Up in the mornin'
Out
on the job
Work like the devil for my pay
But that lucky old
sun got nothin' to do
But roll around heaven all day.
Fuss with my woman,
toil for my kids
Sweat till I'm wrinkled and gray
While that
lucky old sun got nothin' to do
But roll around heaven all day
Dear Lord above, can't
you know I'm pining, tears all in my eyes
Send down that cloud
with a silver lining, lift me to Paradise
From “That Lucky Old Sun” by Frankie Laine (Songwriters: Beasley Smith / Haven Gillespie – 1949)
How much rest should you be getting? Not just sleep, but rest? How can you achieve the necessary rest you need for good mental and physical health? In today's world, society relentlessly speeds up and becomes increasingly stressful. Yet, even if the pace of life is speeding up, this does not necessarily mean that you must choose to be hurried. These are the “rest” questions to explore today – how much do we need and how do we get it?
A general medical definition of “rest” is “repose (relaxation after exertion.” Rest includes sleep, but also includes other forms of relaxation – physical activity, social play time, and even cooking and eating. As you can see, rest has a broader definition than sleep. In medical care, rest is defined as behavior aimed at increasing physical and mental well-being. Rest helps you recover from physical and mental effort and can be either active or passive.
(Ashley Helvig, Sonya Wade, and Lee Hunter-Eades. “Rest and the associated benefits in restorative sleep: a concept analysis. J Adv Nurs. January 2016;72.)
There is a real need to rest. So many modern-day Americans are caught in the grind of work, family responsibilities and ongoing stress. If left untreated, long-term stress can cause chest pain, headaches, digestive issues, anxiety, depression, changes in sexual desire and inability to focus.
Both sleep and rest are integral to maintaining your mental, emotional, and physical health. By relaxing muscles and quieting the brain, rest can help restore a sense of calm during times of exhaustion, illness, or overexertion. Normal daily stress and fatigue also require periods of rest and relaxation, acting as a reset button for the mind and body. Rest can also pave the way to a better night’s sleep.
(Theodore F Robles and Judith E Carroll. “Restorative biological processes and health.” Soc Personal Psychol Compass. August 05, 2011.)
How Much Rest?
Exactly how much rest is an “adequate” amount?
According to twin Drs. Emily and Amelia Nagoski, Science is pretty clear on the amount: it’s 42%.
In their book, Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle (2020), the doctors conclude: “We’re not saying you should take 42 percent of your time to rest; we’re saying if you don’t take the 42 percent, the 42 percent will take you. It will grab you by the face, shove you to the ground, put its foot on your chest, and declare itself the victor.”
42% is the percentage of time your body and brain need you to spend resting. It’s about 10 hours out of every 24. It doesn’t have to be every day; it can average out over a week or a month or more. But yeah. That much.
(Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski. “Work Stress: How the 42% Rule Could Help You Recover from Burnout.” Stylist. March 2019.)
You are probably going off right now, saying “I cannot devote 42% of my time to rest. That's impossible!” However, consider fhow much time you spend sleeping – close to 33%? Then consider that Emily Nagoski assures you …
“The good news is that stress is not the problem. The problem is that the strategies that deal with stressors have almost no relationship to the strategies that deal with the physiological reactions our bodies have to those stressors. To be “well” is not to live in a state of perpetual safety and calm, but to move fluidly from a state of adversity, risk, adventure, or excitement, back to safety and calm, and out again. Stress is not bad for you; being stuck is bad for you.”
(Emily Nagoski. Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. 2020.)
The Nagoskis' research finds your biology requires that you spend 42 percent of your life maintaining the organism of your physical existence. How about that other 9% of recommended rest beyond sleep hours?
Emily Nagoski says, “Rest doesn’t just mean sleep... Rest also includes switching from one type of activity to another. Mental energy, like stress, has a cycle it runs through, an oscillation from task focus to processing and back to task focus. The idea that you can use “grit” or “self-control” to stay focused and productive every minute of every day is not merely incorrect, it is gaslighting, and it is potentially damaging your brain.”
How To “Rest”
Here’s What Your 42 Percent Might Look Like:
• Eight hours of sleep opportunity, give or take an hour.
• 20 to 30 minutes of “stress-reducing conversation” with your partner or other trusted loved one.
• 30 minutes of physical activity. Do this with the explicit mindset of gear-switching, feels-purging, rest-getting freedom. Physical activity counts as “rest” partly because it improves the quality of your sleep and partly because it completes the stress response cycle, transitioning your body out of a stressed state and into a resting state.
