EPI 67 - The Habit of Rest

Hey loves, welcome back to The Habit Within. In this episode, I'm coming to you from Puerto Morelos, Mexico—on a trip that unexpectedly became one of the most restful experiences I’ve ever had with my family. And it inspired today’s topic: the habit of rest.

Rest hasn’t always come easy to me. But over time, I’ve learned that rest is more than just not working—it's about allowing your body and nervous system to truly be. In this episode, I share how I moved from resisting rest to welcoming it as a healing, essential part of my everyday rhythm.

Together we’ll explore:

• Why rest is not a luxury—it’s a requirement for vitality
• How your body remembers rest just like it remembers stress
• The idea of creating a “rest cue” or ritual to train your body to relax
• 5 simple, powerful ways to weave rest into your daily life (without booking a trip)
• How stillness supports your creativity, relationships, and healing
• The importance of labeling rest while you’re in it so your body remembers how to return

Plus, I share some personal reflections from years of returning to the same resort, and how my body began to associate it with deep relaxation. And the best part? You don’t have to fly to Mexico to access this feeling.

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 🎧 Don't miss Courtney Rolfe's session! She studied alongside Deb Dana (Polyvagal Theory) and breaks down the parasympathetic nervous system in such an approachable way.

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Transcript

(0:00 - 2:25)

And today I want to talk about something that has always been actually really hard for me, and it is rest. And I'm talking about real rest, like rest to rest, where you don't do anything else. You're not scrolling your phone, you're not reading your Kindle, you're not making a list of your to-dos, just resting.

So literally like doing nothing. Welcome to The Habit Within. This podcast is for high achieving women, 35 and older, who seem to have it all together, but feel like they're constantly running on fumes, struggling to balance it all, and losing sight of the woman they used to be.

I'm Camille Kinsler, a former physician assistant turned transformational coach, blending science, positive psychology, and a metaphysical approach to habits, health, and vitality. If you've ever asked yourself, why am I so exhausted even after a full night's sleep? Or, I feel like I'm juggling so much, but I'm just barely keeping my head above water. You are in the right place.

Each week, we'll explore the real reasons behind feeling overwhelmed, trapped in the cycle of overworking, and constantly running low on energy, and how to break free from the patterns keeping you stuck in survival mode. It's time to stop living on autopilot, and to start feeling like yourself again. Let's dive in.

Hello, dear ones. I hope this audio comes out okay. I am in Puerto Morelos, Mexico with my family, and I'll tell you a little bit more about that because it weaves into today's topic, and it is all about the habit of rest.

So, hello, friends. Welcome back to The Habit Within. This is Camille Kinsler, your host, and today I want to talk about something that is always been actually really hard for me, and it is rest.

And I'm talking about real rest, like rest to rest, where you don't do anything else. You're not scrolling your phone. You're not reading your Kindle.

You're not making a list of your to-dos. Just resting. So, literally like doing nothing.

But before we dive into kind of the science behind it, and your nervous system, and why it's so important to rest, I want to give you a little bit of a snapshot of what is going on in my life right now. I am in, like I said, Mexico. I'm sitting in this beautiful resort.

(2:25 - 4:17)

I'm actually tucked away in this corner near the curtains of the window. It's really windy outside, so you might hear some of the windowpanes shaking occasionally. But my husband and my two boys are in the other room.

They're playing games, and they're laughing, and it's really beautiful because what I noticed, and what I recognized, is that this is kind of the first time that it's been a truly relaxing family vacation. And I don't think it has to do with them being older, although I think that's a really important aspect of it. But there's more to it.

So, just to give you a little backdrop, a little background into where we are and why we are here. First, I just want to say, if you would have asked me 10 years ago if I saw myself as a resort person, so we're at a resort in Mexico, then I would have said, like, absolutely not. My husband and I prefer the adventurous types of vacations where we're backpacking, and camping, and exploring new towns, and really diving into the culture, not the resort life.

