She Can Heal Podcast

Ep. 40 - How to Reclaim Your Energy: A Woman's Guide to Rest and Recovery

• Keila Aldea, LCSW

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Your body is sending you signals every day, but are you listening? Just like your phone can't function on 1% battery, your mind and body need regular recharging to perform at their best.

In this revealing conversation, we explore why rest isn't a luxury—it's essential maintenance for your physical and mental wellbeing. Society has conditioned us to view constant busyness as a badge of honor, leaving many of us depleted, irritable, and heading toward burnout without even realizing it.

Discover the three critical types of rest everyone needs: micro rest periods (30 seconds to a few minutes) that prevent mental fatigue, short rest periods (5-30 minutes) that help transition between activities, and longer rest periods (hours to days) that foster complete restoration. Each serves a unique purpose in maintaining your energy levels and preventing the chronic stress that leads to serious health complications.

The most powerful insight? Rest doesn't always mean inactivity. Sometimes a 20-minute walk, a brief stretching session, or even mindfully enjoying your lunch without distractions can provide the mental reset you need. By learning to check your internal battery level throughout the day, you can identify exactly when and what type of rest you need before hitting critical depletion.

When you return from vacation feeling motivated and energized, that's not coincidence—it's evidence that your body and mind have finally received the recovery time they've been craving. Start viewing rest as non-negotiable self-care rather than indulgence, and watch how your productivity, relationships, and happiness transform. Your future self will thank you for the permission to pause.

90-day Self-Growth Journal - A great companion you can use on your healing journey. For 90 days you will have daily prompts on the topics of self-love, self-care and gratitude.  This journal is great for beginners, novice and anyone that wants to dive deeper into their true selves.   https://amzn.to/4fk14sq

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Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome back to another episode on the she Can Heal podcast. I am so happy that you have hit play and decided to join me on today's episode and I hope that this episode finds you doing well. So today's episode I wanted to talk about the importance of rest for mental and physical health, and the reason why I am talking about this today is because recently I went on a vacation to Puerto Rico, had an awesome time a lot of rest, restoration, fun, adventure, all the good stuff, right. And one thing that I've realized and this is not the first time that I've realized this, but one thing that I've realized is when I come back from vacation, I come back with so much energy, so much motivation to get back to my normal habits, like getting back to doing all the things that I enjoy doing. And I have this energy and motivation to get back to doing all the things that I enjoy doing, like recording this podcast and all of that. And it prompted me to think about rest, right. And so what I want to do is I want to talk about what are the benefits of rest, but also I want to talk about the different types of rest, okay, and the three different types that I want to talk about, the different types of rest. Okay, and the three different types that I want to talk with you today is long rest period right, like vacation.

Speaker 1:

Short rest periods and many rest periods. And, um, the reason why is because I remember when I was leaving, or like right before vacation, I started to feel the need to like pause. I was feeling really tired, I was feeling drained, I was feeling a bit disconnected from, you know, work and things like that. And it's because I know that I needed a long rest period to just pause, to just, you know, just take a break from the things that I normally do. Right, just taking a break from normal life. And vacations are such a way, a great way to do that. Right, because you're not engaging in any of your normal habits, you don't have this routine. You're just kind of living in the moment. You're kind of just enjoying things day by day. You're doing things you enjoy, you're relaxing, You're just kind of living in the moment. You're kind of just enjoying things day by day. You're doing things you enjoy, you're relaxing, you're having fun. And you know, when we're in our day to day, it's really hard to do those things because we are so programmed to do our normal, you know, monday through Friday. You know we have our routines, we have to work, we have our kids and the truth is that many of us just have a really difficult time of disengaging from our just like getting off that hamster wheel. Right, getting off that hamster wheel is really hard and I want to talk to you about, like, what the benefits are from using different types of rest periods and how they really contribute to us feeling our best and showing up as our best self.

