Episode 37 - Three Questions to Find a Rest Worth Having

Would you believe me if I told you I slept like absolute garbage the night before recording this? Truly terrible. And yes… today’s episode is about rest. The irony is not lost on me.

In this episode of Three Questions, I explore rest in a way most of us never think about it, through nervous system science, sensory preferences, and the everyday realities that drain or restore us. I share why certain people, environments, and workouts instantly deplete our battery, why others feel grounding, and how understanding your sensory systems can completely reshape your relationship to both rest and movement.

In This Episode You’ll Hear:
• Why your “battery” drains differently depending on people, tasks, and sensory load
• How to create balance you don’t need a vacation from
• How micro-rests, sensory resets, and intentional movement can completely change your day

Whether you’re a movement teacher, clinician, or just hoping not to collapse by 3 p.m., this episode gives you a science-backed way to rethink rest and actually feel restored for once.

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Transcript

Meghann Koppele Duffy: Welcome to Three Questions where critical thinking is king, and my opinions and research are only here to support your learning and deeper understanding. Hey, I'm your host Meghann, and I'm so honored you clicked on Three Questions today so we can talk about rest and recovery. Two of my most favorite topics, something I did not always do well, but I think in my forties I've got a much better handle on it.

And lately my favorite thing to do is rest. Something I love about my husband, Brian and I, is maybe one day on our weekend, we have required nothingness and nothing to do, no plans where we can be in our pajamas. We don't have to get dressed. We don't even have to go out to dinner. We don't even have to talk to each other if we don't want to.

And sometimes when he is watching football, I think he'd prefer if nobody, especially me, would ask so many questions. But that's another podcast episode. So let's get right into question one. What does rest mean to you? And right now in your life, please don't judge yourself. I know we all do it, but you might be like, no time to rest.

I am in grind mode. I have no time to rest. Rest is weakness. Now I'm going to respect your answer, but throughout today's episode, maybe maybe we can get you to critically think to either adjust that or to make some changes because did you just hear what I said? People say this, that's not a toughness that could lead to burnout, frustration, sickness, an accident, or even worse.

So let's not put hierarchy in our answers, but think right now, what does rest mean to you? And are you truly valuing it? Am I truly valuing it? Am I truly valuing it? I don't know, but I wanna start valuing it more. Listen, I'm just entering. I'm in perimenopause. Weird shit is happening. Um, and I am someone who's never lost a night of sleep.

Even when I was a baby, my dad said, I never woke up. I was such a great baby. Um, my mom usually rolls her eyes at that, but let's go with what my dad said. Okay. I need sleep. I need a good eight, potentially nine hours of sleep. I put out a lot of energy during the day. I'm not saying I put more energy out than you.

But I put out a lot and I need to rest and recover every night. Sleeping is very important to me. I love my bed. I love being in my bed, and it's something I really love about Brian and I, we both like to go to bed early, right? There'll be, sometimes he's like ready for bed and I'm like, it's seven 30. But yes, now before you judge, we wake up very early.

Brian is up at like four 30 or five every morning. I always get up at six sometimes. Five 30, depending on what I have to do that day. I am a morning person. Um, that's kind of my vibes. But if you listen to any woman who goes through menopause, sleeping becomes a problem. So I really want to give my brain and body that value of sleep.

And if I'm being honest, I slept like shit last night. Oh my God, it was so bad. I think I got like five, maybe four and a half. And it was so funny. No lie. I was planning on doing this podcast today, and how hysterical is that? Today's podcast is about rest and recovery, right? So I'm gonna be critically thinking about my answers too.

So does rest mean that you drain the whole battery and then you recover? Does rest mean that you maintain a certain battery, lo battery load, easy for me to say and recharge throughout the day? Or are you in the place in your life where you just don't have any place to recharge and it's stressing you out and you are about to break or looking for solutions?

I think these are all very legitimate answers. Now let's talk about our computers, for example. Now I could be on word writing a paper all day, and it really, I was writing papers all day yesterday. My computer wasn't plugged in at all. I was kind of amazed at how the, the computer kept its charge. But when I'm on zooms all day, or when I have to upload videos or edit videos and do stuff like that, man, the battery drains so fast.

So think about our computer, like our bodies, there's gonna be certain activities. And people who drain our battery more than others. Okay. So we need to accommodate. We can't just think of every day we start with a full battery and then it drains throughout the day. It ain't like that. I'm gonna give you a little bit of a, um, an exercise to do that.

