Maybe I was never 'bad' at resting: just in motion?

Rest is something I started thinking about a few months ago.

The first time I really thought about rest this past year, I felt anxious. Anxious because I realised that maybe I don’t even know what resting looks or feels like. I feared that even when I said I was resting, I was doing it anxiously.

I found myself thinking about those moments more often. When I say I am resting, what does that actually look like? Is my mind ever quiet in those moments? Does the mind even 'go quiet'? And at times, ask myself the common social media question: “Is my nervous system regulated?”

I wondered.

My favourite thing about life is that sometimes, when we consciously make our brains aware of something, life somehow creates experiences that deepen that awareness. Seeing all these things surrounding my relationship with rest both excited and unsettled me.

As a verb, rest is defined as “to cease work or movement in order to relax or recover strength.”

Simple.

But in reality, it does not always feel that simple.

There is a lot of research on rest, but one article I read on Psychology Today, highlighted something I found truly intriguing: “Somewhere along the way, our culture decided that stillness equals laziness.”

That stayed with me.

Stayed with me because I realised how often I feel guilty for resting. This is because there is always something to think about, something to do, and even when I decide to rest, it often feels slightly anxious.

'Indeed, our culture has framed rest as something you earn. A reward. Something that has to be deserved.'

And maybe that is where my relationship with rest began.

However, further in my reading and exploration of rest, something I came across made me pause. Across different fields, rest is not always described as 'complete stillness, but rather as a shift in state.' This has been highlighted in Academic literature.

From the Caring Science perspective, what we call “rest” still involves activity in the brain. During our moments of 'rest', the brain continues processing, organising, and making sense of things in the background.

And I think that is where something started to shift for me.

Because maybe my mind being active does not mean I am not resting.

I started noticing this in my everyday life. Something as simple as taking walks with a friend became a form of rest. We would walk, talk, complain, and laugh.

Engaging in such usually makes me feel lighter afterwards.

So maybe rest, at least for me, is not always about stopping everything. Maybe it is about creating space, mentally, emotionally, or even physically. Or maybe rest is a moment of doing something that I describe as detaching from everything and switching from my responsibilities, while doing everything except being “physically still". Usually leaving me feeling lighter afterwards.

That also made me think about rest in a more intentional way. Allowing myself to set time aside for it, without needing to justify it.

I noticed this more clearly during Christmas, one of my favourite times of the year. For the first time, I gradually reduced the time I spent on my laptop until I eventually stopped opening it. I travelled, reconnected with friends and family, and allowed myself to simply exist.

And while that felt good, it also reminded me that even the things I enjoy, like science, can be exhausting. My body and mind still need time to recharge, whether between engagements or after them.  And in those moments, maybe it is okay to believe that, for a while, nothing else matters.

Thinking about rest in this way also reminded me of something a previous supervisor once told me to “put on my own perfume.”

Which made me realise that maybe my way of resting does not have to look like anyone else’s. That there isn’t 'one correct way' to do it. Because maybe part of rest is also allowing yourself to exist in a way that aligns with you.

Maybe my “rest rhythm” is my own. And learning to listen to it, rather than fight it, is what allows me to feel more like myself, instead of constantly feeling like I need to do more.

And then I found myself thinking about something simple, but quite interesting.

In physics, an object is only at rest relative to a specific frame of reference. There is no absolute state of rest, commonly called "The Myth of absolute rest", there's only relative motion.

Which means something can appear still, and yet not truly be motionless.

So maybe I was never bad at rest.

Maybe I was just measuring it against the wrong expectations.

Maybe, like a particle, I am never truly still.

And maybe rest is not the absence of motion, but a different way of existing within it. And, I am still figuring this out for myself.. but what does rest look like for you? Especially in those moments where you're not trying to 'get it right?'..