Speaker 1:

You know, depending on what roles we're doing either motherhood, you know, work relationships, right, because when we don't have the opportunity to give ourselves these rest periods, we tend to really engage in a lot of different behaviors and we start to feel in ways that are not so good. You know, I think about a lot of the women that I work with and if they don't have the opportunity because life is life right, like we're busy, we're doing a bunch of different things, and like I don't have kids at home. But even for myself, I can see myself feeling like that Because you know, I'm doing my working full time, coming home and then there's just so much pressure to, like you know, do all the things Like keep your house clean, and you know, spend time with family, and you know, cook nutritious meals and exercise and, you know, just do all the things that we do on a daily basis. And it could be really difficult for us to disengage from that and to give ourselves different periods of rest, and I think a lot of it has to do with so many different like myths and beliefs that people have around rest, which is, you know, a lot of people really don't believe that it's okay to like go away on vacation. Right, they see people going on vacation and they just think that they're irresponsible or they're lazy.

Speaker 1:

You know, if people are taking a day off during the week just to do something that they enjoy, they look at that, as you know, not good, like we shouldn't take a day off to, you know, have a mental health day or have a fun day or anything like that, and they look at that, they look down on that. Or even like taking the afternoon off or coming home and just taking time off, um, maybe today I decide that I need a longer rest period. So, instead of just coming home cooking, cleaning, I'm going to order some food and then I'm just going to take the afternoon to just unwind or engage in a fun activity or craft activity or whatever. It is like a movie night or something like that. And the truth is that that's something that's conditioned in us, because the you know, the normal way of living right is that you constantly have to be busy, and busy is equated with success. It's equated with productivity, and productivity is like most people just want to be productive because they feel that that's the way that makes them feel good, because it makes them they're doing the things that they need to do in order to be successful and all the things right.

Speaker 1:

And the truth is that if you do your research, you will learn that rest is an essential part of being emotionally, physically, well. Success comes from understanding that there are periods of time that we should work, but there's also periods of time that we should rest, and resting does not mean that you're lazy. Resting does not mean that you're lazy. Resting does not mean that you're responsible. Resting means that you are taking needed time in order to let your mind and your body recover from everything. Right, because we're not robots. We're not supposed to be working, working, working, working, working right.

Speaker 1:

Let's use the example of a cell phone. Right, because even everything in life has moments of rest With a cell phone. If you are using your cell phone all day long and you do not charge that phone, that phone battery is going to run out. Right, and in order for you to continue using that phone, you have to plug it in and let it recharge. Nature the same thing happens, right, um, during the summer and the spring months, everything's blooming, everything is, it's just vibration, right, it's just blooming and doing well. And then when winter comes, everything just basically shuts down. Right, the many animals, they hibernate. Um, nature, you know stops, you know they, they use this time as, um, you know, a break, a rest. So the trees don't have leaves and the flowers are, are away, right, because it is winter and winter is seen as a time of rest. And so if you think about yourself in that same way, if you think about yourself and having your battery right, it's saying to yourself your battery is not going to constantly be fully charged.

Speaker 1:

If you're not giving yourself these moments of rest, right, if you think about yourself like, you wake up in the morning and you're the type of person that does things in the morning to fuel themselves. So if you wake up in the morning, maybe you go for a morning walk, maybe you prepare a healthy breakfast, right. By the time you leave for work, your battery is going to be really charged, right. It's going to be probably like close to 100, right, 95%. But as you go around your day, right, if you think about it, by 11am, depending on what is it that you do, no matter what it is, you're still doing right.

Speaker 1:

So let's say you are you work in customer service, right? So you go into work at eight o'clock. By 11 o'clock, right, those three hours you have talked to a lot of customers, you have been doing a lot of physical work to process payments or to stock shelves, um, so, no matter what you're doing, by 11 AM your battery is not going to be at 99% anymore, right? Depending on how much you talk to, how much you process and how much you moved around, your battery is probably going to be close to like 50%, right, in anything, right? Think about someone that works in a career where you know they have meetings all day, so they go in at 8am and you know they have back toback meetings. By 11 am their batteries are going to be 99% right.

Speaker 1:

I think about myself too. If you're a person that works with people, like a therapist or any type of service business right, where you're literally putting out energy to help people, by 11 am again, you're just going to be at 50%, right. And then you say to yourself because most of us don't have this insight to say I noticed that I'm starting to feel a bit tired, I'm starting to feel a little overwhelmed because I just didn't have a break for three hours. And then we say I think my battery's at 50%. I'm going to give myself a short rest, a break, in order to just recharge myself. Right, most of us don't do that. And so then we keep on working, working, working, and a lot of people don't even take a lunch break. A lot of people are eating through their lunches or they skip lunch altogether because they have to do the things right. And so now let's go three more hours right.

