The 7 types of rest
Welcome to my restful journey 😌
Hi all! Very excited to see new followers joining in the fun every week. We won’t let you down 🫡
A friend was telling me recently about the pottery course she was doing in pursuit of what she called ‘creative rest’. My interest was piqued - creative rest, what a curious (oxymoronic?) phrase.
She went on to tell me about this theory that there are in fact seven kinds of ‘rest’, and that we can apply this framework to help us understand why we’re tired and how to get more energy in the same way you figure out why you’re sick before prescribing a treatment.
This is both interesting, appealing and slightly overwhelming to me.
Overwhelming because I really don’t want to end up with a to-do list of types of restful activities that I’ll never get to
Interesting because it does make sense to me that I haven’t always found it to be true that doing less and laying around more has helped me feel more energised of a weekend
And appealing because I love optimising anything in my life and recovery is an area I have struggled with for a while.
So with that in mind I’ve decided to go on a kind of rest safari, where I learn and sample different types of rest (that’s how safari’s work yes?) and see what kind of impact it has on my energy, if any.
For posterity, the seven kinds of rest are:
Physical rest
Mental rest
Emotional rest
Social rest
Spiritual rest
Creative rest
Sensory rest
I have gone wayyyy too deep on each of these to cover them all in one post and I actually did a rest quiz 🤠 to diagnose how rested I am in each category and it scored me lowest on ‘creative rest’, so let’s start there!
Wtf is creative rest?
According to the creator of the 7 types of rest Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith, creative rest refers to…
“The experience of allowing beauty to inspire awe and liberate wonder”
Dalton-Smith advises we should look to “build sabbaticals into your life”. These sabbaticals don’t need to be month-long journeys, they can simply be a 30 minute break from the grind (and probably away from screens). This could be going to an art gallery, hiking in nature, whateverrr.
She says that this type of rest can spark new ideas, enhance problem-solving skills, and bring joy.
What’s the go with awe?
To dig a little deeper into this concept, because there is truly a dearth of valuable info online about creative rest specifically, it really is all about spending time doing things that invoke the emotion of awe - and THAT is something super interesting.
Dacher Keltner, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, has extensively studied awe and its effects on human well-being.
In his research, Keltner identifies eight “wonders of life” that commonly elicit awe.
1. Moral Beauty: Acts of kindness, courage, or selflessness.
E.g. witnessing someone stand up for a stranger, care for a vulnerable person, or risk something for the greater good.
2. Nature: The vastness, complexity, and majesty of the natural world.
E.g. a mountain range, ocean waves, a thunderstorm, the stars, or even a beautiful flower.
3. Collective Effervescence (shared movement) (HELLO RUNNERS!!!!): The awe that arises from moving in unison with others or being part of a collective experience.
E.g. a music festival crowd, a protest march, or a sports game
4. Music: Powerful emotional responses to sound, harmony, rhythm, and melody.
E.g. a moving symphony, a live performance, or a song that resonates deeply with your emotions.
5. Visual Art: Awe inspired by artistic expression through visual mediums.
E.g. a painting, sculpture, or installation that takes your breath away or shifts your perspective.
6. Spiritual or Religious Experience: Feelings of connection to something sacred, eternal, or transcendent.
E.g. prayer, meditation, sacred rituals, or time spent in a place of worship.
7. Big Ideas: The wonder sparked by profound intellectual or philosophical insights.
E.g. learning about the theory of relativity, reading an ancient text, or contemplating the vastness of the universe.
8. Life and Death: Moments tied to the beginning or end of life.
E.g. the birth of a child, being present at a deathbed, or reflecting on the fragility of life.
Keltner's studies suggest that experiencing awe can have tangible health benefits, including reduced stress and inflammation, and improved cardiovascular health.
The research indicates awe helps deactivate the default mode network: the part of your brain sometimes knows as your ‘ego’ that ticks along when you are distracted from the world around you (it’s also the network associated with anxiety).
“Awe quiets that,” he says.
“There’s suggestive evidence that awe activates oxytocin release, which makes you feel more cooperative and connected. Some kinds of awe deactivate the amygdala, which is a threat-related region of the brain.”
To me awe is sounding more and more like something that anchors you to feeling present aka the antithesis of doom scrolling and loooord knows we could all do with a bit more of that.
How I scored on creative rest
I scored 30 on this which apparently means ‘You are feeling the effects of your lack of rest and need a change.’
When I reflect on this, I do feel like I need more space in my head.
I think of all the types of awe above, aside from the daily group run which I will heretofore label ‘collective effervescence’, the one that personally does the job for me the most is nature.
One of the best things I’ve ever done in my life was hiking the John Muir Trail nearly 2 years ago. 350kms of hiking through some of the most insane wilderness with two of my best friends and not another soul in sight (literally, we saw almost no one for those weeks).
Awe was the most common emotion I felt on that hike.
The most incredible mountains, rivers swelling and bursting their banks, mind blowing avalanche snow fields, sunrises and sunsets that took over the entire sky and everything beneath it, swims in half frozen lakes, night skies that felt infinite.
I can’t count how many times my friends and I would look around us and then at each other, lost for words.
And you know what’s interesting - my whole life unfolded to me in a way that it never had before on that hike. I saw what I wanted with a clarity that had evaded me in the bustle of the grind. It’s actually also where the inchoate ideas that would become Cheeky Run Club took hold.
I was bursting with ideas after this hike; I’ve never felt that way before. All I wanted to do was write or make something of my own, or make my life happen. And that is a really specific kind of energy that you can’t top up just by sleeping.
And it’s funny because I’ve been on plenty of holidays, sure, but the classic Europe trip rarely leaves me brimming with new ideas in the same way.
Obviously getting out for hikes that leave me uncontactable in the wilderness for weeks on end aren’t always an option, but I have reflected on how I can build in more regular doses of awe into my weeks:
Change my cycle route home from work to take the long route along the river rather than along a very busy road that goes through the guts of Melbourne
Trail runs
Overnight hikes/camping
Sit spot - chat GPT told me about this one - it says ‘Choose one outdoor spot to sit quietly for 5 minutes a few times a week. Over time, you’ll start to notice patterns—birds returning, plants blooming, insects appearing.’
Gardening & growing things
Would love to hear if anyone else has good ideas to share for creative rest!!
🧡 Phoebe
You may have come across it in your research, but Julia Baird's book Phosphorescence is all about the practice of finding 'awe'!