I give to a lot of my mentees. So if you don't work with clients, well, you could do this with friends. You could even do this with your kids. I won't tell 'em. Uh, family members, uh, people you work with, give them a rating. Ones, twos and threes. A number one is a client who just is a joy. You could give them the worst session, but they still love it.

They wanna learn. They personalities are great. They never drain your battery. And if they do, it's because you guys are getting in the weeds of something and something great's gonna happen. Those are number ones. Number one's never late cancel. Or if you have to cancel, they never give you a hassle.

They're just easy going. We all have people in our life. We need number ones. Then there's number twos, which they don't suck the air out of the room, but they don't bring energy in. So I should have said our number ones also bring good energy, right? Number twos, they don't bring food to the table, but they don't take it away.

Kind of even keel. You can kind of make it happen. And then our number threes, we all know them. We all have them in our lives. They suck the air out of the fricking room. Um, they don't take the food from the table. They take the silverware. Um, they take the napkins. They take the cups. Okay? We all know these people.

So my rule of thumb is you need to prioritize and schedule a date. And don't tell me, well, I can't schedule my date like that. I've got three number threes in a row. That's your problem and you need to fix it. Okay? I work with clients too, so if I can do it, you can do it. I have a rule. You never do two threes in a row.

If you do that, you are gonna have to take a nap. After that, you're gonna have to do such a battery recharge. It might kill the rest of your day. So we use the Oreo methodology where you always have to sandwich a three with a number one, a number one, a number three, a number one. Notice I did not say a number one, A number three, and then a number two.

And no, no, no. Twos cannot be an Oreo. Twos can be a cookie on its own. Okay, so with your number threes, I want you to look at your schedule, your your meetings, okay? Don't schedule a meeting with two number threes say it in that. Number three, I can't do today. I can do later. And meet with a number one in between that.

Or call your best friend, call your husband. Go take a walk. Do a number one thing, not do number one. Although if you have to do number one, you can do that too. Now, with two, you can slide in at two wherever they need to be. But not before a three and not after a three. Remember the Oreo cookie, and if you start coming at me with excuses, I'm just gonna,

I have no response. Because if you want to live a life full of stress and let people drain your battery, I can't help you. Nothing in life is easy. We gotta have to make some changes, and you don't have to do it my way. I just wanted to give you some suggestions that work for me and a ton of my mentees.

They always come back to me and say, um, I'm having a problem with the exercise. And I'll be like, what? I don't have any threes. I just have number ones. And me, I've always got an answer for everything. Well, that's a problem. What do you mean that's a problem? I thought that was the goal. I said, I didn't say that was the goal.

You wanna know why our number threes are often the clients that teach us the most. Now I'm gonna do a podcast, I think next week or the week after about teaching, so stay tuned for that. But I do think we need clients that challenge us and push us out of our comfort zone. Now, I like number threes that are hard to teach but aren't personality dreams, and some people's personalities just don't mesh.

I know it's hard to believe, but not everybody likes me. Has no effect on me. Okay, so think about how you are going to manage your battery life throughout the day. What things are more draining? Write it down. What things are not draining at all? You're like, oh, my workouts aren't, are never draining.

They're always a number one. Well, you better fit in a short workout between number three and number three. Okay? I didn't say number one, how to be a client. A number one can be in something that recharges you. Okay. And if I can give you any piece of advice, I know this is not an opinion podcast. It's supposed to be about critical thinking, but what if we all stopped waiting till our battery died to recharge?

Think about a computer, give her like working and it's like 5% and you're like, I'm in the zone. I don't wanna get up and get my charger. And then it goes, boom, screen goes black. Dammit. You gotta get up. You gotta get the charge. You gotta give it five minutes to reboot. Did you even save what you were doing?

That's stressful. So what if we never let our battery get that low? And tech people don't come at me and saying, oh, you should let batteries go all the way to the end. We're not talking about computers anymore, talking about humans. And when you let your battery drain, you are high risk for losing your SHIT, my Uncle shout out Uncle Jackie told me I curse too much. He said, I say shit too much. Oops. I just said it. So now I'll spell it. I love you Uncle Jackie. He's my godfather. So think about that and let's go to question two. How can we establish a better balance in our lives? So we don't have to recharge so drastically and create a life you don't need a vacation from.

So what if we made small changes in our lives to have better balance so our battery doesn't drain? We don't need so much recovery time.

