September 16th, 2026

Rest is not One Thing

I’ve been on go, go, go mode this whole week and every time I hit the bed hoping to regain all my strength, enthusiasm and self-will to keep pushing, I get disappointed- not exactly what I signed up for when I shut everyone out at 9 pm just so I could get eight hours of deep, good sleep.

And then I came across a YouTube video talking about listening to what our bodies are actually trying to tell us. It got me thinking about how quickly we label ourselves as tired and assume the solution is always more sleep. Maybe my body wasn't asking for more hours in bed. Maybe it was asking for something else entirely.

Apparently, there are seven types of rest, and they're not as straightforward as I thought. Each one of them meets a different kind of tiredness: physical, mental, sensory, creative, emotional, social and spiritual. And honestly, that explained a lot!

Today, I'd like to focus on the first four: the physical, mental, sensory and creative rest. Because sometimes, you can sleep for eight hours and still wake up barely rested at all.

‎Physical rest is probably the one we understand best. It’s the nap, the early night, the day off, the decision not to push your body when it's clearly asking you to slow down. Yet, even with how much we talk about sleep, a 2024 CDC report found that about 3 in 10 U.S. adults were getting less than seven hours of sleep a night.

But sometimes, the tiredness isn’t even in your body.

Mental rest is what you need when your brain has been running overtime. The constant planning, studying, making decisions, remembering things, solving problems, replaying conversations, thinking about what needs to happen next. You know that feeling when you’re physically sitting down but your mind is still doing laps? Yes. That kind of tired.

Then there's sensory rest. And I think this is the one we overlook the most. The music playing in the background, the constant notifications, the endless scrolling, the bright screens. The constant pull of something to look at, listen to or respond to. Sometimes your body isn’t asking for you to sleep. It is simply asking for less.

And finally, creative rest. This one feels especially important when you’re someone who is always thinking, planning, or producing. And it’s also the rest you feel the most guilty to take because you come face to face with the fact that you don't need another idea; you need permission to stop coming up with them. To consume without analysing. To go somewhere beautiful without capturing it. And to do something simply because you enjoy it, not because it has to become something useful.

Written by Favour Ara