Ep 04 - Rest and Resistance: The Power of Rest

In this episode of Health, Healing, and Hope, Natiki Hope Pressley explores the powerful connection between rest and resilience. Rest is more than just sleep—it’s a radical act of resistance in a world that constantly demands more of us. Through stories, examples from nature, and reflections on the deeper meaning of rest, Natiki invites listeners to reclaim rest as a pathway to healing, renewal, and strength. This episode offers practical ways to integrate intentional rest into daily life while affirming the importance of slowing down to rise stronger.

Transcript

Natiki: 0:02

Hello, and welcome to Health Healing and Hope. I'm your host, Natiki Hope Presley. Thank you for being here. There are so many other places that you could be, but you chose to spend your time with me. I'm so grateful for that. Today we're talking about a four letter word, something that we don't often discuss, perhaps because we don't understand it or. It makes us uncomfortable or maybe because we don't get enough of it. That's right. You're right. We're talking about rest. The title of today's episode is Rest and Resistance. Rest and Resistance. Here's a question. In a culture that glorifies the hustle and busyness, how do you find time to rest? I know resting is countercultural and can therefore be considered almost like an act of courage and resistance. Participating in this capitalistic system in the United States demands that we constantly focus on our output. Performance is everything. How productive are we today? How much busy work is on my calendar? How far up the ladder have I climbed and am I achieving all my goals daily, weekly, or monthly goals? Ambition and discipline are not really our issue, right? Because a lot of us have lots of ambition. We're highly motivated and we can schedule some stuff like nobody's business, but that's not the issue. It's when they're at the expense of our health and wellbeing. That's the problem. There's nothing wrong with. Having things to do, scheduling those things and organizing them in a way that works for you. But when you've overscheduled everything because you believe, the more you get done is somehow a measure of your worth or your value to the world, it begins to compromise your health and wellbeing overall. Rest is a great way to resist. It's a great way to resist, and it's not just from the system that's designed to oppress and overwork us, but from the physical enemies of things like stress and fatigue and chronic illness and so many other things. It helps to build up our defenses. It helps to keep our immune system healthy and vigorous and fighting because there's constantly things that are attacking us that we can't even see. And I know it's strange to speak of rest as courageous or even revolutionary, but that's what it's become. It's something we just don't wanna talk about. And if you talk about it or you say you rest too much, or you talk about how much you get rest, it's taboo. Because everybody doesn't wanna know about how much you rest. They wanna know about how much work you doing, what you working on, what's the next project. Rest has become, I dare say, controversial, especially when society suggests that it's somehow optional. Rest is not optional. It is not a, maybe it's a must. And sometimes rest is spoken about, like it's indulgent like it's a piece of cake or chocolate. But let me say this, if rest were chocolate or cake, I am absolutely sure we would get plenty of it. Most of us would definitely have our fair share of rest. They would be slicing it up and buying it and eating it in little cubes. But now I know when we speak about rest, you're probably saying, oh, taking a nap is not courageous, Natiki, there's nothing brave about going to sleep. But when I say rest, I'm not talking about sleep. Sleep is a form of rest. You can sleep and not experience rest, or what we would call restful sleep. I know I'm not the only one who has been tired after sleeping all night. You could wake up tired and say, you know what? I don't even know if I slept. What was I doing? Karate or Pilates in my sleep? I don't even remember. You have those bags and your body feels sluggish and you really just want to go back to sleep. Rest is defined according to dictionary.com. That's just one definition I found. I'm gonna read that. It's like refreshing ease or inactivity after exertion or labor or relief or freedom, especially from anything that wearies troubles or disturbs. You heard that Relief or freedom, especially from anything that wearies troubles or disturbs. In that case, we all need rest, especially in this climate that we're living in today. I would say rest is restorative, right? It's a restorative experience. The word rest, and I'm reading this carries ancient roots that's tied to stillness, stopping and peace. It's Germanic and old English Origins show that from the very beginning, humans understood rest, not only as physical relaxation, but also a state of the soul to be. At rest, quote unquote, right? Tranquility, wholeness, and of course, final peace or a final resting place. So why are we talking about rest? Why does it even matter? What are we talking about? Let's start from the beginning. In the book of Genesis, God created the heavens, the earth, and all living things in six days, and then he rested on the seventh day. This is where we get the rest principle, the