There’s something I’d like to share with you that you might have heard of before but it really shifted the needle for me when it came to how I was tending to my needs around rest and that is the model that Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith calls the 7 types of rest

In her book, Sacred Rest: Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore Your Sanity.
Dalton-Smith presents the idea that we all need these seven different types of rest to feel fully alive and fully ourselves and that the antidote to constant doing, overwhelm and burnout isn’t just, a holiday or more sleep but it’s identifying the types of rest you need most and adopting small daily strategies to replenish them.

This model can really help you define where you need to find your rest, and how you can priotise tending to your needs and is something I come back to again and again, even daily - asking myself the question

‘What type of rest do I need today?’

The seven types of rest that Dalton Smith defined are:

1. PHYSICAL REST

There are 2 types of physical rest, active & passive.

Passive physical rest includes things like sleeping or napping, yoga nidra or meditation and of course the signs you need more physical rest is being tired or sleepy but also I’d say, before you decide that’s what you need, take a read of the next 6 types of rest because often we think physical rest is what we need but its actually something else entirely.

2. MENTAL REST

In our busy worlds we all have a lot on our minds. You might find it hard to switch off and fall asleep at night or you might feel irritable and forgetful from trying to remember all the things you have to do. You might also feel tired a lot of the time even though you’re getting your 8 hours in.

The thing is that most of the time when we think we’re resting we’re actually still stimulating our brains quite a bit.
Watching TV, looking at your phone and even reading might actually be adding to your tiredness if you need mental rest.

To achieve mental rest we need to allow the mind to be as inactive as possible and give our brains a break.

Examples of Mental Rest
Taking regular breaks away from your focused work, is a great way to incorporate regular mental rest into your day, it’s also helpful to schedule longer, less-thought-provoking activities within your schedule.

If you’re worried breaking up your workday will make you less productive, opting for an easy cleaning session over strenuous mental work (like taking a 20-minute break to tidy up your work area) can prove just as effective.

Other suggestions might be spending time in nature; taking a walk or gardening, or just making a cup of tea but staying away from your phone and too much mental stimulation.

3. SOCIAL REST

When we need social rest we might have been spending time with people who are pulling from our social energy or you might just be someone who gets tired by too much peopling (hello fellow introverts)

This doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re spending time with negative people it just means that maybe you don’t have capacity for social interaction in that moment or on that day.

You can often tell when you’re in need of social rest when you’re thinking , “ahh can I just get a moment for me?” or “I just need to be alone”

Examples of Social Rest
Saying no to an event or activity you genuinely don’t want to attend is an important form of social rest. Additionally, quality time spent with a close friend or family member with whom you feel completely comfortable or needs minimal energy from you is an excellent way to practice social rest. Social rest goes hand-in-hand with creating a proper support system throughout all aspects of life.

4. SPIRITUAL REST

The fourth type of rest is spiritual rest, which is the ability to connect beyond the physical and mental and feel a deep sense of belonging, love, acceptance and purpose.

Examples of spiritual rest
To receive spiritual rest, we want to encourage ourselves to connect to something greater than ourselves maybe through using prayer, meditation or community involvement to your daily routine.

5. SENSORY REST

Whether or not you are consciously aware of it or not your body & subconscious are constantly responding to sensory input.

It could be the of phones ringing in the background, the bright lights of your computer, the kids playing while you’re at your home office, your notifications going off on your phone or your email, all sorts of things

All of these inputs over time can be be really overwhelming and most of us respond to sensory overload by getting irritation, agitation, rage, or anger. If you’re in need of sensory rest you might feel calm and rested at the beginning of the day, but you can’t understand why at the end of the day you’re so agitated or irritable.

Examples of Sensory Rest
Sensory rest can include implementing a phone-free times into your day, as well as silencing distracting notifications.
To encourage less sensory stimulation spend time away from artificial light, too much noise, overwhelming smells and prioritise your physical comfort.

6. EMOTIONAL REST

Emotional rest specifically refers to the rest we experience when we feel like we can be real and authentic in how we share our feelings. Many of us carry quite a bit of emotional labor privately, in that we don’t share with people what we’re feeling or we people please and say what we think someone wants to hear. This can be really exhausting and deplete our reserves of emotional rest.

Where can you practice saying what’s on your heart a little more or who can help you share the burden of the emotional labour you might be carrying?

Examples of Emotional Rest
Sharing your thoughts with a trusted friend or family member, attending therapy, or even journaling are all examples of productive emotional rest. Emotional rest can also mean taking a step back from situations that are challenging emotionally, whether it be relationships with friends, family, and significant others, or a difficult aspect of your job.

7. CREATIVE REST

If you’re feeling deficient in this area you might find it challenging to be innovative or creative. Creative rest re-awakens the awe and wonder inside of us, we can experience creative rest in nature, experiencing the beauty of the outdoors or through art, music, and dance.

A lot of people over the pandemic used an excessive amount of creative energy because everything as we had known it changed. There was a lot of problem-solving required, which means there was a lot of creative energy required. And most of us, because we don’t see ourselves as creatives, never thought about how we would pour back into that energy well as we were draining it.

Examples of Creative Rest
Ways to engage in creative rest include activities spent in nature, whether it’s taking a short walk, or simply getting grounded to the earth beneath your feet. Participating in creative rest can allow the brain to restart and gain its creativity back and help you feel re-energised.

Where to Start

So, when I first learned about the 7 types of rest, I felt like I needed all seven but in reality I needed to begin with the place with the most deficit and for me, and the area that I needed most in the beginning was emotional rest.

Offering myself time and space to replenish my emotional rest gave me the resources and capacity to begin to attend to my rest in other areas. It also helped me begin to feel confident in my boundaries so that I didn’t begin to deplete my reserves again.

So if you’re looking at attending to how much rest you need I recommend picking one or two types that feel important or light up your curiosity & start implementing some of the tactics that can help you begin to experience those types of rest.

The restoration process has to be something you can do at almost any time without a lot of limitations. You don’t have to take a three-month holiday or some kind of big carved-out period of time. You need a gentle but diligent strategy of small things you can do today to start feeling better.

Small amounts of consistent restoration can really begin to shift the needle on how you feel and move you away from cumulative stress, overwhelm and burnout and towards ease and exmpowerment as you make steps towards being a well rested human.