As I reflected with my Spiritual Director on rest, she recalled a podcast conversation on seven types of rest / rest deficiency.
Listening to Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith and Mia Freedman talking, their reflections resonated with my own reflections on lived experience with energy depletion. Most recently, I have been, as Dr Dalton-Smith did at the start of this journey of discovery, learning more about emotional exhaustion. I am particularly grateful for Spiritual Director and Professional Supervisor relationships for that unfiltered, honest, speaking of the truth of my experience in relationships (or these segmented encounters within those relationships) that require no more of me than that.
Of course there are going to be particular nuances for one living with chronically fatiguing conditions. ME (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) is the disregulation of energy production at a cellular level. I feel I have found good rhythm with social energy, understanding how solitude replenishes, and even company offers rest for my spirit, and doing well discerning what I need, when. Sensory exhaustion is another kind of energy I am newly learning about, and building more regular practices of noise cancelling ear buds and eye pillows; sometimes to simply be, sometimes to help me enter deeper contemplation to nurture my spirit. I am also learning that if I have a day with lower pain (there are no days without), I need to be disciplined about moving a little, gently, with dishes or laundry or a short walk, because that will offer emotional, spiritual, creative, mental, and even perhaps paradoxically, physical, rest.
I do appreciate hearing from others reflecting on energy and rest. To glean from their wisdom further insights as I build my habits and practices of restfulness in a society built on and for busyness.
Perhaps you, too will find some insight into your own energy use and replenishment, encouragement to pay attention to the activities that replenish energy, so as to include them in your everyday.
No Filter: When Sleep Isn’t Enough: The Seven Types of Rest.
It’s a big one for me, to learn that when physically resting, that moment is not necessarily the time for cognitive work. Just substituting one kind of energy expenditure for another is not resting.
Resting a busy mind will take more practice.
I continue to learn a lot from you, Sarah, about being gentle but firm about setting boundaries to help preserve health.
Thank you, Heather. There is quite some self-awareness and discernment to cultivate as we learn to recognise where our rest deficit might be, and what we can do to replenish different parts of our being. the paradoxes of rest not needing to be sleep, or even still; of movement that can be restful, even ‘still’ us in some way… much to learn, indeed.