• 30 minutes of paying attention to food. “30 minutes?” you say. Don’t fret. That includes all meals, shopping, cooking, and eating, and it doesn’t have to be all at once. It can be with people or alone, but it can’t be while working or driving or watching TV or even listening to a podcast. Pay attention to your food for half an hour a day. This counts as rest partly because it provides necessary nourishment and partly because it’s active rest, a change of pace, apart from the other domains of your life. Think of it as meditation.
• And a 30-minute wild card, depending on your needs. For some people, this will be extra physical activity, because they need that much to feel good. For others, it will be preparation for their sleep opportunity, because they know their brains need time to transition from the buzzing state of wakefulness into the quiet that allows the brain to sleep. For still others, it will be social play time, because their appetite for social engagement is strong. And for some, it’s simply a buffer for travel and changing clothes and other rest-preparation time (because: reality) during which you engage your default mode network — that is, you let your mind wander.
These are just averages, and as you can see, you’ll sometimes do more than one thing at a time. Some people need more sleep than others — sleep need is estimated to be about 40 percent genetically heritable.
Natural exercisers may want to spend more time on physical activity. Foodies may want to spend more time on food. Extroverts may want to spend as much of this time as possible with other people. Your mileage may vary; fine-tune it to fit your individual needs.
(Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski. “Work Stress: How the 42% Rule Could Help You Recover from Burnout.” Stylist. March 2019.)
“Most of us have spent our whole lives being taught to believe everyone else's opinions about our bodies, rather than to believe what our own bodies are trying to tell us. For some of us, it's been so long since we listened to our bodies, we hardly know how to start understanding what they're trying to tell us, much less how to trust and believe what they're saying. To make matters worse, the more exhausted we are, the noisier the signal is, and the harder it is to hear the message.”
– Emily Nagoski, Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
The “Rest Test”
Over two thirds (68 per cent) of the public would like more rest, according to the world’s largest ever survey on the topic. The results of the survey, led by Durham University researchers, also revealed that nearly a third (32 per cent) of respondents said they need more rest than the average person, while 10 per cent think they need less.
More than 18,000 people from 134 different countries took part in the “Rest Test,” an online survey to investigate the public’s resting habits and their attitudes towards relaxation and busyness, and the results were unveiled during BBC Radio 4’s program “The Anatomy of Rest.”
(“Rest and well-being – world’s largest survey.” Durham University News. September 27, 2016)
The survey found that those who felt they needed more rest scored lower in terms of well-being. Similarly, those who responded saying they think they get more rest than average or don’t feel in need of more rest, had well-being scores twice as high as those who wanted more rest. This suggests that the perception of rest matters, as well as the reality.
(Claudia
Hammond and Gemma Lewis. “The Rest Test: Preliminary Findings from
a Large-Scale International Survey on Rest.” Department of
Psychology, Durham University. September 2016.)
According to The Rest Test global survey the most popular ways people rest are:
Reading: The unconscious ability to speed up and slow down the pace of our reading, to linger over the good bits or skip over the dull passages helps to make reading so absorbing and relaxing, according to Claudia Hammond. And, like music, it’s all about reading what you enjoy most.
Spending time in nature: Restoration theory is a psychological explanation why spending time in nature is restful. The more repetition there is in a landscape, the more we enjoy it. Researchers have also found people feel most rested when they are in nature for at least 30 minutes.
Being alone: Even extroverts rated time spent alone as more restful than time spent with other people even if they were less drawn to solitude than introverts.
Listening to music: The key to this is being able to select the music you listen to. Teenagers are best at using music successfully to improve their moods availing of a wider variety of music.
Doing nothing in particular: 10 per cent of respondents said they find rest of any kind so difficult as it made them feel guilty. With the so-called attention economy drawing us in 24/7, maybe simply lying on the couch after a busy day is more important than you think.
Having a good walk: 38 per cent of respondents selected walking as one of their top three restful activities. Another 16 per cent choose exercise and eight per cent said that running is restful.
Enjoying a hot bath: The benefits of bathing go back to Ancient Rome where public baths were a popular form of relaxation. Nowadays, hot baths are more of a private pleasure, except of course in luxurious spas. A hot bath an hour or two before bedtime lowers body temperature to induce sleepiness.
Daydreaming: Scientists often use the term mind wandering rather than day dreaming, describing it as the brain’s natural state. Often maligned (especially by teachers) daydreaming is now considered important for creativity, problem-solving and planning.
Watching TV: More women than men choose watching TV as one of their top three restful activities.
Mindfulness: It gives people an opportunity to quieten their minds and relax their bodies but perhaps its benefit also lies in the decision to put uninterrupted time aside for rest.
Relaxation Techniques
Relaxation techniques are a specific type of rest that have been shown to reduce stress. Symptoms of stress include shallow breath, increased heart rate, anxiety, and muscle tension. Examples of relaxation techniques include meditation, yoga, mindfulness, and guided imagery. These practices may minimize stress-related symptoms and help with health conditions as diverse as rheumatoid arthritic, depression, and epilepsy.
