Does Taking a Break Feel Impossible Right Now? Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith Gives Us 7 Ways to Start

When we first reported on Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith's outlook on rest several years ago, a light bulb went off for us. Dr. Dalton-Smith, a board-certified internal medicine doctor, informed us that sleeping is not the only rest we need. To thrive, we need seven different types of rest: physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, social, sensory, and creative.

We wanted to revisit Dalton-Smith's theory and speak to her again because rest, and the simple idea of taking a break, seems out of reach right now with the political landscape so charged and the other demands on all of our days. But Dalton-Smith sees all this and still believes we can find ways to restore ourselves daily. “We have to change our mindset on what rest is,” she tells The Sunday Paper. “Rest is not simply about stopping. It's about restoration. It's about pouring back into our deficits so that we can serve the people we love, and the areas where we felt called to impact."

A CONVERSATION WITH DR. SAUNDRA DALTON-SMITH

How do you describe the idea of rest, or even simply taking a break, in this current moment?

My definition of rest is based on restoring the parts of us that get depleted. Let's look at politics, for example, because that is such a big part of our lives for the next several months. When we look at how politics affects those different areas of the seven types of rest, it can affect our relationships because someone in your circle may not agree with you. Rest, in that case, may be understanding how to communicate without giving up your boundaries. It may be about not allowing yourself to get reactive to other people's toxicity or avoiding certain people, situations, or taking a break from social media. It varies and requires self-awareness to evaluate what situations are causing you to feel depleted and then what's being depleted in those situations.

Let’s talk about that self-awareness. What are the starting points for getting the seven different types of rest we all need?

Each type has its own ways that people can begin to restore. 

With physical rest, this can be as simple as ensuring you're getting high-quality sleep. It also could be more complicated and include evaluating your workspace or how you spend your leisure time and how your body engages with it. You may notice more back pain or leg swelling after sitting in your favorite chair. It is about being attuned to how your body responds to situations and aware when it is tight, tense, or uncomfortable. Doing this allows you to consider what activities are restorative to you, say maybe yoga or a leisure walk. It is about evaluating where you can begin to bring a sense of healing and restoration within your physical body. 

When we're thinking about mental rest, especially as it relates to some of the things happening right now, a big part of this is ensuring that we're not allowing ourselves to get into what I call 'mental tangles.' This is where we're thinking the same thoughts over and over that are negative and destructive. Mental rest can include opportunities to clear and have quiet in your cerebral space. Mental rest also includes redirecting those net negative thoughts into something that's more positive and will lead to a desired result. Here's an example: Say you've been arguing with a friend about the candidates. You can sit there all day and recount that conversation, and get upset, and feel hurt and rejected. Or you can focus on something more intentional and start thinking of something you both could agree on. Rather than letting your thoughts be wrapped up in the negative, how can you redirect them to something more life-giving or beneficial?  

Our spiritual rest goes back to our purpose and belonging, having a sense of unity, and feeling like we're part of something bigger than ourselves. That looks so different for everyone, regardless if we have spiritual beliefs. For most people, spiritual rest is how you show up in the world in a way that you feel like you're giving back to the greater good. It's a feeling people get when they do good for the sake of doing good and showing themselves to be part of humanity. We see news stories where random acts of kindness inspire a wave of kindness. When we feel disconnected, we may have a spiritual rest deficit. So, this is about finding a way to meaning and greater good. 

Feeling disconnected can also mean we need emotional rest. An emotional rest deficit is the one that people reach out to me most for right now. When we need emotional rest, we feel disconnected from our emotions and the world. We don't feel like we can be our authentic selves. So, with emotional rest, a big part of that is having a general understanding of what emotions are, how to communicate those emotions in a healthy way, how to release them without toxicity, and how we can open up and discuss them in a healthy way. 

Social rest deals with evaluating the people in our lives, which we must be mindful of right now. There might be people in your life who you have a difficult time being around. Social rest can include putting up healthy social boundaries to allow ourselves to stay in a healthy place. During intense political times, I see people take a break from seeing others for a short period, just to give their systems a break. Then, the other side of social rest is finding the people with whom you are on the same page and with whom you feel your voice is accepted. These are the people that pour back into you. They encourage you, they excite you, they inspire you. Part of a social strategy could be about intentionally placing yourself in spaces with these people.

Sensory rest is about downgrading the sensory input in your life. This could be a digital detox, or it could be something like moments of sensory isolation. For some, it can be getting away from the city where there's lots of noise and sounds and going away into quiet places. Another part of sensory rest can be recognizing that our senses come in many different ways. I have had some people who downgrade their sensory input, including the foods they eat. This could mean changing your diet so that you only have natural, simplified foods for the next seven days. It can be about appreciating the uncomplicated version of life and finding a place of peace in that.

And creative rest requires us to consider what excites and inspires us. There is not one person on earth who is not creative. This may be controversial, but I'll say it: I feel many of us are trained in school to block our creativity. We're in a culture that moves toward fitting in rather than standing out. Creativity, by nature, has individuality and it requires the appreciation of our differences. I love it when someone understands how creative rest affects them and can help them recognize things about themselves they didn't think were a part of them. So, creative rest is when we allow ourselves to be innovative and appreciate the things inside us that inspire us. I have found many people who have been successful in their careers get to a point in their life, usually between 40 and about 60, where they start to open themselves up to getting more rest and taking more breaks. As they start to do this, they realize there are talents inside them that they have yet to appreciate.

Dr. Saundra, what if someone feels that taking a break, or leaning into any type of rest, is too much of a privilege or a far away concept? What would you say?

That is a very common thought process. One of the top things I would say is that you're viewing rest as something that takes a lot of time. That's a big misconception. We associate rest with sleep, and sleep is six to eight hours. Then we started associating rest with vacations, and vacations are maybe three to seven days. Then, some people associate rest with sabbaticals, and taking a month off isn't logical for many of us. So, we have started to think about rest as these huge time blocks. Or even if we look at rest as a short time block, say 30 minutes, some people may still say that's unattainable. I try to get people to understand that rest has no time limits or time constraints. Rest is restorative practice. 

You can start thinking about things you habitually do and apply restorative practices to those things. For example, someone may say, 'I'm creatively zapped, but I don't have time to restore myself and go into nature.' Well, research shows that for people who feel restored by going to the ocean or mountains, an MRI of their brains showed their brain activity was the same as when they looked at the ocean or mountains and when they looked at a picture of the ocean or mountains. You can intentionally change the lock screen on your computer to a picture that inspires you and bring it into your home. Those things take one moment to fix, and then it's already in place. For the person who loves to find rest in reading but has no time, every morning when you're brushing your teeth, or every evening when you're cooking your meal, or if you're caregiving for someone, take a few minutes of that time to pop in and audiobook or a book of poetry, where someone's reading something beautiful to you. This is not taking away any time. It's using the time you have to ensure that every moment isn't draining you but that instead, some moments intentionally restore you. 

Curious about what type of rest you need? Take Dr. Saundr Dalton-Smith’s rest quiz here to help you start the break you need. 

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith is the author of Sacred Rest and a Board-Certified internal medicine physician and work-life integration researcher. She is the founder of Restorasis, a professional development agency dedicated to restoring wellbeing in the workplace through its proprietary 7 Types of Rest Framework™. Learn more at drdaltonsmith.com and order her book here.