Sabbath. This principle was applied to many things.;Rest is apparent in nature and all of creation. Rest is one of those principles that is quietly woven into all aspects of our lives without us even realizing it. For instance, our heartbeat, your heart contracts and releases right these beats and without rest in between. There is no life. If your heart was constantly racing it means that you're in trouble. Your body has some kind of trauma and it's inefficient. It's working too hard to pump blood through your body and it's overexerting. In fact, we measure our fitness, our fit level by our resting heart rate, meaning the less work my heart has to do to provide those certain functions that I have in my body. So that my body can do the work, the more fit I am, the more efficient my body is working. Even in breathing, we breathe in and out. That constant exhale or outflow or inhale, is the exchange necessary. There is a rest in between. Or even soil farmers rotate crops so they can let the land rest to restore nutrients. I can go on and on. I'm sure there's more. There's also music. I forgot about that. Musical notes. There's a rest in music. I'm not a musician and I don't necessarily read music a little bit. But I remember from the time I was young and was learning a little bit about music there was rest in between these notes. But without it, it's just noise. It's just constant sound the rest helps you distinguish these different sounds and tones. But let's do the math. Okay, so we said that. God created the heavens and the earth and all living things in six days, and on the seventh day he rested. So six days out of the seven he worked, six, he rested one. So that's a formula, right? So if we would apply that to instead of a week, if we apply that to our days, how much time would we be expected to rest if we would do it the way that God did? I did the math y'all in advance. I did not do it in my head. Okay. Three hours and 25 minutes of rest per day. And you're saying, okay, Natiki, now you, that's it. You lost me. I'm going to click off right now. Please don't hear me out. And I know you're saying I cannot rest for three hours and 20 minutes a day. That's not gonna happen. You know how much stuff I gotta get done in a day? I don't have enough time in a day, and you want me to take time outta the day? Three hours and 25 minutes of it, slow down. That's not necessarily what I'm saying. I'm not saying to take away from your day. I'm actually saying add to your day. Okay. I know. I was looking at this book by Dr. Sandra Dalton Smith. The book is called Sacred Rest, and in that book she mentions seven types of rest. And this is beyond sleep, because I know as soon as we say rest, we assume sleep. But there are different types of rest. And she lists those as number one, physical rest, right? And that's the sleep that we talk about. But number two she says is mental rest. Quieting an overactive mind, and some of the practices was stepping away from constant problem solving, journaling our thoughts and taking mental breaks during work, just removing ourselves and having some quiet, getting some mental rest, letting our mind rest. Number three was emotional rest. Being able to express your true feelings without judgment. That is my favorite one. And some of the practices was talking honestly with trusted people, and we talked about that in a previous episode. Therapy, journaling our feelings, and something that I mentioned in that previous episode was a walk and talk where I said I did something that worked well for me. Which was take my phone and just record, put my headphones in and just audio journal without interruption, without anybody's commentary or judgment, and it was really effective. I was getting exercise by walking and getting a chance to emotionally rest by audio journaling. Number four she says, is social rest. Taking a break from draining relationships and spending time with life. Giving people life giving people, right? How important is that? Who you are around matters. Okay? Your health is not just your physical health. Your mental health is important too, and sometimes it's not. Things that you think it may be, it just might be your surroundings and you're not around life giving people, and it can be draining to be around the opposite, what we would call life taking people. Some of those practices she mentioned is setting boundaries and choosing nourishing connections. Number Five was sensory rest, which is reducing input from screens, noise, bright lights and clutter. Okay, we gotta pause because for me, clutter is a big one. And until I saw this, I thought there was something I wrong with me. I don't know, like maybe, but I realized that it's sensory overload when I see clutter. I don't just see, oh, there's lots of stuff here and I'm just gonna go ahead and move on and walk by it. I'm overloaded by all the things I'm looking at And there's too many things to see, and I need to scale it down and modify it so that I'm not overloaded in terms of my visual sense. And I thought that was super interesting and sometimes you just have to know that's an issue for you so that you can address that. Number six was creative rest, recharging the part of us that solves problems and dreams, right? Practices that she mentioned was exposure to art, right? Nature, music, creative play, or simply allowing wonder and we don't recognize how important. Creative