The Space Between Doing and Resting

Before you read...

Take one slow breath.

Notice where your body meets the chair.

Nothing to change.

Just notice.

Then begin.

There is a particular kind of disappointment that can arrive when you finally stop. You have been looking forward to it all day, perhaps all week. You finish what needs doing, close the laptop, put your phone down, make the tea, get into bed, lie on the sofa, sit outside. Finally, nothing is required of you.

And then, almost immediately, you want to get up.

You remember something you could do. Your hand reaches for your phone. Your mind starts making lists. You can't quite find a comfortable position. You think about tomorrow. You remember the washing. You wonder whether you should reply to that message while you're sitting there. Perhaps you suddenly feel restless or irritated, or simply uncomfortable with the amount of space that has appeared.

You wanted rest. Now that you have it, you don't seem particularly good at it.

It is easy to make that mean something. Why can't I just relax? Why am I always like this? Why can't I switch off? Perhaps you begin trying to relax properly. You slow your breathing. Unclench your jaw. Put on calming music. Try not to think. Try to be present. Try to convince your body that nothing is happening.

And without really noticing, rest has become another task. Another state to achieve. Another version of yourself you're trying to get to.

We expect stopping to feel different immediately

I think we imagine the transition between doing and resting as though someone flicks a switch. Busy, then not busy. Working, then resting. Doing, then being. The external demand disappears and we expect everything happening inside us to disappear with it.

But why would it?

If you have spent the previous eight hours moving quickly, solving problems, replying to people, remembering things, making decisions, thinking ahead, switching between tasks and responding to whatever arrives, lying down doesn't erase the momentum of the day.

You stopped. That doesn't necessarily mean everything else stops at exactly the same moment.

Sometimes stopping simply makes what was already happening easier to notice. Perhaps your leg was restless before you sat down. Perhaps your mind had been moving at that speed for hours. Perhaps your shoulders had been tight since lunchtime. Perhaps all those unfinished thoughts were already there, but activity gave them somewhere to go.

The quiet didn't necessarily create what you found there. You can just hear it now.

There is something important in that distinction, because otherwise we can mistake noticing what is there for evidence that something has gone wrong. We finally become still enough to notice ourselves and immediately decide that what we've found needs fixing.

What if the beginning of rest doesn't have to feel restful?

This seems like a very small distinction, but I think it changes the experience considerably. You lie down and your mind keeps going. Your body fidgets. You think about getting up. An idea arrives. You remember something you've forgotten.

Okay.

None of those things necessarily require a response. You don't have to force yourself to remain still, but you don't have to obey the first impulse to become productive again either. There can simply be a little uncertainty there: a moment in which you haven't yet decided whether the rest is working or failing.

Maybe rest catches up. Maybe it doesn't.

Perhaps you lie there for twenty minutes and still feel restless. That doesn't necessarily make the twenty minutes worthless. Yet we have become very interested in what rest should produce. Better sleep. More energy. Lower stress. Improved concentration. Better performance. A calmer nervous system. Greater productivity tomorrow.

Even rest has acquired a job description.

We rarely allow it to be completely unproductive. And perhaps that's part of why doing nothing can feel so peculiar. If rest is valuable only when it successfully improves something, we're still measuring it by what it accomplishes. We're still working, just more quietly.

Rest and relaxation aren't necessarily the same thing

We tend to picture rest in a particular way: a soft body, a quiet mind, deep breathing, stillness. But perhaps rest describes what we are no longer requiring from ourselves rather than what we are currently feeling.

You can be resting while your mind is busy. You can be resting while your body is adjusting. You can be resting before you feel rested.

If we make relaxation the evidence that rest has begun, the moment we notice activation we decide we haven't arrived yet. We remain responsible for getting ourselves from here to there: from restless to relaxed, from busy to calm, from thinking to present. There is still something to accomplish before we're allowed to say we've rested.

Perhaps we don't need that extra layer.

The body can fidget without becoming a problem. A thought can appear without needing to be followed. The urge to get up can exist without becoming an instruction. And if you do decide to get up, that's fine too. Rest doesn't need to become another form of discipline.