(Samantha K. Norelli, Ashley Long, and Jeffrey M. Krepps. “Relaxation Techniques.” StatPearls [Internet]. National Library of Medicine. September 06. 2021,)
Deep relaxation, like meditation, when practiced regularly not only relieves stress and anxiety, but also is shown to improve mood. Deep relaxation has many other potential benefits as well—it can decrease blood pressure, relieve pain, and improve your immune and cardiovascular systems.
(H, Benson, A. Casey, A. Dadoly A, et al., eds. “Stress Management: Approaches for preventing and reducing stress.” A Harvard Medical School Special Health Report. Boston, MA: Harvard Medical School; 2008.)
“Stress Management,” a Special Health Report from Harvard Medical School, is packed with strategies you can use to rein in the runaway changes unleashed by stress. These proven techniques can help you repel the consuming effects of stress and reclaim and restore inner peace. The report will show you how to elicit at will the relaxation response.
The report is the simple, calming opposite of the stress response. And it will introduce you to various methods of producing this response from focused breathing to tai chi and repetitive prayer. Stress Management will help you explore cognitive restructuring, a strategy to change the way you look at things. You ll find how to challenge negative thoughts and avoid jumping to conclusions.
And, if you ve heard about the power of visualization and meditation, but don't know where to start, the report will show you.
You can order print or ebook download of the publication by clicking here: https://www.health.harvard.edu/promotions/harvard-health-publications/stress-management-approaches-for-preventing-and-reducing-stress/order
(Prepared by the editors of Harvard Health Publications in consultation with Herbert Benson, M.D., Director Emeritus, Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, Mind/Body Medical Institute Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and Aggie Casey, M.S., R.N., Director, Cardiac Wellness Programs, Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, Associate in Medicine, Harvard Medical School. 47 pages. 2013)
Conclusion
My advice? Get some well-deserved rest. Even if you can't achieve the 42% rule, you need to unwind and recharge. It's so unfair to save sentiments for those so desperate in need of repose for the afterlife – “Rest in peace.” You are living, and that peace is a vital part of your well-being. Prioritize it and roll on … just like the lucky old sun.
“Dear Lord above,
can't you know I'm pining, tears all in my eyes
Send down that
cloud with a silver lining, lift me to Paradise”
Speaking of rest, Erma Bombeck wrote of the heavenly need in her book When God Created Mothers (1974). Allow me to end with this Bombeck excerpt. I think you may like it …
“When the Good Lord
was creating mothers, He was into His sixth day of 'overtime' when
the angel appeared and said. 'You're doing a lot of fiddling around
on this one.'
“And God said, 'Have you read the specs on
this order? She has to be completely washable, but not plastic. Have
180 moveable parts...all replaceable. Run on black coffee and
leftovers. Have a lap that disappears when she stands up. A kiss that
can cure anything from a broken leg to a disappointed love affair.
And six pairs of hands.'
“The angel shook her head slowly
and said. 'Six pairs of hands.... no way.'
“'It's not the
hands that are causing me problems,' God remarked, 'it's the three
pairs of eyes that mothers have to have.'
“'That's on the
standard model?' asked the angel. God nodded.
“'One pair
that sees through closed doors when she asks, “What are you kids
doing in there?” when she already knows. Another here in the back
of her head that sees what she shouldn't but what she has to know,
and of course the ones here in front that can look at a child when he
goofs up and say. “I understand and I love you” without so much
as uttering a word."\'
“'God,' said the angel touching
his sleeve gently, 'Get some rest tomorrow....'
“'I can't,'
said God, 'I'm so close to creating something so close to myself.
Already I have one who heals herself when she is sick...can feed a
family of six on one pound of hamburger...and can get a nine year old
to stand under a shower.'
“The angel circled the model of a
mother very slowly. 'It's too soft,' she sighed.
“'But
tough!' said God excitedly. 'You can imagine what this mother can do
or endure.'
“'Can it think?'
“'Not only can it
think, but it can reason and compromise,' said the Creator.
“Finally, the angel bent over and ran her finger across the
cheek.
“'There's a leak,' she pronounced. 'I told You that
You were trying to put too much into this model.'
“'It's
not a leak,' said the Lord, 'It's a tear.'
“'What's it
for?'
“'It's for joy, sadness, disappointment, pain,
loneliness, and pride.'
“'You are a genius,' said the
angel.”
“Somberly, God said, 'I didn't put it there.'”
(Erma Bombeck.. When God Created
Mothers. 1974.)
“Rogier van der Weyden, Detail from Descent from the Cross, 1435”
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