Different forms of rest and why it's beneficial.
Like I've mentioned in another blog post, in the PAH 160 bedtime class, we were tasked with practicing a form of rest every single day for 15-20 minutes and keeping a journal to keep track of our experiences. In this post I will share a couple of my experiences from my rest journal as well as give some insight as to why resting is beneficial.
“Adequate rest helps your body activate its inner healing cascade and return to a state of homeostasis. This is when your body can repair and recover.” - Heather Cherry, Forbes Women https://www.forbes.com/sites/womensmedia/2021/01/15/the-benefits-of-resting-and-how-to-unplug-in-a-busy-world/?sh=4ce065bc2133
Relaxation as a Form of Rest
The Mental Health America website was a resource provided to us by our professor in her explanation of rest and the effects it is shown to have. Her biggest reasons are that rest improves creativity and well-being — which has been backed by research. After reading her explanation I went ahead and read up on the website to get some more insight.
"While there are no specific guidelines for how much relaxation a person should incorporate into their lifestyle, making time to unwind and enjoy life is an important part of maintaining good health. Deep relaxation, like meditation, when practiced regularly not only relieves stress and anxiety, but also is shown to improve mood. Deep relaxation has many other potential benefits as well—it can decrease blood pressure, relieve pain, and improve your immune and cardiovascular systems."
Napping as a Form of Rest
Another resource provided to us by our instructor was an article from the World Economic Forum. The article was titled "Here's why napping is good for you, according to science" and its content is just what it seems— the explanation to why napping is beneficial. This article also has references to specific studies that have found positive impacts from napping.
The article references a study from the journal Nature medicine (https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.4433) and sums it up by saying "that sleep deprivation has been linked to a whole range of health problems, including obesity, diabetes, stroke, heart attack and even death." Using this information to encourage naps to make up for sleep loss.
Another study done by NASA ( https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2005/03jun_naps) found that "the main cognitive function improved by napping was “working memory”. This is the ability to multitask – focusing attention on one task while holding other tasks in memory." I believe this study is relevant because it also happens to back up the memory consolidation theory for why humans sleep that Russell Foster speaks about in his TED Talk. Another blog post on this page.
My Rest Journal Post Examples
As a Chance to Reflect... Try to do this for yourself!
Today for my rest journal I decided to spend time in bed with my eyes closed. Normally when I go to sleep or decide to take a nap, I put the tv on for background sound even if I close my eyes and turn away from it right away. I just like the background noise of a show just like some prefer the sound of a white noise machine. However, because of the instructions to keep it technology free I kept my room sound free and left the tv off for today and before I fell asleep I took one of your rest suggestions and looked at the clouds until I drifted off to sleep. One of the clouds I was looking at resembled a t-rex/godzilla creature and it ended up being what I dreamed about during my nap. My dreams recently have been crazily realistic so when I woke up to my alarm I was dazed and confused for the first few seconds trying to decipher between dreamland and reality. I didn't notice too much of a difference with the tv off, but I do notice that right before I normally fall asleep I tune out the tv and can't even hear it so I assumed that's why I didn't notice a difference.
For the second rest journal entry I decided on combining a few of the rest practices again. I have my two favorite plants (a whale fin snake plant and a totem pole cactus) sitting in front of my window. So I did a little bit of both looking at my window and spending time focusing my plant. However, while doing these things the main resting habit I was attempting was connecting with my breath. Because of my ADD I have a hard time keeping a one track mind, so doing the other things helped my thoughts from wandering as I connected with my breathing. My therapist has recently gone over some breathing techniques to help with my anxiety so I felt like this was a really good time to practice them. I mentioned it in my last discussion as well but the methods I was practicing was the box method and the swing method. I really appreciated this type of active resting as opposed to the nap/ looking at clouds as I'm drifting off type of resting, I appreciate both styles as I feel like they are both really beneficial for different reasons but I just felt really relaxed from this and it didn't cause me to feel tired like I normally do after I nap.
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