Speaker 1:

Now it's like 2 pm and you haven't had a rest period, you haven't taken a break at all. And now where do you think your battery is? At 2 pm, if you have not given yourself a moment of rest, right, your battery is probably going to be at 25%, you know, and that is probably like the danger zone, right? If you think about your phone, when your phone's at 20%, that battery light turns red, right, and it sends you a message, right, it sends you this big notification that the battery is low and you need to recharge it, right? We don't have that, and so if we're not conscious and we're not aware of it, what's going to happen is when you get to that 25% and you don't do anything and you keep going, going, going, by the time that you leave work and you go home, your battery is going to be very, very low, right? It's probably going to be close to like 10, 5%, because you have been going, going, going, you've been doing, doing, doing, and you haven been giving yourself a moment to recoup that energy, to recharge yourself, to give yourself time for recovery.

Speaker 1:

And now you have gone home, and I'm sure for most of you, right? So I'm sure that if you're a mom, if you're someone who has a family, you're going to come home and you're going to have kids who are going to need you, right? You're going to have responsibilities and tasks that are going to need you. And you wonder why you feel so irritable, right? Why you feel so stressed when you get home, why you feel so tired, and at that moment in time, your kids are only going to get the lowest version of you because you haven't given yourself any time for rest or recovery. And so now the kids are going to get this stressed mom, right, this irritable mom who the kids have been waiting for you to get home because they want to know when you're going to make dinner. They're going to want you to help them with homework, or sometimes they just want to like catch up with you and say hey, mom, look look at this great thing that happened to school today, or I've.

Speaker 1:

You know, I had a rough day at school today and you cannot be in a place where you can fully receive it because you are so tapped out. You're completely tapped out, right. And if you're not a mom, if you're like me and you're like an empty nester and you don't have kids at home waiting for you but you have a lifestyle that you want to have, right, like I think about after work, a lot of people just want to go to the gym and if you are not the person who is pretty good with having that insight about your internal battery and your energy levels and things like that. At the end of the day, the last thing you want to do is go to the gym, and the truth is that you have very limited energy. Right, your battery is so low that it's going to be really hard for you to go to the gym because you feel depleted. Right, or you come home, like for me some days. I come home and I am completely tired and I have to cook dinner and I just feel really really drained. Right, and the truth is that this is the reason why we need breaks.

Speaker 1:

Right, because, physically right, rest is really anything that you do that's going to help to increase your physical and your mental wellbeing. It is anything that you do like to like plug yourself in, to like fill your energy reservoir, like to like plug yourself in, to like fill your energy reservoir, to, like, you know, charge your battery. Right, and it could be active. It could be something where you know rest is not just like laying down and doing anything, but it could be something that is going to give your mind and your body a little bit of a break so that you can again recover from the three hours that you did, of, you know, giving so much time, energy and mental um work to what you're doing. And, again, it does not have to be long. Again, it could be mini breaks, it could be shorter breaks, it could be longer breaks at times.

Speaker 1:

Right, and really it's learning that this is what we need to do in order to help our bodies, our minds, to recover and recharge from all the physical and mental effort that we have put out in all the things that we do. Right, and that's why, when we think of rest right, it is disengaging from the condition right, it is disengaging from the condition right, that story that we've learned throughout life that says that rest is for, you know, lazy people or slackers, or like we don't have time to. Well, some people say, right, I'll rest when I'm dead or whatever, and that's so like unhealthy for us. Because we can rest, we can take care of our mental and emotional and physical selves and also be the best parents, the best business owners. We can be successful, we can do all those things, and giving yourself the rest that you need is not going to stop you from doing that. It really does. It really helps you to have more energy, like I was saying with me when I came back, I noticed that like I had all this energy I was, I had all this motivation to do all the things, like I couldn't wait to get back to my normal routine of like going for my daily walks, you know, and meal planning for my healthy meals, you know, and, you know, thinking about podcast episodes that I wanted to record, you know, all those kinds of things. And it's because I had that time to just rest and recover and it gave me all that, like I recouped it, I was, I recovered, I rejuvenated myself through that one week of disengaging from the things that I normally do. And so this is why rest is really really important and why I think that most of us need to think about it differently, need to think about it as this is part of just a healthy lifestyle, to keep myself physically and mentally healthy.