What if we didn't have to take these extravagant vacations? I mean, take an extravagant vacation, but something that is super important to me, and one of the reasons why I knew marrying I made a good choice in marrying my husband is I used to always look forward to vacations, and I was always doing extravagant things.

I thought that was gonna make me feel better, feel more grounded, feel more rested, and it didn't. I never felt better. If anything, I felt more anxious because now I've got to come back to a life that was chaotic. Brian brings a lot of peace and I wanna say contentment, which sounds so cold, but like being content is so wonderful.

Why do we always have to be so happy all the time? I mean, for a pretty happy person that's me saying that, but like. I don't know. I feel just as good spending a day on the couch than going to an extravagant vacation. It took me a lot of years to get there and to create a balance in my work life to get there.

I've got a really special interview next year on the person who I think is the expert in work life balance, and I'm gonna ask him the questions directly because he was a black belt at it. I am not a black belt at it yet. I've gotten so much better. But I'm gonna ask you, what's one thing you can change in your life to make your battery drain less?

Is it less stress about exercise? Shorter exercises, going for a walk every day. Connecting with your best friend every day. Talking to your spouse, talking to your kids. Being present, going on a hike or a trip, not seeing so many number threes as clients. Maybe it's a career change and people kind of freak out about making bigger changes.

Like people were like shocked that I'm doing my doctorate. I've always wanted to do it. Now is the right time, because I've worked to get my business in a place where I can adjust some things to do that. And I really know what I wanna say in my dissertation. Something's going on with my hair. Sorry, years ago, I, I, I didn't know what I wanted to say in my dissertation.

I wanted to be clear, and I am not tired or drained doing it all because I'm actually really enjoying it. I cannot believe I'm saying that, but I don't really feel as exhausted as I think I should. What I do wanna work on is being able to shut things off at night. So I know what I have to change. I need to enforce my rule of no devices.

I wanna say 5:00 PM I really wanna say 5:00 PM but I think 6 36. Six 30. And Brian's better at it. I'm not so good at it. Being on devices later at night, we know what it does to our eyes. Not even mention the scrolling, how it screws up our eyes, but the light, the constant feedback, our brain can't shut off.

That is why I am not feeling rested at night and I need my rest and recharge. Mama needs her eight. Okay. What's one change you're gonna make in your life? And I want you DM me. I know. Maybe you don't wanna comment on social media. DM me. I'm like really curious. Somebody's just telling somebody makes you more accountable.

Like I just admitted to all you guys that I'm going to get off my devices at 6:00 PM now, some nights I've gotta be until eight 30 when I'm doing lectures. Is that okay? But the most powerful shift in my life was creating a life you don't need a vacation from. That doesn't mean not take vacations. We must take vacations.

They're very important. I'm kind of speaking to Americans, my European students. Australian students, they tend to know how to do vacations. Americans we're not great at that. So maybe just think about that and what if we all committed? It's getting close to the end of the year, making one small change.

Cool. And last but not least, are you willing to accept, willing to accept. I am gonna keep it. Are you willing to accept, or maybe we can redefine movement? Could we use movement to aid in recovery and rest rather than creating something we need to rest from? This is gonna sound controversial. Now with my, with athletes it's a little bit different, but their rest sessions are even more important.

If you're training for something or need to get better at something, doing more is not better. Your nervous system, your body needs to recover. Working out to a point where you need to take a nap or you feel like shit is not what most of your workouts should feel like. Workouts should feel challenging and invigorating.

Now I know what you're gonna say. Um, they don't for me, I get it. Most of my life workouts were work. They were tough and I felt like shit mostly because I didn't understand my sensory preferences. Now, if you follow me on the neuro studio or my movement site, I'm big on individualizing movement based off your sensory preferences. Very quickly, what does that mean? We get sensory from our eyes, our muscles, our tendons, our joints, our skin. That's all proprioception. So eyes are visual, proprioception, skin joints, tendons, pressure, um, heat, all these things. And then our vestibular system, our inner ear. We also get sensory information from smell and sound, our surroundings, our peripheral vision, our ability to see things, our ability for spatial awareness.

All these things matter in our workouts. So for example, if you're someone who identifies as clumsy. Well, there is a good chance your brain is prioritizing the wrong eye, okay? So your brain thinks something is a little to the left when it's to the right. If that's happening, reach out. Oftentimes we can fix that very quickly.

