The Power of Rest

Written By Natasha Durand-Moulton

I used to get horrible migraines.

In my early 20s, I was riding high on youth, fueled by adrenaline, ambition, and way too much caffeine. I didn’t understand the subtle ways my body whispered warnings. So, it started screaming. My migraines were blinding. They hurt so badly I would vomit. Light, sound, and even movement became unbearable. Still, I refused to stop. I would recover, get another morphine injection, sleep for a day or two, and then return right back to the same grind that landed me there in the first place.

Until one day, I realized something.

The migraines weren’t random. They were warnings from my body’s alarm system blaring, “STOP.” When I started to actually listen, I began to heal.

Over time, I noticed a pattern: the more I built rest into my routine, the less the migraines came. The more I paused, the more space I gave myself to recover, and the more resilient I became. Now, if I start to feel that old ache creep in, I stop, breathe, and return to stillness. Usually, that’s enough.

Because I’ve come to understand: rest isn’t a luxury. It’s a strategy.

Rest Is Not the Absence of Action, It’s the Foundation of It

Too often we confuse rest with weakness, laziness, or stagnation. But from both ancient wisdom and modern science, we learn something different: rest is a sacred part of growth.

“It’s not emptiness, it’s potential.”

From the Vedic tradition, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi spoke of something called the Gap. This place is a moment of stillness, but it isn’t empty. Instead, it is filled with possibility. He explained that when activity comes to a stop, what follows isn’t just rest, it’s a space where anything can emerge. The Gap is that sacred pause between an inhale and an exhale, between action and result, between asking a question and receiving the answer. It’s not a void. It’s where creativity, healing, and insight are born.

When we allow ourselves to rest, we’re not doing nothing. Instead, we’re entering the richest space of all: the space where transformation begins. Rest is not stepping out of life, it is stepping deeper into it. It is what allows new ideas to rise, solutions to present themselves, and inner clarity to settle.

Maharishi taught that when activity ends, it doesn’t lead to nothingness, it leads to a place where anything can happen. The pause is not empty; it’s open. It’s the fertile soil in which clarity and creativity grow. What follows rest isn’t nothing, it’s next. The power of that next step lies in the quality of your pause.

Science Agrees: Rest Is Multidimensional

In her insightful research, Margareta Asp (2015) found that rest is not just stillness. It is being in harmony between motivation, feelings, and action. Asp describes the rhythm between rest and non-rest as essential for health. Rest includes:

  • Letting go in confidence

  • Being accepted without judgment

  • Dwelling in calm and peace

  • Perceiving pleasurable sensations

Non-rest, on the other hand, is not just busyness. It’s disharmony, a dissonance between your drive and your capacity. Staying in that space too long leads to depletion, despair, and disease.

That’s why rest must be deliberate, conscious, and it must be diverse.

The Seven Types of Rest

According to the American Psychological Association (Abramson, 2025), rest isn’t just about sleep. Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith defines seven types of rest we all need:

  1. Physical Rest: Not just naps, but massages, stretches, or simply lying down.

  2. Mental Rest: Breaks from problem-solving, journaling, or allowing mindless moments.

  3. Emotional Rest: Permission to stop performing, to cry, and to speak your truth.

  4. Social Rest: Retreating from draining interactions and choosing soul-nourishing ones.

  5. Sensory Rest: Less screen time, less noise, more time in stillness.

  6. Creative Rest: Replenishing your sense of awe with beauty, nature, or joyful hobbies.

  7. Spiritual Rest: Returning to meaning, connection, and quiet reflection.

Each type speaks to a different kind of fatigue and each one leaves its own clues. If your body aches and your eyelids feel heavy, it might be physical rest you’re lacking. If your thoughts are racing and you can’t concentrate, your mind may be crying out for mental rest. If you feel emotionally threadbare or like you're always performing, you probably need emotional rest. Start by observing where you feel most depleted. That’s your cue.

Why We Resist It and Why We Must Stop

Jimmy Evans (2024) writes in Psychology Today that most people set aside almost no time to actually rest. We associate rest with being unproductive or indulgent, fearing that if we slow down, we’ll lose our edge, fall behind, or let people down. But what really happens when we don’t rest?

We fray, we forget, and then we burn out. Worst of all? We become disconnected from ourselves.

