Rest - Part 2 - It takes work

The first thing I've come to discover about rest is counter-intuitive.

It takes work to rest.

Resting isn't just stopping activity.

At least, the kind of rest that actually restores (notice how the word restore has "rest" in it? Oddly I never had until recently) seems very often to involve some kind of practice or activity that engages us differently than our usual work does. If we think about rest as being a fundamental biological need, it logically follows that obtaining it will often require an effort on our part. To feed ourselves, to find and maintain adequate shelter, to stay close and sustained by our tribe, even to love and be loved; they all require effort or work on our part.

And maybe this is one of the reasons why so many of us crash, burn-out, or struggle so hard with resting: by the time we choose to rest, we're already too exhausted to engage in the kinds of things we need to do to rest.

It's a little like depression. Most people caught in a full depressive episode lack the energy to engage in the activities that will help them get out of the depression. That's often why they're stuck and need some kind of intervention beyond their own efforts and knowledge.

When I first started noticing this exhaustion I've been having, I knew I needed to get more physical exercise. But when you're trying to drag your tired butt off the couch to work out, you experience that counter-intuitive reality about rest and effort. It just seems so natural when you're tired to lay on the couch. The idea of intense effort seems so impossible that most us choose to wait until we have more energy to exercise....and hence we have a multi-billion dollar gym industry that makes its money off unused gym memberships.

So if rest takes work, and that's not only counter-intuitive, but requires us to act with energy we don't seem to have, how do overcome this hurdle?

I think the truth is we must establish rhythms in our life that draw us into the kinds of activity we need for restoration. I've know this be true from a few sources:

1) The most successful way of helping people out of depression is by developing routines of activity that push them over the hurdle of low energy and motivation.
2) The people I know who are the most rested, calm, purposeful, and present in their lives all have established routines and rhythms that they stick to. Rather than reinventing the wheel, I started looking at people's lives who emulate restfulness.
3) The great wisdom traditions all teach and have elaborate rituals (rhythmic practices) to assist disciples in their path of learning and transformation.
4) There is an overwhelming importance placed on rhythms, particularly Sabbath rest, in God's instructions to His people in the Hebrew scriptures. Some of the endless detail of the rituals and rhythms is what makes the Torah such a difficult read at times. (I'll get back to Sabbath in future posts)
5) Our biology is rhythmic. From sleep-wake cycles, to heart beats, and the variety of homeostatic mechanisms that establish balance in our bodies, there are rhythms that seem crucial to human flourishing.

The thing is, all this talk about routines and rhythm and ritual, about practices woven into the fabric of lives is a pretty counter-cultural way of thinking. It's not that our culture doesn't have rituals or rhythms, or even sort of liturgies. But most of them are based on the activities of consumption and production. Holidays are about shopping and eating. Sometimes we add obligatory closeness with family, although even this is mostly a nostalgic experience to be consumed. Our leisure activities, which our culture confuses with resting, are expressions of the dominant modes of consumption and production. (much more on this in later posts)

But what if you or I made it a regularly scheduled practice to engage in the kinds of activities that bring about restoration?

What are the practices that bring about restoration? Are they are certain set of things laid out for all time and people? Or, are the practices fundamentally about the mind-set (or heart-set) that we have when entering those practices?

And while establishing practices, routines and rhythms also requires work I suspect that once established they become less strenuous and helps enter into restorative activity with less dependency on personal willpower or discipline. Even if it requires us to swim upstream in current of our culture, perhaps theses routines will offer us the venue to be practiced in art of resting, and eventually require less effort in our attempts to rest.