That the resort life just felt too insulated, that it was fake and fabricated. And yeah, what do you do? Just sit by the pool all day, and read a book, and do nothing? Is that really a thing? Do people really do that? Well, okay, so now eight years have gone by, and this is our eighth year coming to this resort. And I have to say that, yes, it is a thing.

And yes, it is absolutely magnificent. So, we started coming here about seven or eight years ago, and it was gifted to us by my late mother-in-law. She bought this timeshare, and she kept extending the contracts.

(4:17 - 5:22)

I think there's still a 20-year contract on this resort. And I always joke with my husband, I'm like, oh my gosh, we're going to be coming here when we're 70. Like, what? It's so crazy to think about.

And yeah, we also used to joke about like, how could somebody really have so many points, right? Because they would just, every time they came back, they would keep buying points, they would keep extending the contract. And we actually, as a family, we're like, do we need to have an intervention, y'all? But now, I honestly feel like it was part of her plan, part of her legacy, that she could leave this behind to her children to, well, and her current children, to really have this opportunity to really talk away. And when we were gifted this seven to eight years ago, she had also gifted it with a week of taking care of the kids.

So, she was like, you get a week away once per year without the kids. And luckily, my parents have been extremely generous with their time as well. So, we do get a little bit more than that.

(5:22 - 5:51)

So, we've brought the kids here before, but this is only the second time that they've been here with us. Like I said, we usually come by ourselves. But the last time they were here, my youngest was five.

So, that still meant that there was more of this constant parental engagement, pool time, snacks, meltdown, snap, naps, transitions, you know, the drill. But now, my oldest is 13. So, he is like totally on board with hanging out with my youngest, who is now 10, just turned 10.

(5:52 - 7:08)

So, they're like kicking it, going around together, having the best time. They're playing, exploring, connecting with their kids. And one thing that was really unexpected when I got here, because I was like, okay, it's probably going to be a different kind of vacation and I won't be as relaxed.

I was wrong. Like I immediately dropped into this deep relaxation. Hold with me here.

I'll tell you why. But I dropped in really quickly. And I was really surprised by how fast my body just knew what to do.

And that's what I want to talk about today, is how rest can become a habit, and how we really need to consider it a habit, how your body can remember peace, just like it remembers stress and anger and all the other things. And so, it's so important to cultivate the state of rest, that it's so crucial for your health and your creativity, your relationships, your bonding, and your overall vitality. So, when we think about habits, right, most of us always think about things that we do, about waking up early, meal prepping to eat healthy, journaling, working out, all the things.

(7:08 - 7:51)

But what about the habit of being? And I know I talk about this in my podcast, but it's so like the B-E-I-N-G. What about the habit of being? And that is really where this idea of rest comes in. Because when we rest, when we do nothing, we are just being, we're not doing, and we're human beings.

And so, I think it's beautiful to think of it this way. I mean, we know the truth is that everything gets encoded in our bodies, that our bodies, our muscles have memories, and the wiring of our brain creates these memories, but our body also contains these memories as well. And so, the pace that we live becomes a habit.

(7:51 - 9:02)

Have you ever noticed that it's hard to unwind when you go on vacation? It typically takes me like two or three days to unwind when we go on vacation, because I'm so used to going to the bus. The tension that we hold is just in our body, and we need to release that in order to fully relax. So, what we do day in and day out becomes so familiar.

Your stress can feel like home, but let's just go ahead and let's try to reframe this and say that rest can feel like home too. That rest, instead of feeling foreign and uncomfortable, that is something that we can really tune into and become more comfortable with. But just like you can train your body to run a mile or eat more vegetables or go to bed like at nine o'clock every night, you can train your body to rest and to really drop into that parasympathetic nervous system, that rest and digest state.

This is the state where the healing happens. That's why in yoga and Shavasana, they say that that's the absolute most important pose, because that's where the true healing and integration and understanding of how life works occurs. That's where creativity blooms.

