spiritual Rest

• Physical Rest

Let’s look closer at each type of rest and how to get more of it.

Image from @silkandsonder based on Dr. Sandra Dalton’s book, Sacred Rest.

EMOTIONAL REST

Being emotionally rested means being able to express your feelings and cut back on people pleasing. If you are constantly dealing with people who drain you, if you have family members that text you all the time for emotional support, of you have co-workers that rely on you for gossip and personal problem solving, chances are you might be emotionally exhausted.

To get more emotional rest, try identifying which people drain your energy, and find ways to reduce the time you spend with them. You might limit chats, work on responding only at certain times of day, or turn on the “mute” function on text threads.

Emotional rest is a practice in being more honest about what you need, setting boundaries, communicating these boundaries.

MENTAL REST

Mental rest is about being able to quiet your mind chatter and focus on what's important. If you're in your head, stirring up worries or rehearsing past conversations, you need mental rest.

Journaling, venting, mindfulness exercises, or focusing your energy on solving the stickiest hang-ups can help here. There’s a reason why labyrinths and forest walks have been known to be meditative and relaxing—it’s another way to give yourself mental rest.

While it’s unlikely that I’ll have a labyrinth close by, picking a certain route through my neighborhood that I can go on easily has a similar meditative quality to the walk. My partner and I have 15m, 20m, and 30m loops that we can do depending on the day.

Journaling can be a wonderful way to get the chatter out of your mind and onto the page – there’s a reason why hundreds of thousands of people love morning pages.

Therapy or counseling can be tremendously beneficial. While the session itself might be hard, having a place to unpack what’s stuck in my brain and causing a spin cycle of worry or pain can create a lot of mental freedom and rest down the line.

SOCIAL REST

Social rest can be more active, like taking walks with friends, or having a lovely tea and down-time with a friend. It can also be more passive. Passive social rest can include things like scrolling before bed.

Jordan says "It's fine to scroll social media if it helps you zone out, but make sure you switch to active rest too in order to fill your tank.”

You can combine social rest in the form of down time with friends. In this example, coloring with friends can be a form of social, creative, and mental rest.

Here’s an example of social rest and also physical contact, aka sensory stimulation that might create sensory rest as well. I don’t like the metaphor of killing two birds with stones, so the better metaphor might be “the longer the robin sits on the egg, the better it grows” (work in progress here).

CREATIVE REST

Creative rest is the rest that comes from being creative—making something, exploring something, building something, for example. If you need more of it in your life, things like sewing, painting, crafting, cooking, or doing puzzles can be deeply rejuvenating.

But if your job requires a large amount of creativity and building, then creative rest can also mean resting from creativity if your job requires a high demand from you.

When was the last time you laid in your bed without your phone? Turn off the phone and the work and play around a little with music, or explore dancing or bopping around to delicious music.

Hand-crafting, whether cooking or paper or something else, can be very relaxing. I’ve recently been spending more time with coloring books, and a lot of times I’ll listen to books, podcasts, or music and I love it.

SENSORY REST

Sensory rest is about reducing stimulation. That can mean turning the noise down, dimming lights in the evening, or even taking a warm bath with lavender and salt in a candle-lit room.

For me, I dim lights, play very quiet relaxing music, and sometimes wear headphones to reduce kid noise! I also love a weighted blanket in a dark room for 15 minutes.

SPIRITUAL REST

Spiritual Rest is about having a sense of belonging to something bigger than yourself. This can be faith-based, like meditation or prayer, or this can be about the groups that you belong to, from support groups to regional groups and more.

Volunteering with others, being part of an alumni group, or joining a local choir or music group can all be a form of spiritual rest. A community gathering or regular place of faith can be restorative.

PHYSICAL REST

Last but not least, there is physical rest. This is about resting our physical bodies. Passive physical rest includes sleeping and napping. Dr. Saundra Dalton calls these "cessation activities," which is where you don't physically do anything.

There is also active physical rest, which means restorative activities "that improve our circulation and lymphatic systems and help relax our muscles." This can include leisurely walks, stretching, dancing, yoga, massage therapy, and more. 

Sleep is also an important part of this mix of rest types. We definitely need sleep, and getting more sleep (and better quality sleep) is something the majority of humans need. Sleep alone, however, is not all there is to rest.

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ACTIVE AND PASSIVE REST

Within each category of rest, there can be passive rest (where you don’t actually do anything, or you take a break and time away from doing something more intensive). There’s also active rest, in which you proactively do something to encourage rest—for example, getting a massage, going for a walk, actively taking steps to text friends and socialize, for example.

For me, because I work from home, I don’t always get enough in-person socialization! There is a real connection between laughing with people after work, playing games, chatting it up, and the real sense of rest and distance I get from work. I’ve noticed that sometimes, being social at the end of the day can help me better unwind and get even better sleep. For others who are extremely social or in meetings all day, the opposite might be true, with the need to take a break from social events a very real rest need.

Rest doesn't necessarily mean stopping everything. Rest is about restoration.

HOW TO GET MORE REST

Identify which buckets of yours need to be filled right now

If you're overwhelmed by all the rest you might need, here's what Dr. Dalton-Smith says to do:

• First, start small, she reminds people. If you add a whole bunch to your todo list all at once, it’s not going to be helpful, it’ll just make you more exhausted.

• Rest is not about a major sabbatical or an elaborate vacation. When you start daydreaming about a major sabbatical or a huge vacation, this is a sign that you need more rest in your everyday life, and to start to implement new habits or patterns to get rest within your current situation (in possible). Plus, people are often more tired after vacation because it requires a lot of work and planning, plus you might do a whole slew of activities that don't fill up any of the rest buckets you really need—it's an adventure or a trip, not a respite.) Believe it or not, but a vacation or sleep might not actually solve the tired, but it's 95% of what's thought of as "rest."

• Start with the bucket that feels most depleted. If you feel like you’re mentally over-stimulated at work and you don’t have any creative space in your life, try unwinding at night with a coloring book for five minutes just to doodle and add a little delight back into your life.

• Rest does not need to be BIG to count. Rest is about all the little things we fill ourselves up with. Start small rather than not start at all.

What's the smallest thing that would put a drop in the rest bucket you need most?

• Three minutes of closing your eyes and doing 2x breathing?

• Five minutes of doodle-sketching while listening to beautiful music?

• A short little walk outside to look at the trees?

• Watching a comedy special to laugh more in the evenings?

• Taking an hour away from social media on your favorite day of the week—or—taking an hour specifically to text and gab with whatever friends are online?

— Sarah Peck
CEO & Founder
Startup Parent

PS: What do you do to get enough rest? Leave a note in the comments.

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KEY IDEAS & TAKEAWAYS

• “Rest is about the time, energy, and attention you return to yourself,” says Jordan Maney.

• “If you are not purposefully resting, you are not building resilience in your life,” says researcher Saundra Dalton-Smith. “Just stopping is not always restorative. Sometimes something has to be done to pour back into that area where you are being depleted."

• There are seven types of rest: emotional, mental, physical, social, sensory, spiritual, and creative. You can get passive and active rest within each category.

• Getting enough rest is a profound act of resistance and rebellion—especially for Black women, people of color, and people most affected by the isms—racism, sexism, ageism, classism and other systems of oppression.

• Start small, ideally with the buckets that feel most depleted.

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A FUTURE OF WORK TO BELIEVE IN

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