Speaker 1:

If we think about physically, if you are constantly on the go, on, the go, on the go, as I said earlier, everything needs rest, everything does. But if you think about physically, you know what can happen when you give yourself physical rest. Right, you think about your muscles are fatigued or they're tired or they're tense, and giving yourself something to give your physical body some rest can really be helpful to your muscles, right, it can give it more energy, it can release that tension. It can really help us to function better, right, it can help us to then be able to do all the things we need to do because we've given ourselves a little bit of physical rest. And the same thing with our minds, right, if you are doing something where you're constantly, you know, thinking and processing and having to use a lot of mental focus, your brain needs rest, it needs a pause. There's a link between you know, giving yourself mental rest and, like that, mental recovery and mental health problems. Right, because that's where the anxiety, the depression, the irritability comes right, the mental fatigue comes from.

Speaker 1:

It's when I've been just going, going, going, going and I have given myself moments of rest. I haven't given my brain time to just re-energize itself and to do what it needs to do to get rid of and process everything that we've been doing, so that we can then have that mental clarity and we can do so much more. Because, think about it, if you are on this hamster wheel I call it, right, an autopilot and you're going, going, going, going going, you are going to like your brain's going to run out of mental battery, right, because it can only do so much without a break, without a pause, without a moment to just give it some time to recoup that energy. And we tend to. I know that when I don't notice this or when I choose to ignore that, my mind that I need a mental break I am making mistakes, right? Sometimes, like it's hard for the brain, what is it? They call it? I forgot what it's called, but you know, you get that brain fog.

Speaker 1:

I think it's what it's called brain fog, right. Your mind gets foggy because it really is telling you like I'm overloaded, right, I'm overloaded and this is not helpful to me, and so you make mistakes, you have a hard time focusing, you get irritable because you are again overloaded and you just your mental capacity is just really low, and so you start experiencing all of these um symptoms. You know that's where the stress, um and decision-making and all of that gets affected, because, again, we're not robots. We need time for rest, and so I want to talk to you about the different types of rest. With all that being said, it's saying that there's ways for us to incorporate different types of rest into our life, into our day, to help us through these times, and so I want to break it up into, like those micro breaks, short breaks and longer rest periods.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so let's start with micro rest periods, and I think these are one of the most important ones that we can actually incorporate into our lives, because they are just little short bursts of pauses that we can incorporate into our lives that can help us right. So, like when we're talking about restarting work at like that 90% battery life, and then we give ourselves, you know, after a couple hours and we're down to 50%, that's a great time for us to incorporate a short amount of break. And so these are activities that you can do that can be like 30 seconds to a few minutes. And so why these things really work is because giving yourself even just a minute of just a mental break could be really really helpful, and it is essential. It really is Because, again, like we're talking about us disengaging from the doing, taking a pause back, to just give ourselves a little bit of that little pause and break, so that our capacity to continue doing what we're doing can be really helpful.

Speaker 1:

Yes, longer breaks might be helpful, but listen, micro rest periods are just as helpful, and I know, because those are the ones that I truly, um, you know, enjoy doing and so, um, those are the ones that are going to really help to prevent mental fatigue and they're going to help you to maintain focus, you know, especially for those of us who work on the computers or, like I said, we work with people. So, you know, after if I'm doing my type of work, which is working one-on-one with individuals, or sometimes I'm at the school with kids, it's saying to myself, like, after three hours, I have given out so much of my energy mental energy, physical energy and I just need to take a minute to just recoup some of that. And it could be something as simple as, maybe, after like two hours of your, after like two hours of your, of your work day, you sit back, you close your eyes and you might just give yourself 30 seconds to a minute to just focus on your breath. So it could just be closing your eyes, which could be really helpful, because then it it kind of blocks out all the um, the lights and all the stimulation, and then all you do is you tap into your breath and it could be something like, um, focusing on your breath as it goes in through your nose. Maybe it's focusing on um, your chest as it rises and falls, um, you know. So it's like giving yourself that moment to just come back into yourself and just recenter your energy, and so doing something like that could be really helpful.

