The Marvelous Gift of Resting

BY Judith Petry. M.D.

Dr. Petry is a physician with a beautiful and gentle attitude toward life and those who suffer. If you never learn how to do any of our other stress busters, be sure to learn and practice this one! (She has also written a wonderful piece called The Body as Battlefield.)

Recently I had the opportunity to co-facilitate "The Healing Tools Course", a ten-week class sponsored by Vermont Healing Tools Project, for people living with critical and chronic illness. During the weekly 2-hour sessions, we teach personal tools for healing such as meditation, visualization, drawing, dream work, and much more. I get as much out of the course as any of the participants. During one of the mid-course sessions, we had been talking about the healing power of rest, and of sleep. A women taking the course, a nurse with breast cancer who had just completed a round of chemotherapy, related an incident from the previous week, an experience of resting. She, who never rests, decided that she would just sit in her favorite chair and look out at the view of her yard. She got settled comfortably into the chair, took some deep breaths, and gazed out the window. She watched the wind in the crab apple tree, the birds as they stopped in it's branches, the clouds passing by, the light changing as she sat there, doing nothing, for 4 hours!

As she spoke of this peaceful interlude of doing absolutely nothing except resting and described to us how wonderful it felt, I became increasingly agitated. I noticed a yearning sensation in my belly. My legs wanted to get up and walk me out of the room. Surprised by my response to her story, I looked more closely at how I was feeling. The sensation was one of abject longing for what she had described. My body begged to take me home to my own favorite chair and sit me down for an unnamed period of time and do nothing but rest. It felt like a small child hearing her first description of Disneyland and wanting with every part of herself to go there too. My body ached to be given the gift of rest that this woman had described.

I was barely able to wait until the meeting was over and I was on my way home. I could almost taste the deliciousness of sitting in a chair and watching the birds and the clouds and the wind, and doing nothing. As soon as I got in the house, ignoring the usual distractions of checking phone messages and e-mail, I went right to my favorite chair and sat down. I had the pure intention of resting, something I could never remember doing before. I didn't plan to read, or catch up on the newspapers, or organize what I would do tomorrow, or even think about making dinner. I just rested. I noticed things that had never caught my attention before: the way the wind moved the bird feeder and how the birds held on and seemed to ignore the gusts; the way the clouds raced across the sky and changed shape with such ease; the way the aspen leaves moved in a totally different way than the maple leaves. They were all sights I had seen before, but never with such clarity; never with such total absorption.

I understood for a time what it felt like to be fully present in the moment. And I felt so comfortable and peaceful. My cat, who had been sound asleep in another part of the house was somehow drawn to the serenity of my being at that time and climbed into my lap and went to sleep. I had no feeling of tiredness or sleepiness. I was fully awake, yet perfectly quiet and tranquil. I stayed that way for about 40 minutes before my mind began to judge my lack of activity as laziness. When I allowed it to draw me back into motion, I felt as if I had just awakened from a perfect night's sleep, fully refreshed and exceedingly grateful for the gift I had given myself. I have no doubt that if someone had measured the activity of my immune system prior to that rest, and again after it, there would have been a major improvement in it's health. I could feel the overall positive effect of that brief true rest period on my body, mind, and emotions.

It seems, in our frenetically active lives, that we never take time to just rest. If we do slow down, we usually fill the time with TV or reading, or surfing the net. Not that there is anything wrong with those activities, just that they do not allow us to truly decelerate, rest, become present to ourselves. It seems sometimes that the only way we are able or willing to rest without guilt is if we are sick or injured. I wonder, if we cultivated the habit of resting just to renew ourselves, if as much illness and injury would be necessary. As a famous Mexican proverb says, "How beautiful to do nothing and rest afterwards." Words to live by.

Tips on resting:

1. The Site: Choose a favorite, comfortable place with a view of nature. Turn off the phone, tell your family you cannot be interrupted for anything short of a life-or-death problem.
2. The Time: Give yourself a minimum of 30 minutes to rest, uninterrupted. Choose a time other than just before bedtime, when you are not physically exhausted and ready to fall asleep.
3. The Rest: Allow yourself to notice your surroundings, especially trees, flowers, sky, clouds, birds. Notice your thoughts. If you find yourself planning, or thinking of things you should be doing, smile at yourself and tuck the thoughts away until after the rest. Notice any tension in your body and invite it to melt away.
4. The Reentry: When you are done resting, thank yourself for the beauty of the experience. Stretch your arms and legs and take a deep breath and reenter your active world with a sense of rested renewal.

© Copyright 2002, Judith Petry, M.D.