rest is because we are created to be creative and when we're not able to create, and I'm not saying that you sow and you draw and all those things because there are other ways to be creative. Everybody is creative. We were all made to create. Okay. Not just reproduce. But to create. And so when we don't have an outlet or we haven't recharged that part of us that is creative and that creates, we definitely feel exhausted. There is some exhaustion that can come in that area. So I wanted to make sure to point that out because a lot of people don't think about that. Spiritual rest was number seven, connection to God purpose and something greater than yourselves. Mandatory. Some of the practices she mentioned is Prayer, meditation, worship, reflection on scripture, and some other practices of just quieting ourselves and just tuning in to God. I was incredibly grateful for the outline of. The types of rest because I didn't know this before. Now, doing this research and learning that I knew how important rest was, but I honestly can say I did not understand the different types of rest that we need. So some of the key insights that I got from this was about exhaustion, and she says, exhaustion is multi-dimensional. Most people think of fatigue I need more sleep, right? I'm tired, I'm over it. I just need to take a nap. And sometimes that is you just need to shut down and reset. But in reality, you probably are experiencing what. She mentions here as rest deficit in one or more of those seven areas of physical, mental, emotional, social, sensory, creative, and spiritual areas that need rest. So let me ask you a question. Where are you deficient? What areas of those seven do you need more rest? Because getting sleep is not doing it because like I said, you can wake up and still be tired, but I believe exhaustion also comes. When we haven't fully evaluated our efforts, this is something that's personal for me because we can exhaust ourselves doing something that isn't getting us closer to our desired goals. Or we could exhaust ourselves by doing something that's adding to us, but it's taking things away. And so we find ourselves depleted. Let me give you an example. For so many years I was working in schools. I worked in high school and I spent a lot of time in schools. And I know a lot of people say, oh, you work in schools, that's great'cause you get out at three o'clock. No, the students get out at three o'clock. Work doesn't stop at three for the people who work there. Work continues after the students leave, but you get there early, whatever, before seven and and I would leave sometimes around six o'clock let's say. And then I would go ahead and whatever mode of transportation I chose for that day, sometimes it's the train and sometimes it's driving, depending on what my responsibilities were after. So I get home maybe about seven, eight, I don't know, seven 30. I'm gonna give it seven 30. And of course when I got home I would just try to relax and get a little bite to eat and try to just just sit and relax for a second, decompress. And that could be maybe about, I don't know, 8 30, 9 o'clock, and at that point just preparing to go ahead and go to bed and then do it all over again. Now let me say this, I loved my job. I love working with young people. It is extremely fulfilling. I love to see them grow and mature and become, and there's something very wonderful about being a part of that process and knowing that I've contributed in a good way to that process and then seeing them become whoever God has them to become and knowing that I did a little bit of that, I am a reason for some of that, but. What I noticed after doing that for many years was that I was starting to get depleted. I wasn't getting enough in, I wasn't being able to pour enough time in. My resting time was limited and it led me to the hospital. I ended up in the hospital. And I'm not saying that if you have a job that is demanding that you're gonna end up in the hospital. I am not saying that. I am saying, for me, doing this job for many years, eventually it just became too much because I couldn't find a way. And time to rest the way I needed to. In all those seven areas, I was getting some of that rest. I know there were some areas probably getting more than others, but I wasn't able to find balance and I paid a heavy price for it. But upon further evaluation, I realized that a big part of that was I was able to contribute and support. Students, and families in a way that I wasn't able to for my own daughter. I was helping other people's children and couldn't really support mine the way I wanted to because I didn't have the time and that was taking a toll on me. Helping other people's families is great, but when I can't help my own, the way I'm helping other people's family, it's difficult. I didn't have the understanding about rest at that time, but I'm trying to help you understand that when you're not getting rest, it will impact your health in one way or another, whether it's your physical health, your mental health. Spiritual health, it will have an impact. There will be a deficit somewhere. Rest is not a luxury. I know. We make it sound like that. We treat it like it's indulgent, like I said, like it's a piece of cake or a piece of candy. It is not. Dr. Dalton Smith argues that it's as vital as food and water for health and healing. So when you're not getting ample rest, it's like