What Does It Mean to Really, Truly Rest?

“The most striking thing I noticed was from the Garmin Venu 2, which gives stress readings throughout the day based on your heart rate variability (HRV),” she told me recently. “You get short blue bars when you’re calm or at rest, and tall to very tall orange bars when you’re stressed or very stressed. When I was still testing positive, I thought that I was doing enough to ‘rest’ by not exercising and working from bed. But my stress remained high while doing so—I was still getting orange bars.” 

“I remember one day I took the afternoon off to nap, and I FINALLY got some blue,” she continued. “It was really interesting to me because I felt like because I was physically lying down, in bed, and not doing anything physical, that I was resting. But because my mind was still going, I clearly wasn’t—which shows the importance of letting your mind turn off if you want your body to calm down.” 

That’s the thing: It’s not enough to pay attention. If your body is telling you to rest, it’s important to act on that information. “Way before you hit that point of no return, your body’s already been giving you signals that it needs something,” Conlon says. Unfortunately, this is often when people tend to disregard or downplay the signs, she says: “They will ignore it and say, ‘Oh, whatever. Yeah, yeah, I think I’m getting sick.’ No—you know you’re getting sick.” 

“A lot of times people think, Oh, well let me just wait,” she continues. “Sometimes it’s difficult for people to listen to their bodies, because what their bodies are telling them, especially within the realm of rest, goes against what they think they should be doing.”  

So, what is your body telling you to do? Figuring that out will likely take some trial and error, but both Seltzer and Conlon say that doing way, way less than you normally would (and than you might think you can do) is a good place to start. “Cut what you’re doing by 99%,” Conlon says. That can feel really hard—and I say this from personal experience!—but when you’re sick or burned out, you just can’t expect life (or your body) to function like it normally would. That’s kind of the whole definition of going through a Bad Time; things are going to look different because things are different. The trash might pile up, or you might miss a deadline at work, or your kid might have to skip a birthday party because you’re not able to take them. This stuff happens, and it’s not a moral failing on your part if it does.  

If you’re struggling to do less, try to be super honest with yourself about how dire the potential consequences will actually be if you cancel plans and spend the day in bed. “There are some tangibles, like fear of job loss or responsibilities—childcare or an aging parent or a pet,” Conlon says. “There are just so many things that we can hold onto and say, ‘No, no, no, I really need to push through this.’” But, she says, there might also be a psychological aspect informed by your values and the way you’ve internalized certain cultural or societal norms. “If you grew up in an environment where rest was seen as something for lazy people, or if it was seen as something that was not productive, then the thought of rest can trigger anxiety,” she says. “You can see how trying to rest, even though your body is begging you for it, makes you want to crawl out of your skin.”