(9:02 - 9:38)

That's where there's more love and forgiveness and clarity in life. So, when you truly rest, when you don't distract yourself or numb yourself, that rest, aka do nothing, your body gets the signal that it's safe. Right? That it's safe.

And that's when your cells repair. That's when you stop chasing the magic pill, the next shiny thing, the thing that will make you, quote unquote, better, look better, be smarter, feel healthier. That's when you can actually start to receive.

(9:39 - 13:38)

When you get into this rest state, that's where you will receive the answers. I've always been super grateful and understood the privilege of being able to come to a place like this and being able to have the opportunity of my, of the grandparents taking the kids. And I really, truly didn't understand even the importance of it until this trip, because coming back to the same place year after year, sometimes even twice a year, has allowed my body to memorize that this is a safe place, that this is a place of true relaxation.

There's nothing else that I do here except to rest. The only thing I do is plan resting between meals. You know, you don't want to be too full when you go to the spa.

You don't want to be too full when you put your bathing suit on and go lay out by the sun. So you have to plan everything around your food. But really, it's like, I didn't really get it, that our body memorizes these moments.

And so over the years, it's become easier and easier and easier for me to drop into this restful state. And I remember for many years, it took me like to day four or five to fully rest and fully relax into it without thinking that I was missing out or that I should be doing stuff. I remember actually, I used to bring a stack of stuff.

I would bring a backpack full of notebooks and nonfiction literature and all these ideas of writing a book or starting a business or whatever it was, I would come loaded down. And as the years have have followed, that bag has been lighter and lighter and lighter. And so now all I really bring is my laptop, jokingly say this is actually a Monday for and this is the first day I've opened my laptop to record this episode.

And I jokingly have said to my kids, and my husband that I've been trying to lose my phone this whole trip, I left it at the restaurant, I keep misplacing it in the condo. I just don't want to have access to it. I go and I sit by the ocean for an hour.

I don't even take a notebook. I used to take a little notebook that I would write ideas in. It's similar to me when I go into acupuncture, I lay on the table and I'm immediately in that relaxed state, that parasympathetic nervous system.

Or when I go into yoga and you sit and you position yourself and you immediately relax into that position. It's like anything that we do on a routine basis to get us ourselves in that rest state. That is our practice.

We the more and more we practice it, the more we can easily drop into it. That's why breathwork is so important. Because if we can take several deep breaths, our body remembers that that can relax us and make us feel more alert and connected.

And that, you know, again, it's just the importance of practicing these things. Remember, you know, because everything that we do as a habit, we get to choose, we should choose wisely of which things that we choose to make a habit. But yeah, so I feel like really that this place is that the medicine of this place is the true relaxation that it brings, that it's not the palm trees or the buffets or, you know, the drinks by the pool, but it really is that permission to slow down.

You know, there's no cooking or cleaning. And you're not really like serving anyone else. I mean, you're just here, you're just being and you're polite to other people.

They're polite to you. But you really have time to think or just really stare at the ocean and not think at all. And it's been fun because in this time, it's also been fun to like play with my kids and connect with them without really having to say like, okay, it's time to do chores or mow the yard or fold your clothes or put them away.

(13:38 - 20:01)

It's just like, yeah, being present with them, with them. But you don't have to fly to Mexico to access this. And this is something that I've connected the dots to as well.

Like I was mentioning with acupuncture and yoga. And really even when I wake up somewhat early, it's not even that early anymore. But when I wake up before the family does, and I just sit on this one area of my couch, and I shut my eyes and I do my meditation, sometimes it's with intention of a meditation, sometimes just being in stillness.