when you're not getting ample food, it has an impact. Your energy becomes low, right? You have nutritional deficits. Not getting any water, it's you're not getting hydration. You become dehydrated, and that causes other issues in your life. Your mental health is affected by dehydration. Circulation is affected. Rest is the stewardship of our body that God gave us. We need to give our bodies what it needs besides just food and water. Our bodies also need rest and not just our bodies. Rest is also resistance against burnout and against physical ailments, right? Your body operates much better when. It gets rest. Your immune system defenses depend on you getting rest, and that's specifically physical rest as well, because when you sleep, a lot of things happen while you're sleeping. Regeneration of cells And a whole lot of things are happening internally while we sleep. And your body needs an ample supply of that to do its job. The rest is also sacred. Rest is an act of trust. Sometimes when we just say, I'm gonna take a break, I'm gonna step away. I'm saying, I trust that God got this. I don't have to exert all this energy because we can't make anything happen in and of itself. I can't make you like me. I can't make you listen to this podcast. I can't make. Someone give me a job. You can't make your boss give you the promotion. Obviously there's things you need to do. There's a part that you play in that. But you can't make it happen. I can plant a seed. I can't make it grow. There are factors that I have no control over. I can't control how much sunlight or rain. I can't control what happens underneath the soil. So my role is limited And when I recognize that, then I can rest. The farmer plans the seed. I don't think he plans the seed and stares at it all day. Eventually you gotta take a nap, you gotta go to sleep, you gotta go take care of other things. But rest also restores our ability to pour into other people. Remember, you can't give from an empty cup Sometimes our frustration and why I'm feeling the way I'm feeling, it's not because of anything that we think it might be. Sometimes it's just that we are just not putting enough in. You can't pour out what hasn't been poured in. If I'm not replenishing, I cannot give The soil can't give nutrients without being replenished, and we're trying to do things from an empty cup, and we're kicking the dog and yelling at the goldfish. Not because the dog did anything, or the goldfish is doing anything because we just are depleted, we're empty. There's good news here people. The good news is we're gonna talk about some rest strategies here. What are some of the ways that we can get rest? In the opening, I asked you, how do you get rest? How do you find time to rest? Because I know many of you, like me, would say, I don't have time to do what you're talking about. You want me to take a walk in the park and stop and journal all those things? I don't have the time. I'm gonna say to you, do you make time for you? You have the time. You just don't take the time. Maybe the issue is not that you don't have the time, it's that you spend too much time on things you shouldn't be spending time on and not enough time on the things you should. That's for me too. What am I spending my time on? Because when we did the math, we said there's three hours and 25 minutes, right? According to that divine rest principle that we were talking about earlier. Do I have three hours and 25 minutes? I know. Like I said, you don't get mad at me if you're still listening. Thank you for sticking with me, but if you can take time. To take a walk for an hour. Okay. Walk and talk Or just a walk. Or just a walk around the block. Whatever walk you can do. That's an hour. I. You're getting a chance to get some exercise and some movement. That's also some mental rest. You get some time to just journal or audio journal if you're doing a walk and talk and or just quiet your mind. Maybe you also put your phone away and you're not talking on the phone or looking at emails and checking your texts and looking at your social media. Maybe that hour is just about the walk. Enjoying nature, enjoying that quiet time, spending time with you. Okay, so that's an hour. Maybe you spend 25 minutes on your way home from work or from wherever you have to travel from. And you do some meditative things during those 25 minutes, instead of just yelling at people through your car window or being upset with the traffic and talking on the phone to people trying to catch up with quick conversations or, texting and driving what you're not supposed to you. So maybe you use the those minutes too. Do something else. Listen to a podcast or to something that's soothing, something that relaxes you, something that helps to quiet and give you some calm and tranquility. Okay, that's another 25 minutes. All right, we're narrowing it down. Or maybe before you go to bed, you have some quiet time for your scripture. Reading a prayer That's another hour. It's possible you can do this, and it doesn't have to be, of course, the three hours and 25 minutes. That was just an example because I wanna set a standard for you. Maybe you can't do three hours and 25 minutes, but you can do two hours. But I wanted to help you and be practical so I wanted to map something out for you, but o obviously you need to do this for yourself. You need to map something out for you, something that's gonna work for