Rest is an area in life we can all improve on! When people hear the word “rest” they often think of “sleep,” but rest is much more than that.

In this pre-recorded webinar below, I will be reviewing the 7 different types of rest based off of the book Sacred Rest: Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore Your Sanity by Saundra Dalton-Smith. Ultimately, this webinar will help you expand your perspective on what your body needs, teach you how to replenish the types of rest you may be lacking, and assist you in aligning your body’s needed rest to your priorities.

For the webinar slideshow, please click here to email me!

Don’t want to watch the video? No problem! Check out the webinar summary below to learn what was covered.

Webinar Summary:

What is rest? 

• Purposely reviving the parts of your life you regularly deplete.
• Speaking peace into the daily storms your mind, body, and spirit encounter.
• What rebuilds, renews, regenerates, and refreshes you.
• An opportunity to put back in order what has shifted you out of alignment.
• What forces you to slow down and fully experience.

What are the 7 types of rest?

1. Physical Rest

What is this all about? It’s not just sleep! Saundra Dalton-Smith says, “When your vessel of life is in a state of balance and movement serves you well.” When you are taking care of yourself so you are not hurting or aching. How do you know you are lacking physical rest? When you lack the energy to finish tasks, get sick often, have muscle tension, headaches, you depend on substances to give you energy and/or rest.

How do you replenish physical rest? Giving stillness purpose, developing a bedtime routine, stretching, skipping a cardio class for yoga, taking deep breaths. These may be simple but they are often forgotten resulting in a low physical rest.

2. Mental Rest

Mental rest is all about quieting the brain chatter and focusing on things that matter. When your mind is constantly buzzing, focusing on the past, overthinking, indecision, stuck in a loop, critiquing, fearing what-ifs, these are signs you are lacking mental rest.

It takes stepping away from the noisy world like turning off the T.V or phone and focusing on: meditation, silence, repeating a mantra or affirmation, closing your eyes, practicing being present to replenish your mental rest. Mental rest is about resting yourself before moving on.

3. Emotional Rest

What is emotional rest? It is the freedom to authentically express feelings and eliminating people-pleasing behaviors. You might be lacking emotional rest when your emotions are bubbled up, suppressed, overwhelmed, unresolved, and you feel like you are performing instead of being real.

Replenishing emotional rest looks like talking with a friend you can be authentic with, talking to a therapist, journaling, creating distance from toxic draining people.

4. Spiritual Rest

Spiritual rest is all about the capacity and sanctuary to connect with God or another higher power. You might be low in spiritual rest when you feel you are wandering or disconnected from something greater, lacking, or distrusting intuitive guidance, your soul feels empty or apathetic.

Ways to replenish your spiritual rest include prayer, practicing gratitude, volunteering, journaling, reading devotions, surrendering control. Spiritual rest is about mending broken places.

5. Social Rest

What is social rest? It is finding solace in our relationships and social interactions. It is time to renew your social rest when: we crave uplifting exchange from others, we feel isolated, lonely, disconnected, we cannot wait to be alone.

You can restore your social rest by catching up with an old friend who understands you, minimize superficial interactions, take time away from socializing and social media, turn on, or off zoom video. It’s all about knowing what you need, it may differ for introverts and extroverts.

6. Sensory Rest

Sensory rest is the ability and opportunity to control the amount and type of input to your sensory system. When your senses are overloaded by devices, fragrance, noise, you adversely react to sounds or touch you are lacking in sensory rest.

Ways to replenish your sensory system includes taking a digital detox, limiting screen time, sitting in silence, reducing lighting, or savoring a hot beverage. Simple things to think about but they can help you stay in the threshold of your sensory system.

7. Creative Rest

Creative rest is when you allow beauty to inspire awe and liberate/captivate wonder. You require creative rest when your brain is out of ideas, you lack inspiration, feel stuck, and find it difficult to enjoy nature.

Replenishing creative rest looks like going on a nature walk, doodling, coloring, reading books, keeping an idea notebook, listening to music, and free-writing.

Knowing the 7 types of rest can propel you to action. The next step is to connect rest to your priorities.

When connecting your priorities to rest, it’s important to know what type of rest you are lacking. After understanding this, you can connect dots. By replenishing your rest you can launch your priorities into action.

What areas of rest do you need to grow in? Let us know in the comments below!

If you have any questions about this webinar, would like to continue learning more, or are interested in receiving coaching, I would love to set up a free 30-minute Zoom call with you to talk further in-depth. If you’re interested, click here to email me. 

Looking forward to chatting soon!

– Megan Leasher