But by day four, the words on my screen were swimming and swan-diving. My bullet-train hyperconsciousness blew off its rails. I was halfway incoherent and shivery-shaky. I was so out of it I tripped down three stairs, caught myself from falling the rest of the way, and then just sat down, bleary and mystified. I knew that if I kept going, I’d get sick or just shut down.
Culturally, we’ve acknowledged our fixation with “digital overwhelm” and “millennial burnout,” but we still do the same stuff, over and over. Even when I did have time away from my computer during my work cyclone to run, shower, or eat, I was also listening to podcasts or scrolling through Instagram, immersed in the usual digital cacophony. What I didn’t do was daydream, or stare blankly into space, or do any kind of nothing at all.
This is what has been termed “waking rest.” In a letter to the editor of the academic journal Sleep last fall, researchers at the Occupational Sleep Medicine Group at Washington State University describe waking rest as a “fourth puzzle piece” in the existing wellness trio of exercise, nutrition, and sleep. Waking rest is “a period of quiet, reflective thought that allows the brain time to consider and process whatever arises spontaneously,” says the letter’s lead author, Amanda Lamp, PhD. “Consciously stepping out of yourself and your deadlines and your to-do lists and everything you think is important, and allowing your brain the time to think about what needs to be processed or consolidated or thought through, or prepared for, or whatever the case may be.” Exactly what I was not getting during my three-day, screen-stoned brain-bender.
While related concerns like sleep, mindfulness, minimalism, slow living, and self-care have become contemporary wellness obsessions, none of these specifically address the importance of being both awake and unassigned, the essential nothingness of quiescence. Defining rest and making practical distinctions between rest, relaxation, idleness, leisure, entertainment, fun, and pleasure is both unfamiliar and essential, when so much of the average day, and thus the average life, is taken up by doing. Those of us committed to balance might put meditation on the iCal, but we understand it as another to-do benefiting our health and productivity. During waking rest, Lamp says, you can fold laundry or sweep or do some other rote task, but you shouldn’t mentally engage with anything—not even music. “The problem is, if you really like the song, you’re present with that song, [and] it’s not going to allow waking rest,” she explains.
– According to elle.com –