your schedule and for your lifestyle. Yeah. Rest, food and water and exercise and all these things are part of what we are calling lifestyle medicine. That's something that's been talked about a lot lately. It's not new. It's just been given a name. Because holistic medicine has been around for a very long time, and it's very similar in that it speaks about the whole person. Because if you're dealing with a health challenge right now and you're going through something, whether it is physical, mental, or you're dealing with some trauma, grief, or other things that you're healing from. You need to incorporate rest as part of your health strategy, your healing strategy. It's not just changing your diet, not eating this, and eating more of that. That is important and it's not just exercise and moving, which is important too, and we'll talk about that next week. The next episode is Move It or Lose It. Movement is very important for your health, that it's not just that, and of course it's not just staying hydrated, which is important too, but rest. Rest. Why is it so hard for us to rest? I know I talked about that a little bit, I used to feel bad, like if I try to steal away or step aside and have some time for me, I feel like I could be doing something else with that time. I fall behind I, everybody's doing something and I'm over here doing this. Rest is an investment in clarity, healing, and long-term perseverance. You need to be able to have a long game here. Health is not a short game. It's not just a little goal. I just wanna lose weight, which is great, but losing weight is not the only thing that you need to do to improve your health. There are lots of other areas of our lives that we need to address that are just as important. And if you don't find time for you, who will? If you don't make time for rest and all those things that you need to be healthy, who's gonna do it? Who are you waiting on to do it? Rest is resistance. Because it reclaims power over our bodies, minds and spirit. But rest also can be resistant to some of those things we talked about. Stress fatigue, exhaustion, chronic illness. When our bodies rest, we have restoration that happens on the inside. And like I mentioned, we're able to fight against some of those things that are trying to fight against us. Things we can't even see, catch a cold or whatever it is because your immune system is not operating effectively. Rest will help with that. Diet, of course, will also help. You have to have the right nutrients, but rest is definitely part of the formula. rest is your right. Rest is the way that you resist. Against, stress, fatigue and all those things that could potentially harm you. But rest is also how you fight against exhaustion, mental exhaustion, emotional exhaustion, physical exhaustion. Spiritual exhaustion, all those seven areas that we mentioned earlier. I hope you enjoy your time with me. I'm hoping you feel like it was a good way to invest your time. As I've mentioned before, I'm a healing expert, and my approach is simple. It's something that was gifted to me, it's called the Grace approach. It is an acronym, G-R-A-C-E-G is for guidance. That is divine guidance and guidance by wisdom and research r is for reflection. A is affirmation, C for clarity, and E is encouragement. I will always offer you all of those things. I will always provide grace. I. I'll give you guidance that was either given to me by God or guidance that was I've gotten from research and wisdom. I'll always offer you a reflection, an opportunity to look on the inside to see what's going on. I'll always offer you affirmation, a way to affirm you, to clearly identify with what's true. And I'll also provide clarity. I'll make sure that we're talking about things in a way that is helpful to you, and I'll always give you encouragement. I know you can do this. I'll never offer you something and say, I don't know if you're gonna be able to do this I'm always gonna say, this is how it could get done. Here's some suggestions, and I encourage you, of course, to seek out more ways to improve your health. And of course, share those things with us. Share them with your community. I'd love to hear from you. I wanna thank you again for joining me today, and I'm gonna leave you of course, with a reflection in case you didn't get a chance to write it down. What areas of your life are deficient? Are you getting enough rest? What areas do you need to get more rest in? Map out your day and find a way to add rest and make sure you identify what kind of rest i'm gonna do a walk and talk, during my lunch hour or I'm gonna do a walk and talk, early in the morning before I leave for work. Maybe it's audio journaling that you're doing while you're walking and talking, and maybe you're putting your phone away and you're not answering emails and you're not checking social media and you're not, doing anything on your phone. So you're getting some of that social rest. You're getting some things done in just a walk and talk. So I encourage you to do that and share it with me. Let me know how it's going. Rest is necessary. Rest is going to help you get healthy and feel better. Remember we talked about rest between notes in music. Without rest, the music becomes noise, but without rest in your life, that also becomes just noise. It's the stillness that gives the sound. Its beauty and meaning. Until next time, be well. Be strong, be you.