But it is important you understand that. Or you might be clumsy 'cause your proprioception is off. You might have hypermobility or EDS or another neurological condition that affects your sensation. You might have visual issues. Okay. All these things matter and what's so amazing and I will die on this hill.

You need to be focused when you are moving. It doesn't have to be laser focused, create a new movement pattern, but when you are focused and in the zone, man, the body just moves in a very fluid connected. Aligned patterns. I see people moving all the time. They're looking all around. They're fidgeting. It's because their sensory preferences are not being considered.

I watch teachers say, oh, it doesn't matter how you move, just move. This is all that matters. And I'm watching them fidget and they can't focus. Their eyes aren't focused. I just wanna be like, Hey, find a visual target. Don't change the distance between that. And they would have so much more enjoy enjoyment in their workouts.

Okay, so saying things aren't possible is just because you're not doing it. Okay. Might sound arrogant of me, let it sound arrogant, but I know what it feels like to not be focused during workouts. It's how I felt my whole life. Okay. I pay one of my friends to literally almost watch me work out so he can be my proprioception.

'cause newsflash, your proprioception isn't as accurate as you think it is, and sometimes just to give me different ideas on movements, we'll play off each other. Okay. Why I do that is because my cognitive load for my workouts is often lower, and I want somebody's eyes on me to make sure I'm not missing something that I am not feeling.

Because awareness, if I don't have it in the movement pattern, I can't make the correction. So when it comes to movement. I'm okay with you kicking your ass sometimes, but kick your ass smartly. What is the goal? Are you actually achieving that goal? Are you giving your body better sensory information so it can rest?

If you can't sit down on the toilet, that doesn't mean you worked really hard. To me that means you moved past what your brain thinks is safe. You overrode a movement pattern and now your brain is shutting shit down. Okay? They, they've. There's been research to just prove the delayed muscle, um, the delayed onset of muscle soreness, doms, they thought it was due to lactic acid or something like that.

To me, it's a neurological response. Now, it's not bad to feel sore. I don't wanna make people stress out about that, but I want you to think if what you're doing is the, in the gym is draining your battery more and not helping your body recover, what are we actually doing? When I had my Pilates studio in, what was it, 2006 to 2011, nobody had injuries.

Many people were not working out back then. Right? And you're like, no, a lot of people worked out. Trust me, they didn't. Okay, I see. None of my girlfriends really worked out. Now they all do. Okay, so more people are working out, more people are injured. Anxieties levels are higher. We're all stressed out.

Nobody's resting. Um, hello. Maybe we should look at this from a different perspective and please. I feel like I have to say this and you're annoying me if I have to say this, but that's okay. You're allowed to annoy me, is, how do I say this without being, nah, I really think. What you guys are doing in the gym, if it is negatively affecting your body, you have to change what you're doing.

Don't just do something or think, oh my God, I'm feeling it this way. I'm gonna keep going. That's not getting you the results. Okay? I can't stress this enough. You can go hard in the paint. You don't know what I mean. It's a saying of basketball. So like they say, Steph Curry goes hard in the paint. Okay. You can go hard in the paint, but go hard in the paint smart. Don't bust up your knees. Don't do things that hurt. I feel like I'm getting on a soapbox and yelling at you all. So I am going to chill the hell out. I'm gonna rest.

Did everybody see what I just did there? I closed my eyes and I took a deep breath that actually I could hear. Now if you've taken my courses, you're like, Meghann, don't you always want efficiency of breath? Yes. And this is a reset I do between clients. So how do I stay tuned in with clients? I give myself a two seconds nap between each client, and what I do is I close my eyes so I'm not getting any sensory input from my eyes.

I breathe in to shift my proprioception. Hmm. And I breathe out sigh. So I get auditory feedback. Hmm.

And then I am ready to go. Now could we argue that that might have a, um, simulated my vagus nerve? The noise, the humming? Yeah. Or it could have just activated my auditory system. Who cares what it did. It worked, and it is my reset. It's my tiny little nap. So anybody who's got young kids give yourself a quicker, smoother transition of rest, even if it's just closing your eyes and making a sound, or closing your eyes and screaming, sorry.

Maybe, maybe, maybe that's me. Or hug your body tight, press yourself into something. I'm pushing myself in the back of my chair with my eyes closed. I didn't love that so much. I love the auditory. I process auditory information fast and best. But a lot of you might process touch base things, so hugging yourself, squeezing, um, changing your clothes, wiggling around, doing a cat cow.