Speaker 1:

Another thing that I like to do is I sometimes you know you're especially if you're sitting for long periods of time giving yourself like rest. Um, stretch periods could be really helpful too, and that could be something as simple as doing a neck, um, a neck roll right, and again you're using your breath and you're rolling your neck from side to side. That could be doing overhead stretch for a couple of seconds. It could be doing side twists, so twisting to one side for a couple of seconds, twisting to the other side for a couple of seconds, and then standing up and doing a like a bent over stretch, right, and that alone can take two minutes. And I will tell you that I do this from time to time and it actually feels really relaxing because you're holding your posture. You know, depending on the work that you're doing, sometimes you're holding on to like tension you might experience little stresses here and there and just doing something like that, just like giving yourself like two minutes to just stretch your body from you know the top to the bottom. Again, you know what does each stretch take you. That could be 15 to 20 seconds and if you do like five to six stretches, that doesn't take much time and you're using your breath and that is just going to help to relieve and give you a little bit of that like mini, like relaxation that you can do.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes it could be taking a break where you get up from your desk or you get up from you know your workstation, and you go and you stop at the water fountain or if you have a cup of water or a water bottle, right, it could be a water break. That could be the time Cause sometimes hey, listen, when you're real busy you forget to do all the things right. So I know it's happened to me where I've been working, working, working and before I know it I'm like, oh my God, it's almost noon and I haven't really drunk any water. So it could be something as simple as that is giving yourself a minute or two to go ahead and just take a water break. So you're literally just mindfully taking some time. Again, it could be 30 seconds that you take away from your screen. Maybe you stand up and maybe you step outside for a couple minutes or seconds, right, depending on where your workstation is, or at home, it could be going to the window.

Speaker 1:

It could be anything like that where you're just giving yourself a minute to just have a drink, or it could be something where you're going and making a cup of coffee, you're sitting down and you're just sipping on your coffee for, like you know, two to three minutes, right, it doesn't take a lot of time. But these little mini, like breaks, rest periods, whatever you want to call them, could be really impactful. And you have to say to yourself like what's more important? Right, could be really impactful. And you have to say to yourself what's more important, right? Is it more important to just push through and feel like crap and bring on the fatigue and bring on the stress, or is it okay, every two to three hours, that I just take a two minute break, right?

Speaker 1:

One thing that I have on my desk and I got this as a gift many years ago and I love it, and it's having a stand timer on my desk and a stand timer on my desk is a is a really good reminder, and I've used it from time to time, and so what I'll do is, if I've noticed that, you know what, I think it's time for me just to take a little mental break, I'll just flip it over I think it's a one minute timer and I will just focus on my breath, or I might just like look outside and just focus on what's happening outside, or I might close my eyes and, you know, breathe, and just for a minute, and if I feel like I need it just a little longer, I'll flip it again and I'll and I'll do the same thing, you know, and again, it doesn't take a long time. It's just these little micro breaks that you can do for yourself that actually make such a huge difference. And again, think about it as you're plugging in your battery, so that you're not depleting yourself throughout your day without recouping that energy, throughout your day, without recouping that energy. Okay, so now let's talk about short rest periods, and so these are just a little longer than like the micro ones, because the micro ones are like from a couple seconds to a few minutes and it's just doing something very quickly, where a short period is doing something that can take you from like five to 30 minutes, and again, this can be really helpful.

Speaker 1:

I would include into this shorter rest periods are normal, like lunch breaks, right, which I say? So many of us do not give ourselves our lunch break and we underestimate how important it is just to take that break to eat a meal or to engage in something that's going to help us to take a break from work. I think it's so important because this is a time where you can kind of give back to yourself and say to yourself I need to take space from what I'm doing so that I can engage in an activity that's going to help me to relax, to do some recovery time right To you know, just help myself to get that mental or that physical break. This is one of my favorites, too, because one of the things that I personally do is I give myself a daily 20 to 30 minute walk every day at my lunch break, especially now that it's turning into spring and summer, it's going to be one of the best things. When it's winter it's a little harder, but I still would go out there.

