5 Minute Read
Hello, 2023 & welcome to the next few months of Winter – the season of cosy evenings curled up by a warm fire, wearing leg warmers over your yoga leggings & taking a flask with you to class is upon us. It may not be everyone’s favourite season, but it is the perfect time to invest in rest so you’re refuelled and ready when Spring & Summer roll around!
In the Winter months, most of us are likely feeling more sluggish and a little slower during the shorter day and longer nights. As we wind down from the festivities and new year parties, the urge to cancel any foreseeable social plans & curl up in a mountain of blankets is oh too real…
We know that our devices won’t work when they run out of battery, so why do we expect to function at 100% all year around? We’re human beings, after all, not human doings, and just as flowers refuse to bloom all year long, we too need time to rest so we can flourish.
If you’re feeling the Winter blues, it might mean you need to revamp your rest routine, and I don’t mean hibernating until Spring, but instead, making sure you’re getting the different types of rest that we all need to function at our best.
Physical Rest
In our busy, connected world, we all spend a lot of our lives rushing and on the go, which can put our bodies, nervous systems and immune systems under a lot of pressure.
Giving yourself the opportunity to slow down can help to strengthen your nervous system and help your body to repair. Try Restorative Yoga or Yin to help you wind down and physically restore.
Mental Rest
Just as our muscles & bodies need a break from constantly working, so do our brains. Stress and mental overstimulation can lead to poor mental health and more serious health conditions.
Giving your brain a regular break (scrolling on your phone doesn’t count!) could look like trying guided meditation, yoga Nidra, pranayama (breathwork), or simply spending some time in nature on your lunch break.
Social Rest
Even the most social of butterflies need some downtime from organising, planning, hosting, coordinating dates that work for everyone and deciding where to meet…it can get tiring and leave us feeling drained. Just as isolation can negatively affect us, over-exerting yourself socially can also become overwhelming.
Set aside a weekend or a few evenings a week dedicated to you; if you’re not someone who is comfortable in your own company, maybe this is an opportunity to start getting to know yourself a little better.
Rest from our Devices
Switching off from devices is something that we’re doing less and less. With technology becoming a large part of our lives, it’s important to give yourself a break from artificial lights, marketing, scrolling, alarms and alerts.
Try setting some time aside (even if it’s just an hour to start) with no phone, TV, laptop, tablet, smartwatch etc. and try reading a book, taking a bath, journalling, writing someone a letter, painting, cooking from scratch or going for a stroll outside. If it feels boring or really uncomfortable, that probably means you REALLY need to take a rest from technology so your nervous system can wind down.
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About Liz Joy Hardie
Liz is Head of Wellness at MoreYoga, a trained Holistic Wellbeing Coach and Senior Yoga Teacher specialising in Yoga Therapy for Stress & Anxiety. Liz came to teach Yoga after being signed off from work with a blood pressure condition brought on by stress & generalised anxiety disorder. She is an advocate for Mental Health Awareness and co-founded the MoreMind Programme to promote positive mental health and help fight the stigma that still exists around mental illness. Her writing and commentary has been featured in Stylist, Time Out, The Times, Women’s Health, The Telegraph, Huffpost and more.