So you can cultivate these moments in your life as well. But when we can cultivate these moments of relaxation, then I know for myself that I can better show up for my clients, for my kids, for my health, for my body and for my calling. So the real question is, is that I know this is what you're probably asking is how do you build rest within the rhythm of your day? So here's some ideas that I have about that, how you can weave in rest into your day without booking a flight or clearing your calendar, although I totally recommend that too, is first I would say that creating a rest cue.

So like I said, my rest cue is this area of my couch. Sometimes I light a candle, sometimes I put on music, sometimes I do breath. It just depends on how easily it is for me to drop in or not.

But that's my area for my body to know that it's safe for me to relax. So again, your rescue can be a specific place, it can be a candle before bed, it can be deep breaths, it can be reading a passage, or reading Bible or tarot cards or whatever it is for you to kind of get you in there. And you recognize that this ritual that you're creating is your area of safety, it's like your safety zone.

And you want to try to practice stillness every day for even two minutes, and that can be in your car. So it doesn't have to be like a 90 minute, you know, hot yoga class that you have to like not eat an hour before or an hour after and it takes forever for you to program that into your day. It can just be two minutes of silence, I promise you that's all it takes.

So you just close your eyes, no phone, let your body just feel it getting more and more relaxed. Let your mind wander. Just let your nervous system recalibrate.

It wants to balance be balanced out. And replace scrolling with just staring. I know that sounds really silly, but just like you can stare at the candle.

If you lit a candle, you can look at the window, you can watch the leaves move and stare at the ceiling. You can stare at your ceiling fan, you can start your dog, your brain is constantly processing things. So if you can just like let it off the hook, and just stare at one thing, then that could really help reset you as well.

So number four is going to be like label the feeling. So when you feel the feeling of relaxation, when you're like, Oh my gosh, I think I'm there. Like I feel it.

Like I'm feeling pretty good right now, then label it say this is what rest feels like, because this helps your brain and body memorize sensation. So it becomes easier to return to next time. And then number five is guard it with your life.

So you want to set the time. So if you're doing, you know, two minutes in the morning or two minutes in your car, to make sure that your phone is turned off, like allow this to be your sacred time. Don't try to fill it up.

Don't try to explain it away. Just allow for yourself to feel to heal and just let yourself be. So if your body feels like it's always bracing for something, if you're constantly on if the idea of rest makes you anxious, and I completely understand it used to make me anxious to it's totally okay.

That is just a sign as always, our bodies are telling us that something that you're wired for just surviving. And you've been doing it for a really long time. And it's absolutely okay.

And it's okay to change too. And you can rewire it, this can become a habit, rest can become a habit, you can train your body to trust stillness again. And I'm just gonna say it, it's just it's not a luxury, it really is something that we have to choose our responsibility to find time to rest.

Because it really is a requirement for vitality and for health and for energy and for connection and love. And sometimes the most productive thing you can do is nothing at all. So okay, my loves until next time, feel your best summit is still going on for energy vitality and confidence and perimenopause and beyond the link is in the show notes.

This woman named Courtney Rolfe is coming up. She studied alongside of Deb Dana, who wrote the polyvagal theory. She has written co authored other books with her.

I loved the interview I had with her and she really breaks down the parasympathetic nervous system and such a palatable way. So definitely if you have not, go ahead and get a spot. It's a free summit, you will start getting emails where we are in the series.

And at the very end, there's it's going to be opened up for 72 hours where you can watch any of the ones that you missed. So you you are not too late to join. But this is perfect because almost every single speaker talks about getting into our parasympathetic nervous system, getting into that rest and digest, but she breaks it down and to such a way that makes way more sense for our busy, busy brains.

And yeah, each speaker speaks about it. And so she really gives us action items to do that. And it will also help tie into this episode.

So please go there. And I hope to see you in the series. As always, please let me know if you enjoyed this episode and what else you would like to learn about.

The world needs the vibrance and wisdom of a woman's intuition to help heal the world. When we learn to trust ourselves through leaning into and through discomfort, we learn to trust ourselves and in that space is our power and clarity.