Speaker 1:

And again, it doesn't have to be a long break, it doesn't have to be going out there for and again, it doesn't have to be a long break. It doesn't have to be going out there for 45 minutes. It could be something like going for a walk a 10 minute walk, right. It could be leaving your office space and going for a 10 minute walk and then coming back. It could be giving yourself those 20 to 30 minutes to just focus on eating your meal, right. And the whole idea here is trying to disengage from trying to do multiple things at once. I know a lot of us like to eat and watch videos and things like that, and if that's relaxing to you, then that's fine, because you're doing something to really help you to feel more chilled and relaxed.

Speaker 1:

But one of the things I've learned about mindful eating is that it is very impactful to your mental health, to your physical health. It has so many benefits and so even if you would just give yourself 10 to 15 minutes to just enjoy just your meal, you know, to just literally focus on what you're eating, focus on tasting your food and just being present with your food can be really helpful. I know I do that from time to time and it just is very helpful because sometimes when you're eating and watching something, when you're eating and talking, you are not fully present with your food and you don't fully taste your food. Or sometimes you're like, oh shoot, I already finished this. You are not fully present with your food and you don't fully taste your food. Or sometimes you're like, oh shoot, I already finished this, you know, and you're eating more faster, and those types of things. So having some time to just sit with, just eating your food could be really helpful as well.

Speaker 1:

Maybe you want to have a 15 minute. You know coffee break, right, and so this might be 15 minute. Um, you know coffee break, right, and so this might be brewing a cup of coffee and maybe sitting outside, preferably because you're just engaging with, um, you know the sun and fresh air, but just sitting outside and just having your cup of coffee and just enjoying the time away from doing the things, um, or a cup of tea, right. And again, it's about being present and being away from all types of distractions. I mean, listen, sometimes it's having a cup of coffee with a coworker. You guys are just sitting down and just chatting and having a good time, or whatnot. Um, anything like that could be helpful.

Speaker 1:

Um, one that I like to do, um, and this could be like five minutes or so Sometimes it's good to do a little quick meditation or a walking meditation could be really helpful where you can do that for five to 10 minutes. I've done that, like I'll sometimes I'll just go on YouTube and I'll look up a five minute just mindful meditation and if someone that's guiding you through a breathing exercise or guiding you through a body scan or something like that, or sometimes it could just be putting on some meditation music which I also like to do and just giving yourself a couple minutes to sit with your cup of coffee or your cup of tea and you're just sipping on the tea while you're listening to some relaxation music, and again, it could be five minutes, it could be 10 minutes right, it can be that short of a time or this could be your time where you go for your 20 minute walk and maybe you are doing a walking meditation or maybe you're listening to a really good audio book, which I enjoy doing, so anything like that. Maybe it's when you get home from work. You give yourself those 20 minutes, which is something that I've started doing because it's very tempting to get home from work and start to just jump into, you know, preparing dinner or start cleaning the kitchen or start doing all these things. I know that again, if we get home and we're feeling energized and like we've been doing things throughout the day, that's really hasn't depleted us and we feel like our battery is pretty good and you feel energized to do those things, do it by all means. I'm not saying that you have to come home and take a break. I'm saying that I want you to learn how to check in with yourself and if you get home from work and you're feeling a bit tired, you're feeling a bit depleted, that you make sure that you give yourself that time. And it's also really good to give yourself a little bit of a break when you come home from work, because you want to give yourself that transition period anyways, because you should have that. You should have some time to unwind from the day. You should have some time to you know, come home and just give yourself some time to not rush into the next thing.

Speaker 1:

I think this is really helpful, even for kids. I do encourage, like high school students, to do this that when you come home from work I know you have a lot of homework and you probably have chores and things like that but giving your kids. You know time to transition is super helpful because think about it again they've been in school all day long and they've been learning and they've been around a lot of kids and just all the stuff that happens at school. And then they come home and immediately you want them to start cleaning their room or to start doing their homework. And then you wonder why they're so irritable.

