Shola A.

Case Study: What type of rest needs do you have?

April 25, 2023April 17, 2023 Shola A.1 Comment

The last two posts summarized Saundra Dalton-Smith’s ideas on the 7 types of rest. You can read the first one here and the second one here. I strongly recommend that you take time to focus on each type and examine yourself to see what you’re missing. Here is a case study.

Sarah has a full time job in healthcare as a nurse. The recent shortage of nurses means she works more than usual. She is also married and she has four young children. The oldest is 15 and the youngest is 3. Her two youngest children are ages 2 and 3. Recently, the 2 year old started to get clingy. The 3 year old started throwing tantrums. Her 12 year old is dealing with the emotional roller coaster of puberty. The 15 year old is dealing with school problems. On top of this, she and her husband have started having frequent misunderstandings and their conflicts are getting more difficult to resolve.

Let’s assess this: What types of rest(s) may Sarah need?

Sarah needs emotional rest with regards to her relationship with her spouse.
She needs physical and mental rest with regards to her work as a nurse.
Perhaps she needs social rest away from her constant contact with people both at work and her children at home
Creative rest may also be something that Sarah needs. It is not clear what she does for fun. She may not even have time for that.

This list is not exhaustive. But I hope this example helps you examine your situation and what types of rest you need.

Types of Rest: Part 2

April 18, 2023March 23, 2023 Shola A.1 Comment

The 7 types of rest based on Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith’s work. Here are the remaining three.

Read about the earlier ones here.

Type of rest	Definition	Signs of Deficit	Activities to rest
Emotional Rest	The ability to express how you truly feel and be your authentic self	Feeling burdened and having no one to talk to Feeling you have to keep quiet, give fake smiles Imposter syndrome	Reach out to trusted people Get help from professional listeners (counsellors, therapists)
Social Rest	Has to do with relationships and feelings of connection to other people especially loved ones	You feel drained. Tired of dealing with people Feeling isolated/alone Feeling invisible	Spending time with loved ones (in person is better than virtual) or getting “me time”
Spiritual Rest	Having a sense of purpose and belonging to something bigger than us	Doubting that God loves you Staying away from places and people that remind you of God/spirituality	Praying, fasting, retreats, reading the Bible etc

I ask again, what kind of rest do you really need?

How to be productive while procrastinating

April 17, 2023 Shola A.Leave a comment

I remembered a quote I read somewhere and I thought it was a simple trick to be productive while procrastinating. It also feels like something scanners love to do.

“I like to work on two tasks at the same time. So that I can procrastinate on one task by working on the other and vice versa.”

Types of Rest Part 1

April 11, 2023March 23, 2023 Shola A.2 Comments

Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith has in her book, seven types of rest.

Physical Rest
Mental Rest
Sensory Rest
Creative Rest
Emotional Rest
Social Rest
Spiritual Rest

Let’s look at 4 now:

Type of rest	Definition	Signs of Deficit	Activities to rest
Physical Rest	This about the physical placement of our whole bodies in space	Body aches, pain	Sleep, napping, stretching, massage, yoga, walking
Mental rest	This is about our minds and brain processes	Too much on the mind Can’t concentrate Can’t think straight Think or worry too much	Taking a break, staring into space, putting focus on breathing or other calming activity, learning to surrender
Sensory Rest	This has to do with our physical senses, avoiding over or understimulation	Spending too much time on devices, exposure to bright lights, sounds etc Irritation, agitation, anger	Restricting time spent on electronics, Spending time alone in dark/quiet places Stay longer in the bathroom
Creative Rest	This is about our capacity to enjoy beauty in any form	Feeling “blocked.” Thinking we are not as creative as someone else, feeling stuck on problems; Can’t remember the last time you daydreamed or played	Enjoy art, music, dance, creative writing, craft-making

How are you doing with each type of rest?

Learning to Give the Honest “no”

April 4, 2023March 5, 2023 Shola A.Leave a comment

Dr Dalton-Smith in her book tells people to learn to give an honest no instead of a polite yes. Let’s break that down. The polite yes is the yes you give when:

Your friend comes asking you to do something. Even though you know you’re tired and busy at the moment. You say yes because you don’t want to disappoint your friend. You say yes to the extra responsibility your boss has given you because you don’t want your boss to dislike you. You say yes to peer pressure to spend extra hours at a social function because you don’t want the hosts to be offended. You say yes because you’re so polite and don’t want to step on anyone’s toes.

Unfortunately, too much of the polite yes may be ruining your rest, sleep and health. Now is the time to give the honest no.

The honest no is your response that reflects your real capacity to do something.

If you are tired and you need to sleep and your friend is asking you to stay up longer, the honest no is when you say, “I’m really loving our company at the moment but I honestly cannot stay longer as I need to rest.”

Your boss wants to give you an extra responsibility and you say, “I understand that you value me as an employee and would love for me to do this extra work. I honestly do not think that I have the capacity to do an excellent job at the momentally to those with power over us or even just to our kids.

