RESeT

Categories: Blog May 17, 2015

What is the most overlooked reset? When does the body repair itself? If you train with heavy weights, do your muscles grow while you train? If you seek to learn information, or you try to understand new concepts, when does the information get processed or assimilated?

The answers to all of these questions is "When you are at rest."

Rest is the period when the body can repair, learn, restore, retain, and reset. Growth and renewal happen when we rest. For example, your muscles repair themselves while you sleep, not while you train. Training is a stress that tears the muscles down. It damages them, so to speak. Rest, sleep, is the time of growth and repair. But let's look at a less physical example: Trying to learn a new concept is often a stress to the mind. It may be the act of silent thought, or meditation - a type of rest that allows the concept to be grasped. Certainly, the brain recovers and processes the previous day’s information while we sleep.

Rest is when we grow, or renew.

Not resting, is being in a state of unrest, or stress. Growth and repair do not happen when we are experiencing stress. Whether the stress is physical and deliberately imposed on ourselves, or the stress is mental from the chaos and fears that our jobs, family, relationships, and responsibilities create. Stress tears us down, it damages us, much like the stress of weight training breaks down muscle tissue.

There are physical stresses and mental stresses. They are both connected. Any emotional or mental stress you hold in your mind will and does express itself in your physical body. Tight muscles, poor posture, restless sleep, TMJ, high blood pressure, etc... Any type of stress becomes physical. Likewise, any physical stress becomes mental as well. Don't believe me? Train as heavy and as hard as you can every day of the week and see what happens to your mind and your thoughts. They too start to break down.

We need to rest from stress in order to be reset.

Rest is not a passive event. It is not being lazy and doing nothing. Rest is deliberate. To enter rest, you have to be intentional.

If sleep is the rest you need, you have to go to bed at a decent time and sleep long enough for your body to recover. You have to get rid of distractions that would keep you awake, or diminish the quality of your sleep.

If you train heavy and hard, you need intentional scheduled rest, sleep, and nutrition to be able to "rest and digest" so you can recover, repair and grow.

If peace is the rest you need, you have to soothe your mind. You have to quite the "noise" and fears inside your head. This allows your mind to enter a state of rest so that light can shine on the darkness of your fears.

Physically, to enter rest, we can PRESS RESET. Things like diaphragmatic breathing, rolling, rocking, SLEEPING and walking can help the body recover. They can help the body enter the "rest and digest" mode, the "recover and repair" mode. They can also soothe the mind as they require stillness in themselves. Though, we can still walk and rock with a racing mind, these resets do slow the mind and allow an entry point of peace.

Then, there is the more mentally deliberate approach as well. If the stress of work, bills, family, life and relationships seem to really be crushing your mind, you have to learn to enter rest by directing your mind with intentional, restful thoughts. You have to purposefully set your mind on things that are pure, things that are lovely, things that are good, things that are beautiful, and things that bring you joy.

AND, sometimes in order to enter rest, you have to simply “let go”. You may have to let go of the things you cannot control like the boy your daughter chooses to date. You may have to decide to let go of a bad relationship. Sometimes we try to hold on to things as if they are ours to bear, when they just aren’t. We need to learn how to be still and let go.

These purposeful thoughts and actions can attack the stressful thoughts in your mind and push them out of your head. They can help set you free so you can become renewed. Again, it is like shining a light in the darkness.

This is what rest is. It is light. It pushes away the darkness - the stressors - that would break us down and damage us. Kind of ironic if you think about it this way. We sleep when it is dark. That is like saying we are lights when we sleep, or when we rest.

Anyhooooo, rest is restorative, it is nourishing. But rest must be intentional. Rest takes deliberate effort, and perhaps a great deal of work. Yes, it is oxymoronic. But rest is where growth and repair happen. It is where we become restored. Rest is where we shine.

Learn how to rest.

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