We can turn almost anything into self-improvement

There is a strange tendency in modern wellbeing to take perfectly ordinary parts of being human and turn them into things we should become better at. We can become better at sleeping, better at breathing, better at being present, better at regulating ourselves, better at listening to our bodies and, eventually, better at resting.

Soon we are lying on the sofa wondering whether we're doing that correctly too.

I don't want rest to become another measure of how successfully we are managing ourselves. Sometimes you'll scroll on your phone. Sometimes you'll fall asleep instantly. Sometimes you'll spend an afternoon doing almost nothing and feel wonderful. Sometimes you'll have two free hours and somehow fill every minute of them. Sometimes you'll sit down and realise you don't actually want to sit down.

We're allowed to be inconsistent.

What interests me more is that tiny moment before we automatically fill the space. The impulse appears: I should probably…

Put the washing on. Check the email. Make the list. Sort that cupboard. Reply to that person. Get ahead for tomorrow.

Sometimes something genuinely does need doing. But perhaps occasionally we discover that it doesn't.

No. I don't need to.

Not because productivity is bad. Not because we have diagnosed ourselves as needing rest. Not because a wellness expert told us to protect our nervous systems. Simply because nothing is required right now.

And perhaps we stay where we are long enough to discover what happens next.

Sometimes what arrives when we stop is information

It may not be peace that appears when everything becomes quiet. It might be something much more ordinary.

I'm exhausted.

I'm hungry.

I've been thinking about that conversation all day.

I don't actually want to do what I've committed to tomorrow.

I miss someone.

I'm bored.

I want to go outside.

Or perhaps nothing profound appears at all. You simply realise you've been moving quickly.

There doesn't always need to be a deeper meaning.

This is where I think we can make rest unnecessarily complicated. We notice something in stillness and immediately begin excavating it. Why am I restless? What am I avoiding? What is my body trying to tell me? Why can't I let go?

Maybe there is something worth listening to. But maybe your body is simply restless. Maybe your mind is still moving. Maybe five minutes from now it won't be.

We don't have to turn every experience into an investigation.

There is a difference between noticing something and deciding it needs an explanation. There is also a difference between receiving information and assuming that information requires action.

Perhaps the tiredness means you go to bed earlier. Perhaps the thought about tomorrow reminds you of something genuinely important. Perhaps you decide you do want to get up and do something.

Or perhaps nothing is required.

There is a space between doing and resting

Maybe this is the part we overlook.

We imagine there are only two states: doing and resting. But perhaps there is a transition between them, a little stretch of territory where the activity has stopped but the momentum hasn't.

We don't necessarily need to do anything with that space.

We don't need to hurry through it so we can reach relaxation. We don't need to regulate ourselves out of it. We don't need to interpret it as evidence that we've forgotten how to rest.

Perhaps we can simply let the transition be a transition.

A car doesn't become still at the exact moment you take your foot off the accelerator. Momentum continues for a while. We understand that perfectly well. We don't accuse the car of failing to stop properly.

Maybe sometimes we could offer ourselves the same simplicity.

The day has stopped asking things of you. Your internal world hasn't caught up yet.

Fine.

Perhaps rest begins before relaxation

This is the idea I keep returning to.

We tend to think that first we relax and then we are resting. Perhaps it is often the other way around. We stop requiring. We stop responding. We stop doing for a while, and whatever is already moving gets to continue moving until it doesn't.

There is no deadline. No particular state we have to reach. No proof required that the rest worked.

And maybe somewhere in that, something settles. Not because we successfully made it settle, but because for once we stopped asking it to become something else.

So if you finally sit down this week and discover that sitting down isn't immediately peaceful, perhaps don't make too much of it. Let the leg fidget. Let the mind wander. Notice the urge to get back up.

You don't have to call it dysregulation. You don't have to call it resistance. You don't have to make yourself relax.

Maybe you've simply stopped long enough to notice the speed you were already travelling at.

Perhaps rest doesn't always announce itself with a feeling of restfulness. Sometimes it begins much more quietly, in the moment you realise there is nowhere you need to get to next, nothing you need to make happen, and nothing about this moment that needs to be different before you are allowed to stay in it.

Read Body Note 006 → Sometimes stopping feels harder than carrying on.