Speaker 1:

And giving your kids or giving yourself that transition rest period when you come home, to just do something that you enjoy, something relaxing, to help you to ease into your evening, could be a really helpful technique. And again, thinking about what kinds of things helps you to feel more relaxed. One of the things that I started doing now that it's lighter out is, when I get home, I'll take my dog for a walk and we'll go for a 20 minute walk before I do anything else, and that's really helpful because, again, or 20 minute walk before I do anything else, and that's really helpful because, again, you're kind of giving yourself that time to just unwind, to do something physically good for you. And again, these rest periods can be active, right. Rest is not just about sitting down and doing, you know, like doing things that are like physically relaxing. It could be active too, right, going for a walk is really helpful. It's really de-stressing for the body. You know, when you're walking, your muscles are just feeling a lot more, you know, relaxed, and you're getting that fresh air and the endorphins are starting to get, you know, activated.

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Rest periods can also include, you know, like, is this a good time for you to do a yoga, a yoga stretch? Right? Maybe you come home, or maybe after work, you go and you do a yoga class to really help stretch your body and to use your breath, and it could be such a really great way to disengage from everything else before you go ahead and do the things you need to do. Okay, so that is short rest periods. Okay, so now let's talk about longer rest periods, and this could be hours to days, and longer rest periods could include hours, right, so it could be, you know, taking the afternoon off of work to go and do something enjoyable, right? It could be like I was talking a quiet or relaxing evening, and that could be. I'm going to order food today, I'm going to get into my pajamas and maybe I'm going to watch some movies, or maybe I'm going to use it as a time to connect with someone and I'm going to go and I'm going to take go out with a friend or we're going to order pizza and we're going to have just a family game night or something like that. And so it's really helping yourself to understand that if you're feeling really depleted, that you might need a longer rest period.

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From time to time Might be take an afternoon nap. You know, some people really love that. I know I don't not very much during the year. But hey, listen, there's days in the year where I come home and I literally have nothing left and I will just lay down and I'll take an hour or two nap, and it doesn't happen very often. But I think the most important part is listening to your body.

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So if you're feeling really depleted, if you're feeling really tired, if you're feeling really fatigued, that you really listen to yourself and give yourself some rest, even if that means that certain things are not going to get done, because the truth is that we have to prioritize ourselves and we have to believe that we are worth taking care of ourselves and the dishes right. We are worth taking care of ourselves and the dishes right. You know certain things keeping the house clean, those types of things are not always should not be before you. You know, if you have the energy to do it, if you have help, great, do it. Of course, we all want to have a nice, organized and clean house, because that definitely helps with our mental health. But also, is it worth making yourself more stressed, right? Is it not listening to yourself and not taking care of yourself?

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Think about it as you come home and you are trying to do all the things even though you feel really badly, right, it's not worth it. And if that means that one afternoon I'm not going to get any chores done because I truly feel like I need it, then I'm going to do that. Because, guess what? This is not like an everyday kind of thing where I'm ignoring all my responsibilities. It is saying, today I need the afternoon off and I'm going to engage in these fun or relaxing activities for today, and then tomorrow I am going to get back to doing what I do. It could be going to bed a little earlier that day, right? So it could be. You know, I usually go to bed at 10 o'clock at night. Today, I think I'm going to go to bed at eight o'clock because I feel like I need it and that is okay and that is perfectly fine, especially, again, because the importance of deep physical and mental recovery is that you are preventing yourself from burnout, you're preventing yourself from chronic stress, which is absolutely devastating to our bodies, right?

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Sometimes it's really talking about making sure that we're getting adequate sleep. You know those seven to nine hours, right, because it helps in so many different ways for our physical health, like regulating our hormones and, you know, our immune system functioning, and just letting your mind get the restoration that it needs. And sometimes it's taking days off, maybe it's taking the weekend off to go away and do something that is really enjoyable, and this also includes vacations. Vacations can be super helpful, as I talked about myself. I know for me, like every six months, I just need, like that week away and thankfully you know I'm at a place where I can, you know, go away, take a full vacation and travel which is really, um, helpful and fun and enjoyable, um, but when we're talking about long rest periods, it's just thinking to yourself what fits into your lifestyle, what is that you need, and just understanding that there's times where we need just longer periods to recover, right?

