Rest is radical

This week’s Gemini Full Moon rises in the run-up to the Winter Solstice, when the day in northern climes is as short and the night as long as they get each year. (Salutations to readers in the Southern Hemisphere who experience the exact opposite—I jealously hope you’re enjoying your warm, sunlit, long summer evenings.) As a result, the Gemini Full Moon has traditionally become known up north as the Cold Moon. We expect temperatures to plummet as winter finally triumphs over any late autumnal mild weather. Deciduous trees have largely lost their leaves; flora and fauna have shut up shop for dormancy or hibernation. Perhaps humans should follow suit: retire to our caves to sleep deeply in what warmth can be found before returning rested and revitalised to our modern world hunting and gathering come spring. We’d arguably do less harm to our planet and each other.

Instead, the busy festive season is soon upon us, signalled in Asian communities worldwide by Diwali in late November; into December with any number of global pagan midwinter festivals on solstice night; Christian observance of the Christmas festival just after, followed by Hanukkah in Jewish households. The candlelit celebrations’ common theme is the triumph of light over darkness, an honouring of life overcoming death, of rebirth and renewal as the darkest, longest night is marked and passed.

Alongside their own native midwinter festivities, there aren’t many cultures or societies that aren’t tickled by the long, tinselled tentacles of Christmas—quite probably the most ubiquitous annual festival of consumerism and excess ever conceived. The Cold Moon will see most of us doing our fair share of partying in between running ourselves ragged to make Christmas a memorable experience for family and friends. There are presents to buy, trees to be dressed, halls to be decked, and poultry or vegan nut roasts to be stuffed, while still attending to regular employment and domestic responsibilities, quite often infusing proceedings with stress and anxiety. Ironically, at a time of year when the natural world is slowing down toward hibernation, the last thing most of us are considering is rest.

Yet rest is vital to our well-being. Clinical studies have shown without exception that regular sleep patterns are central to human health. Nearly half of people in the UK have trouble sleeping, with around a third of adults sleeping less than seven hours each night. Without enough sleep, our bodies begin to accumulate sleep debt.

This sleep debt is very difficult to repay—it grows over time and takes a significant toll on mental and physical health. Initially sleep deprivation has been shown to impair mental capacity and physical coordination, increase mood swings, compromise our immune systems, and cause weight gain, but long-term increases the likelihood of inflammation, obesity, hormone imbalances, mental health conditions, diabetes, dementia, heart disease, and certain types of cancer. Without being alarmist, there’s a strong case for all adults to ensure they achieve an unbroken 7-8 hours of sleep if we want to stay happy and healthy. (I include a simple exercise to help you get to sleep at the end of this article.)

Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast.

(William Shakespeare)

But sleep isn’t the only mode of rest available. A vast amount of our daily energy is expended by the mind and its associated emotional baggage. Worry, anger, frustration, disappointment, fear, and distress all swallow up huge amounts of our energetic mental and emotional reserves. In employing practices to rest the mind while awake, we can alleviate some of the emotional outlay that takes its toll, very tangibly, on our immediate overall health.

As a teacher of mindfulness in schools, I am used to regularly lauding the benefits of simple breathing exercises to help students calm their minds in order to relax, relieve anxiety, and improve their sleep. When I ask students what the mind consists of, they usually suggest the brain, blood, cells, or electrons, but the mind (and consciousness) largely remains a mystery to science. Despite the most advanced physiological, psychological, and philosophical research, the fundamental workings of the mind elude us. There is a correlation to activity in the brain, but that organ itself cannot be called the mind. Mind appears to operate materially from the nonmaterial; origin unknown. I point out to students that the human mind actually appears to be inextricably linked to the immaterial realm of thought. It’s full of them—thoughts that elicit emotion, expression, and behaviour. In effect, what we think (the mind) determines what we say and do and defines the parameters of our sense of self.

In the simple practice of concentrating solely on the physical sensations of breathing, mindfulness allows the busy thoughts in the mind to slow down, diminish in intensity, and, after a bit of concerted exercise, occasionally stop. After periods of deep meditation, practitioners report experiencing states of being beyond thought which bring a profound sense of peace. In concentrated silent awareness, the mind finds much-needed rest, which spreads to the body through the consciousness animating our entire being. It’s not sleep, but what’s not to like?

