We wouldn’t write anything without some punctation to give words and thoughts clarity. Speaking out loud, we need to breathe or we cannot speak and may rush and trip over our words in an urgency to get to the breath. We all respond to changing tempos and pauses in music, the space between the notes and the quieter phases compliment louder, faster sections.

Our complex bodily system likes rhythm and pauses and rests too. Yet we often we ignore our need for quieter phases and keep pushing, only stopping when have to.

Working out how you can rest throughout the week, the day and the hour means we may not be so activated with a tendency to dysregulation. And if we find we have had to take on more and go beyond our personal energy store we can dysregulate and experience a range of uncomfortable symptoms and need to step back from work, social events, and many other areas of life. This is stressful which exacerbates everything….when we are in a very activated state, we really need ways of gently going down the gears so that we can eventually come to restful stop.

Rest as punctuation examples

  • breathing out I look up out of the window at the clouds and stay gently gazing for 3 more breaths.

  • I stop working at my desk and stand up and stretch and drink water. Checking my posture and purposely lengthening after a period of sitting.

  • come in from a walk and sit down with a cup of tea and rest my eyes.

  • -Before I go out in the evening, I have a lie down and listen to a bodyscan and then rest with a book and a bit of a snooze.

  • I have time off work and out my usual routine either at home or away

Try This!

How can you add punctuation to your day, week, month, year?

Look at what you have planned for the rest of the day, can you find a few commas, full stops and maybe a paragraph change.

Hint…. you are unlikely to do this in the moment or even feel like it. We can become habituated to pushing doing “just one more thing”. Planning to take a pause and then noticing the shift from one mode to another can enhance it and make it likely to happen.