Could be your little rest and reset. So let's do a quick review now that I've yelled at you about movement at the end of this episode. Like, what does rest mean to you? Now, I honestly feel at the end of this episode, I really wanna lean in and reframe how I think of rest to be, not those eight or nine hours.

But those little moments throughout the day, the connection, the good movement, the auditory feedback, the hugs from my dog, the kiss on my husband, comes home from work, all those little things, I feel like I want to change my mindset about that. Not looking forward to the end of the day, the bed or the couch.

I love couch time, but those little moments, and maybe that resonates with you, or maybe you're the opposite. Maybe you're like, I do that shit already. I need better sleep at the end of the night. If rest means for you that you need to get those eight or nine hours. Well, let's talk some strategies for you before I let you go.

Number one, do a few eye exercises before you go to bed. What I did last night and finally made me go to bed, which I should have done like hours before, is I press my hand on top of my head. So if you're watching me on YouTube, you can do it with me or you can listen. And I've just got my hand on my head and I'm just gonna look up towards the ceiling casually and look down.

So I'm kind of finding what my range of motion in my eyes is without moving my head. Now I was doing this laying down, then I'm gonna look up and I'm gonna press my head into my hand and my hand into my head evenly. And I tend to press the right side more than the left. So I'm gonna find evenness through my head.

And then I'm gonna look up and the range of motion in my eyes got really big. And then I'm gonna look down. Then I'm gonna press my head into my hand, my hand into my head. And if you don't like the top of the head, you can always do the chin. And then I'm gonna look down and my visual field has gotten so much bigger.

Then I'm gonna slowly track my eyes up and slowly track my eyes down. I'm gonna jump my eyes up. Jump my eyes down, I'm then gonna do that same thing right to left. Now, last night, to be honest, I went to the side of my face. So I did my eyes right to left. And when I did the isometric, the head into the hand, the hand into the head, I initially did my face and I didn't like it.

So I went back to the top of my head. So basically touch any spot of your head that you like. And what I'm having you do here is open up your visual field and calm everything down. This way your eyes can downregulate and they could do what they need to do during sleep, especially the REM cycle. Okay.

Number two, the best advice my business partner Mariska has ever given is get a bed jet. So if you're having hot flashes and can't sleep at night, that is not a problem for me. But get what's called a bed jet. Okay? It blows air. It helps with a hot flash. Um, it was, Mariska said the best thing she's ever purchased.

And last but not least, go to bed the same time every day and wake up the same time every day. It's very important. Okay. And again, what's Huber? Dr. Dr. Huberman, Andrew Huberman. I think he's a doctor. Dr. Huberman. Sorry. He does a lot with first thing in the morning. Go see sunlight, look outside, have your eyes track far, not be looking at something close.

Set a routine because you guys deserve rest at night. Alright. Last but not least, let's try to change our mindset about movement. That we can work hard and recover hard. You need good recovery sessions, and that doesn't just mean yoga and Pilates. Because I see a lot of people doing yoga and Pilates that aren't good recovery sessions 'cause it's aggravating their nervous system.

Okay. A good recovery session to me is brain-based, based off what your brain needs. Sensory integration using a visual cue, understanding what you feel. Okay. And if you don't know about how to do that, reach out. I will point you in the right direction. We got neuro studio teachers all over the world. Tell me where you're at.

I'll send you to the best. Or when you're doing your movement sessions, think about what you're feeling the most. Hey, I feel a lot of pressure under my right knee. Okay, let me see if I can move in the opposite direction without changing that pressure, or the next time I do the exercise, not increasing the pressure there.

Ask your body questions and let your body answer, because we need recovery in our movement. We need to work hard because we need to challenge ourselves, but we need to stop thinking that more is better, and that kicking your ass is going to get your goals. That will lead to rhabdo, that will lead to over training and other problems.

So I am very interested to hear how you rest. The rest of your day, let me know how it goes with assigning numbers to your clients. Did it work? Do you hate it? Do you love it? Tell me how that goes. Sorry. I got on a rant about movement. I just got off Thanksgiving with all my family members asking me what to do and then not listening to my answers because they did not really want a solution.

They just wanted to vent, and I usually just let them vent, but I bit. All right, so I appreciate you guys and tell me what you do to rest and recover. Gimme some tips. Can't wait to hear 'em, and I'll see you guys next time.