Rest is radical. It’s a radical act of self-love and resistance against a culture that equates busyness with worth. Rest allows us to reconnect with our true selves, align with our natural rhythms, and show up more fully in our work and lives. Rest is not a luxury; it’s a necessity.

(Rebecca Douglas)

Many wisdom traditions suggest that the consciousness animating our whole being is inextricably linked to the consciousness coursing through everything else in existence, from the most basic cell structure to the most complex organisms, such as the human brain; from the tiniest grain of sand to the magnificent enormity of galaxies. The wisdom seems to be backed by science as developments in quantum physics explore evidence of objects existing in multiple states at once, atoms holding the capacity to interact instantaneously across vast distances.

As the awesome force of the natural world prepares to rest at the onset of winter, there is a deeply connected, inherent intelligence in our cells calling for the same. That connection has been written into our genes over hundreds of thousands of years. Humanity’s relatively recent divorce from that natural heritage probably gained momentum with the advent of readily available artificial light—the candle. As soon as humanity’s ingenuity defeated the restrictions of darkness, our world has completely transformed. In a matter of three centuries, the industrialisation of human endeavour has cast us as constantly mobilised, dehumanised, measurable units of labour and productivity. If we’re not doing something, we must be lazy. Our natural circadian rhythms have been forced out of whack, and we suffer as a result. Modern living is busy, busy, busy, day and night, 24/7—even our downtime is dominated by the light from screens we carry in our pockets. Is it any wonder so many of us struggle to sleep?

Activity and rest are two vital aspects of life. To find a balance in them is a skill in itself. Wisdom is knowing when to have rest, when to have activity, and how much of each to have. Finding them in each other—activity in rest and rest in activity—is the ultimate freedom.

(Sri Sri Ravi Shankar)

In her book, Rest Is Resistence: A Manifesto, the American author, artist, and activist, Tricia Hersey, maintains that humans have been indoctrinated against the idea of rest. She suggests that modern living, the current iteration of capitalist ideology historically forged on colonial plantations the world over, has “been lying and guiding us all blindly to urgent and unsustainable fantasies. We have replaced our inherent self-esteem with toxic productivity.” She continues,” One day I hope we can all reprogram from the lie that rest, silence, and pausing is a luxury and privilege. It is not! Social systems manipulated you to believe it is true.

The Rest Is Resistance framework also does not believe in the toxic idea that we are resting to recharge and rejuvenate so we can be prepared to give more output to capitalism. What we have internalised as productivity has been informed by a capitalist, ableist, patriarchal system. Our drive and obsession to always be in a state of 'productivity' leads us to the path of exhaustion, guilt, and shame. We falsely believe we are not doing enough and that we must always be guiding our lives toward more labor. The distinction that must be repeated as many times as necessary is this: We are not resting to be productive. We are resting simply because it is our divine right to do so.”

Ultimately, rest is an act of resistance against the siren calls of our idols to work for them. By stopping, we take up arms against the great Western gods of achievement, money, and self-determination.

(Adam Mabry)

Novelist, poet, cultural critic, and farmer, Wendell Berry chimes in from his book Jayber Crow in 2000 bemoaning the commodification of R&R as a ‘lifestyle’ product into which we slavishly buy, “On pretty weekends in the summer, this riverbank is the very verge of the modern world. It is a seat in the front row, you might say. On those weekends, the river is disquieted from morning to night by people resting from their work.

This resting involves travelling at great speed, first on the road and then on the river. The people are in an emergency to relax. They long for the peace and quiet of the great outdoors. Their eyes are hungry for the scenes of nature. They go very fast in their boats. They stir the river like a spoon in a cup of coffee. They play their radios loud enough to hear above the noise of their motors. They look neither left nor right. They don't slow down for—or maybe even see—an old man in a rowboat raising his lines...

I watch, and I wonder, and I think. I think of the old slavery and of the way The Economy has now improved upon it. The new slavery has improved upon the old by giving the new slaves the illusion that they are free. The economy does not take people's freedom by force, which would be against its principles, for it is very humane. It buys their freedom, pays for it, and then persuades its money back again with shoddy goods and the promise of freedom.”

