{"id":10834,"date":"2021-06-03T11:30:57","date_gmt":"2021-06-03T04:30:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/illume-emag.com\/?p=10834"},"modified":"2021-06-20T11:34:02","modified_gmt":"2021-06-20T04:34:02","slug":"why-doing-nothing-is-as-healthy-for-you-as-working-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lavyon.com\/en\/why-doing-nothing-is-as-healthy-for-you-as-working-out\/","title":{"rendered":"why doing nothing is as healthy for you as working out"},"content":{"rendered":"
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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\u2019d get sick or just shut down.<\/div>\n
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Culturally, we\u2019ve acknowledged our fixation with \u201cdigital overwhelm\u201d and \u201cmillennial burnout,\u201d 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\u2019t do was daydream, or stare blankly into space, or do any kind of nothing at all.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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This is what has been termed \u201cwaking rest.\u201d 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 \u201cfourth puzzle piece\u201d in the existing wellness trio of exercise, nutrition, and sleep. Waking rest is \u201ca period of quiet, reflective thought that allows the brain time to consider and process whatever arises spontaneously,\u201d says the letter\u2019s lead author, Amanda Lamp, PhD. \u201cConsciously 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.\u201d Exactly what I was not getting during my three-day, screen-stoned brain-bender.<\/div>\n
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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\u2019t mentally engage with anything\u2014not even music. \u201cThe problem is, if you really like the song, you\u2019re present with that song, [and] it\u2019s not going to allow waking rest,\u201d she explains.<\/div>\n
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– According to elle.com<\/a> –<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10835,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2490,5388,5814,2488],"class_list":{"0":"post-10834","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-illume-en","9":"tag-illume-e-mag-en","10":"tag-illume-eag","11":"tag-illume-magazine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lavyon.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lavyon.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lavyon.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lavyon.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lavyon.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lavyon.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lavyon.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lavyon.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lavyon.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lavyon.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}