Evans outlines three key insights that offer a springboard for redefining our relationship with rest:

  1. Rest is a generator of energy, mental clarity, and wholehearted caring. This isn't just poetic. Think of rest like a deep breath in the middle of a chaotic day, not a stop sign, but a reset button. It's that quiet in-between moment where the pressure eases and space opens up. Instead of pushing through burnout, rest lets you pull from a deeper place inside. It’s not about quitting, it’s about reconnecting. That pause? That’s the place where possibility lives. When you rest, you’re not falling behind, you’re gathering the energy to leap forward.

  2. Most people barely allow themselves any true rest. Hustle culture tells us that to stop is to fail. But this is a social and cultural conditioning that must be questioned. If we’re always in motion, when do we reflect? When do we realign? When do we remember what we’re working for in the first place? This is why so many of us, especially women, find ourselves burning out. We're following rules that deny us permission to stop.

  3. Gentle tweaks to our routines, brief pauses, quiet space between tasks, a moment of breath, can help us reclaim it. Rest doesn’t have to be a dramatic overhaul. It can be small: a walk without your phone, a deep breath before a meeting, a moment in the sun before opening your laptop. These are our entries into the Gap. These are our deposits into the energy bank. Remember, as we explored in a previous blog, small changes are powerful. They ripple outward and rest is the softest, strongest ripple of them all.

Rest isn’t the opposite of productivity. It’s what allows productivity to flourish.

It is the hidden generator of momentum, resilience, and inner peace. When we fail to rest, we stop evolving. We become machines running on fumes, disconnected from the very life we’re working so hard to build.

Reclaiming Rest: Cultural and Personal Reframing

We live in a culture that worships hustle and demonizes rest. The constant pressure to be “on” has left us unable to distinguish between activity and progress. Productivity has become the measure of worth. And in that model, rest is failure.

But here’s the truth: rest isn’t laziness, it’s leadership and it’s ownership of your energy. It’s a form of spiritual rebellion against systems that benefit from your burnout. We weren’t made to be machines. We are cyclical, rhythmic, and dynamic beings.

To rest is to reclaim your rhythm.

Start by refusing the internalized shame around rest. Rest doesn’t require permission. It requires intention. Let’s stop viewing rest as something you have to earn. View it as something you must build with care and respect. Because your body, your mind, and your spirit are all sacred.

Gentle Integration: Rest as a Practice

Here’s a simple way to begin building rest into your rhythm:

1. Reflect: What kind of rest are you most depleted in right now? (Emotional? Mental? Creative?)

2. Reclaim: Choose one small way to invite that type of rest into your day. Ten minutes, that’s all it takes.

3. Ritualize: Pick a time (before work, after lunch, before bed) to pause, even for 60 seconds. Let that pause be a ritual, a return to yourself.

4. Reframe: Remind yourself: “This isn’t wasted time. It’s my way back to harmony.”

5. Restore: Let this moment be enough. Let it be your drop in the ocean. You don’t need a vacation. You need a rhythm.

How I Practice Rest in My Daily Life

Part of my daily rest comes at the very end of my day before I get into bed. I’ve created a detailed self-care routine that signals to my body: it’s time to stop.

I take a hot shower where I exfoliate and use scents that are pleasing to me and make me feel good. I go through my facial routine, gently massaging the tension out of my jaw and temples. I follow this with a self-massage known in Ayurveda as abhyanga (pronounced aw-bee-ah-n-guh). First lotion, then oil, something moisturizing and soothing, always with calming scents that help my nervous system settle.

Then I brush my teeth, braid my hair, and slip into comfortable, silky pajamas. These actions aren’t about vanity, they’re about reclaiming the end of my day as mine. They’re my way of closing the day with intention and ease.

I also try to keep Sunday as a sacred pause. No work, just home. Sometimes that means laundry but I’ll throw a load in and then play a video game while it runs. I sprinkle rest in with things that need to get done. I do what feels good in my body, what helps me feel grounded, and what makes me smile. That’s rest too.

Rest, for me, is a patchwork, a practice, and a promise.

It’s not always perfect. But it’s mine.

Final Thought: You Are Not Empty

When you pause, when you rest, when you do “nothing”… you’re not empty. You are full of potential.

Rest doesn’t delay your growth. It nourishes it.

It doesn’t block your creativity. It awakens it.

And it doesn’t take away your power. It restores it.

Let this blog be your weighted blanket. Let it be the Gap, that sacred space between breath and action. Then let your return from it be stronger, clearer, and more full of life than before.

You don’t have to earn it. You only have to allow it.

References

Natasha Durand-Moulton
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Waking Up in the Life You Haven’t Escaped