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Maybe it's a time where work is stressful. Maybe it's a time where you know a lot of your family members are sick and you've been doing a lot of caretaking. It is, you know, sometimes life can be really stressful or it could be really busy. Maybe you've had a really busy day week, I mean, and you know, like you say to yourself, I need, maybe it's Friday I say to myself this week has been really stressful or really tiring, really busy to myself. This week has been really stressful or really tiring, really busy, and I'm going to give myself the whole morning to just do nothing or do, just to read or just watch, you know, some fun, some good movies, or it might be to engage in a, you know, in some type of a hobby or something like that.

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And it's just understanding that that is all important, right, and so it's just reminding ourselves that, depending on what's happening in our lives, depending on how we are feeling, we can engage in these types of rest periods and, as I've mentioned before, they are so essential for our mental health, for our physical health, right. It keeps you feeling well, it keeps you from developing these chronic stress syndromes that you know I see so many people have. And if you think about stress. Stress really, I mean we need stress, and stress is something that can help you can like wake you up and get you doing things. But we're talking about chronic, which means it's like long lasting. If you're constantly stressed with your cortisol levels are constantly elevated, it's really going to do damage to your physical self, right? It's going to create all this inflammation, it's going to create other serious health conditions, and so these rest periods are really helping yourself to disengage or to prevent, right, think about these as preventative measures.

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And so one of the things that I would say for you if this is something that you maybe haven't really engaged in, my suggestion to you and where to start is to start doing a internal battery check. And so what you will do is, I would say, get really good at checking how you feel at certain percentages of battery, right, how do you feel when you're at 90%, 100%? Right, you should feel energized, you should be full of motivation. And then, how do you feel when you're at 50%? Right, really really tapping into that so that you can start to assess yourself. Right, check in with yourself, assess yourself, either intentionally, meaning all right, it's been, it's 11 o'clock. How do I feel right now. I've noticed that I could probably use a break because this morning was really busy, and then you can engage into a micro or short break period, right?

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Or sometimes it's noticing when you feel really low and so maybe you haven't had a chance to take a break. And now it's 12 PM and you might say to yourself shoot, like I really feel depleted, I need to go and take a lunch break away from the office. I'm going to go and I'm going to pick up some food, I'm going to sit at the park and I'm just going to have my lunch away so that I can feel better when I come back. Or you might say you know what I am feeling really depleted. I'm going to go for my 30 minute walk and I'm just going to go and take this long walk. Or it might be you know what I'm feeling really a bit stressed. Let me stop and just take a couple to a two minute little breathing break and I'm just going to focus on my breath. Or I'm going to stretch my body, right, so it's really helping yourself to assess your battery, right it's. Do I need to plug myself in? Do I need to recharge myself? Do I need a two minute break just to refill my energy, right To recoup the energy that I have lost, right, and that is the biggest thing that I would recommend to start there, because then you're going to get really good at noticing when it's time for you to take a short break, a longer break.

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Maybe you're noticing that you're feeling a lot more irritable and you might say you know what? I have vacation time, I'm going to go and I'm going to book this little mini getaway for the weekend so that I can take some restoration. Or you might notice that every I don't know six months, three months, four months, whatever it is for you you notice I need to get away and I am going to plan a vacation to go somewhere relaxing. I'm going to go to a resort, right, I'm going to go somewhere where I'm just going to be able to catch up on relaxation, whatever that is for you. Sometimes it could be something as simple as this afternoon I'm going to take it off and I'm going to book a massage, or I'm going to go for a pedicure, you know. Or I'm going to grab my favorite book and I'm going to go to a bookstore and I'm just going to sit there and just get myself a nice coffee and just read and drink my coffee.

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So, again, this is very personalized.

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Everybody likes different things. Some people the gym is the place where they go and they recover. So it's really just checking in with yourself, assessing yourself, so that you know yourself and you know when you need to pause, when you need a break, when you need a longer rest period, when you need to, like, go to bed a little earlier today or whatever is it that you need in order so that you can be physically and mental, mentally well, okay. Well, that's all I have for today's episode. I truly hope that this was a reminder and it's really going to encourage you to understand the importance of rest, why we need to rest, and that it's truly essential for us to prioritize ourselves. And as you listen during today's episode, it does not have to take, it doesn't have to be a burden on you, it doesn't have to be extra tasks or anything like that. You can truly incorporate these mini breaks, shorter breaks and longer breaks, as you need. So thank you so much for joining me on today's episode and I will talk to you next week. Take care.