I realise most readers of this article will be doing so on a screen provided by their modern lifestyle, but nonetheless I have a suggestion/challenge for those interested in a practical exploration of rest over the festive season. Modern living affords most of us an annual winter break from work routines in which we are encouraged to indulge our most exaggerated consumer desires. My suggestion, heretical as it may seem, is to allocate that holiday period entirely to rest. Woahh there! What about the kids; the parents; the tree and decor; the presents; the box sets; the travel mileage; the endless mince pies?

I believe there is a way to do this by respectfully downing the tools of societal and familial expectation in favour of unlimited downtime. This needn’t be an imposition on others in your tribe; in fact, I am fairly convinced this gentle revolution will open up more quality time to be shared while resting. The ground rules just need to be very clearly communicated to those sharing your space: that those exploring the desire to rest are taking it seriously and refusing to engage with societal norms designed to fuck us over.

Our parents will naturally be a lost cause, so I wouldn’t waste energy trying to explain; however, kids are pretty flexible in my experience and can understand new paradigms quite quickly with the recompense of mutually engaged parent time, happy to curl up with a book if you take the time to enjoy reading it to them. There are puzzles. There are games to play. There are carols and songs to sing together. There are walks in nature. There is food and drink to share over hours at the table. There is quiet. There is conversation, intimacy, and sensuality. There is contemplation. There are daydreams. There is time, loads of time.

There are no rules to impose upon anyone else, but participants in the rest revolution will switch their phones off... and leave them off. They will not scroll. They will not read or reply to email. They will not engage with social media. They will use devices solely to communicate with loved ones in order to put minds at rest. They will not watch any screens. They will nap advisedly in the middle of the day. They will sleep at night. They will allow rooms to darken and grow quiet. In this period, beginning with the festival of lights and now under a Cold Moon, advocates for rest might light candles rather than electric bulbs, gratefully saluting with each flame the generations before us that lived sustainably within their means, without laying the planet to waste. There is much to learn from their enduring example.

Love turns work into rest.

(Teresa of Avila)

Yet this no ‘Bah! Humbug!’ anti Christmas manifesto. Rest revolutionaries will still revel in giving loving generous gifts, but none more loving or generous than that of rest to themselves. In the gift of rest, we risk reclaiming our humanity, our civility, our own value structure, and time from the clutches of those with a financial interest in controlling how we think and behave across the planet. Rest is the key signature of an imminent revolution in mind, body, and spirit and a risk well worth taking for the benefit of All.

We must believe we are worthy of rest. We don’t have to earn it. It is our birthright. it is one of our most ancient and primal needs.

(Tricia Hersey)

A simple guide to help you fall asleep

What follows is the mindfulness equivalent of the ‘counting sheep’ method often recommended by well-meaning parents to encourage their kids to drop off to sleep. Instead of counting sheep leaping over hurdles, we count breath cycles. A full breath cycle is an in-breath followed by an out-breath, and this exercise involves counting those cycles to the exclusion of distracting thoughts as we calm our minds before sleep. Here’s a quick ‘How to’ :

Switch off the devices at least an hour before bedtime. No screen time or telly in that final hour before sleep.
Get ready for bed as usual, shower or wash, and do your teeth.
Sit quietly on a chair near your bed with a straight back.
Close your eyes and concentrate solely on your breathing until your thoughts start to slow down. Don't beat yourself up if uncontrolled thoughts keep distracting you; it’s not a problem; just acknowledge those thoughts, then swiftly return your concentration to the breath.
Do this for at least a couple of minutes.
When you feel ready, retire to your bed, get under the covers, and make yourself comfortable. With your head on the pillow, focus your attention once again on the breath...quite literally the physical sensations of breathing in and out and only this.
Begin to count your breath cycles.
For every complete breath cycle of inbreath and outbreath without a distracting thought, you count 1.
Initially you might count to two or three breath cycles before a distracting thought arises, but when it does, don’t fret!
Simply return your attention to the breath and begin the counting process all over again starting from 1.
If you’re disciplined and honest with the process, the reality is that you’ll go through a few unsuccessful cycles before counting to 4. You won’t count to 5 because you’ll actually be asleep.