Sweet summer rest 🏖️

Filling up with all 7 types of rest feels so good

Hello, dear friends,

How are you doing today, on the cusp of a new season?

We have been in the squeeze of early June here, with school wrapping up, Little League Baseball playoffs ending, and a trifecta of major events at work underway, including our big fundraiser of the year, the Gold Gala, to raise money for humanism in healthcare. I feel on the edge of relief, that the season is about to shift.

Summer, which starts on June 21 in the Northern Hemipshere, is about to arrive in my body, too.

Summer is my favorite season. I love the warmth. (My body loves the warmth. I know some bodies that don’t love the heat, that prefer the chill of winter, which is very interesting to me. I find the cold hard.)

I love any chance to go swimming, to immerse my body in water, to float, to feel weightless is more ways than one.

I love that sitting on sand staring at the ocean is a perfectly suitable form of recreation — in fact, a non-activity I organize and plan for and can persuade others to join in, too.

I love baseball, that slow sport of skill, strategy, statistics, and luck. (My beloved Orioles are having a stellar year after an eternity of losing seasons, which makes it extra fun.)

I love the laziness of summer, ingrained since childhood by form-free days and boredom without school.

The term “lazy” gets a bad rap, and there are probably think pieces about what it means or doesn’t mean in our modern American culture.

But what I mean to say here is that we all need time to just be in the world. More than time: permission, celebration, validation.

We need down time.

We need rest.

And not just physical rest, but all forms of rest. As I’ve written about before, Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith has described 7 kinds of rest:

7 different kinds of rest

• Physical rest — both passive (sleep, naps) and active (yoga, massage therapy, actions that help with the body’s circulation and flexibility)

• Mental rest — a break from the brain’s conversations and worries

• Sensory rest — an escape from the noise and visual cacophony of modern life

• Creative rest — “This type of rest is especially important for anyone who must solve problems or brainstorm new ideas,” writes Dr. Salton Smith — it’s a kind of refilling of the well. Visiting a museum, or a new neighborhood, a bookstore, or a trail in the woods could all be creative rest. You aren’t producing; you are soaking up an experience. Creative rest reminds me of Julia Cameron’s weekly “artist dates,” which involve going by yourself to something that interests you. “The Artist Date need not be overtly ‘artistic’— think mischief more than mastery,” she explains. “Artist Dates fire up the imagination. They spark whimsy. They encourage play.”

• Emotional rest — time to express yourself and your feelings openly, without people pleasing or worrying about how you might be judged

• Social rest — time to connect with friends who help you feel reenergized and restored

• Spiritual rest — All of these forms of rest are personal and individual, including this one. Dr. Dalton-Smith describes this “the ability to connect beyond the physical and mental and feel a deep sense of belonging, love, acceptance and purpose. To receive this, engage in something greater than yourself and add prayer, meditation or community involvement to your daily routine.”

I haven’t seen these 7 forms of rest in any study or validated, but I don’t know that it matters. I find this expansive framework enormously helpful because our language around rest and our body’s needs can be so limited. We can be sleeping 8 hours a night and still feel drained. Our bodies need sleep — and also need more than sleep. We feel this.

This framework acknowledges our wide human needs, which are not listed on a medical chart.

In summer, I find all 7 types of rest are easier. From simple schedule shifts, like sleeping in later because there is no school (more physical rest), to weather shifts (which mean I’m outside more, and getting more sensory rest and creative rest), to time on vacation with family (social rest), summer allows me more types of rest and more rest overall.

And when I am more rested, I feel happier and healthier.

I wonder:

What season gives you the most rest?

Do you sense these 7 types of rest, too?

Which one jumps out at you?

To our journeys,
Brianne