More on this later. For now, can you begin to examine relatively simple/low-stake areas where you can give the honest no instead of the polite yes?

Consider starting with your family and friends, people that will love and care for you no matter what.

Rest doesn’t have to expensive

March 28, 2023March 5, 2023 Shola A.Leave a comment

When people think of rest, they may think of places like

or places like

Nothing wrong with these places especially if you can afford to go there as regularly as you need to. But let’s start with the basics, rest begins at the location where you lay your head each night. Like this one

Rest is anything that connects your mind and body.

March 22, 2023March 2, 2023 Shola A.Leave a comment

Here’s a blog post from the Nap Bishop, Tricia Hersay. I thought it was powerful and wanted to repost it here. The systems we live may use us like we are machines. But we are not. Just as the nap Bishop says, I say and say with me: we will rest.

The Nap Ministry

This is about more than naps. This is about more than naps. This is about more than naps.

This has been my battle cry and mantra since I created the “Rest is Resistance” framework in 2016. I begin experimenting with rest as a tool for my own liberation and healing in 2013. It has always been about more than taking a full nap. My rest as a Black woman in America suffering from generational exhaustion and racial trauma always was a political refusal and social justice uprising within my body. I took to rest and naps and slowing down as a way to save my life, resist the systems telling me to do more and most importantly as a remembrance to my Ancestors who had their DreamSpace stolen from them. This is about more than naps. It is not about fluffy pillows, expensive sheets, silk sleep masks or any other…

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Boundaries: God created them.

March 15, 2023January 27, 2023 Shola A.5 Comments

We’ve already noted that God rested on the 7th day after creating everything. But there’s more to learn from that story about rest.

When God created light on the first day, God separates light (Day) from darkness (Night). Then on day 4, God creates the greater and lesser lights. One of their functions is to keep day and night separate. In other words, the sun and moon are charged to continue an activity that God did on the first day, separating light from darkness, keeping our day distinct and separated from the night.

Part of the challenges we face in today’s modern world especially in “developed” countries is that the availability of all-day electricity means that 1am in our houses can practically look the same as 1pm. The day and night are not separate. On top of that, when we have unhealthy work habits or have work with irregular hours, while we work away at the computer desk or wherever, we lose track of natural time (dawn, morning sunlight, noon day sun, dusk, night). We keep working into the hours when we ought to be resting.

Our main lesson here is that day and night are meant to be distinguished from one another. This was one of God’s earliest tasks in creation and the sun and moon were created to maintain the distinction. How can we comply with God’s preference that our day and night should be separate?

Say with me: God made boundaries. So will I.

Body versus Flesh on the Topic of Rest

March 8, 2023January 25, 2023 Shola A.Leave a comment

If only you knew how much work each of your body parts does, you would be surprised why EACH body part doesn’t have more medals than Usain Bolt and Simone Biles combined.

Here’s a fun fact. Your heart is about the size of two clenched fists. Your heart pumps roughly 2,000 gallons of blood per day. For comparison, an aeroplane is several times bigger (at least 1000, if not 2,000 times bigger) than your heart. An average plane if it were to run for 24hours (it can’t) burns 4,800 gallons of fuel per day. In other words, your heart in 2.5 days will pump as much blood as a plane will use in the whole of 24 hours. God did a lot of work on our bodies. We are wonderfully and fearfully made.

That said, there is an aspect of Christian belief that ties all sorts of sin and evil to the physical body. The eyes are connected to lust, the heart and brain to evil thoughts and desire, the groin is about “dirty sex”, and the feet is about walking to “sinful” locations. If you associate only evil and sin with your physical body, it would be difficult to rest and nourish the body without guilt.

My recommendation is to uncover how your faith and view of sin impacts your treatment of your physical body. To truly rest without guilt, you’ll also need to develop a theology that allows you fully honor and love your physical body while at the same time not contradict your biblical based beliefs about sin, evil, and the “Flesh”.

What are you afraid of?

March 1, 2023January 24, 2023 Shola A.Leave a comment

There’s a Yoruba saying that suggests we should know what is chasing us before we start running. So let me ask again, what are you afraid of that is making you cling so much to work and making rest feels near impossible?

Imagine you went away for 2 weeks, no access to phones, you’re by yourself. You have basic needs taken care of but you’re otherwise alone, by yourself with no to do list, no expectations to meet…. what would happen?

Some people avoid rest because

They can’t stand being alone.
They feel that their self worth is tied to productivity.
Work provides a distraction from problems at home.
They just don’t know how to rest.

What’s your reason? Whatever feelings you have are valid, rest, TROG, deep rest, can be very scary.

Once you’ve explored your fears on the topic, I’d like to ask you: can you to take a leap of faith by believing that if God says your rest is sacred, there’s a possibility that God is right? Can you?