209 - Beyond Lying Down: What Rest Really Means in Recovery

In this solo episode, Jackie Baxter unpacks what rest really is during long covid and MECFS recovery—and why simply lying down often doesn’t feel restorative. She reframes the struggle to rest as your body’s way of protecting you, not failing you, and introduces the idea of “banking energy for healing”.

Jackie explores the different types of rest we need—physical, mental, sensory, emotional, social, creative, and nervous system rest—and how safety cues and nervous system regulation make deeper rest possible. She shares practical tools like soft exhales, visual anchors, contact points, sound cues, micro rests, pre-emptive rest, and co-regulation with supportive people or pets.

The episode closes with a gentle grounding and rest practice and affirmations to help you feel just a little softer, safer, and more present—one small step at a time. 

LINKS:

- Yoga Nidra (voice only): https://insig.ht/p11in6GLO1b
- Yoga Nidra (with music): https://insig.ht/ryTWpwOLO1b
- Yoga Nidra (nature sounds): https://insig.ht/qGIWLqKLO1b

- Opal app for screen time: https://www.opal.so/

- Work with me page: https://www.longcovidpodcast.com/workwithme

- The 2 practises in this episode can be found with background music on Insight Timer:
- 2 Minute Safety Cue (with music): https://insig.ht/DO2f3U7LO1b
- Rest without Guilt - A Compassionate Pause (with music): https://insig.ht/LkTy9ifMO1b

For more information about Long Covid Breathing courses & workshops, please check out LongCovidBreathing.com

(music credit - Brock Hewitt, Rule of Life)

Transcript

Jackie Baxter  
Hello and welcome to this episode of the long covid Podcast. Today I am going to explore this topic of rest, what this actually means, why it's important, and how to get good quality rest that actually feels restorative. If you've ever laid down to rest and felt your mind buzzing, your body wired or your system unable to switch off, you're not alone. Today, I'm going to explore what rest really is and why it's so much more than just lying still. We're also going to explore a little bit about why rest can sometimes feel like a dirty word, why other people might judge us are resting. So settle yourself into a position that is as comfortable as you can be, release a little tension, take a conscious breath or two, and let's dive in. So what is rest? Rest can mean a lot of different things, and as we find out, when we're going through this experience, is rest is something that is absolutely vital our need for rest seems to exceed anything we've ever known, and the consequences of not getting adequate rest often feel catastrophic. So why is rest so hard when we are on our long covid And MECFS recovery journey. So the body is in this state of Protection or survival, so spending most, if not all of its time in this state of Fight, fight freeze or shut down. Rest requires safety, not just stillness. So if the nervous system is hyper vigilant, scanning for threat. This means that letting go and getting true rest actually feels unsafe. If you think of the cartoon of the dinosaur or the dragon, maybe sleeping with one eye open. If we don't feel safe enough. We aren't able to let go. And if we're in this state of survival or protection, we often do feel like we're in that constantly alert state, constantly standing for danger, constantly having to sleep with that one eye open. So fatigue can definitely be a signal that the body is asking for rest, but it doesn't mean that we have the ability to drop straight into that restorative rest. So I would look at fatigue as a signal, a signal of our needs. This tired but wired, there's a real physiological state, and that requires us to listen to our body, assess our needs and try to attend to them. Rest can feel like doing nothing, and for some people, that can trigger feelings of guilt, shame, fear or possibly frustration, boredom and that feeling of wasting time. So maybe we feel like we have better things to be doing than resting. And it's interesting to explore this if you do notice those feelings coming up for you. What is it that makes you feel guilty for resting? For example, facing movement doesn't necessarily mean you are resting in a restorative. Way. So yes, rest is important, but the quality of that rest is important too. So perhaps this is resonating with you on some level. Maybe you wake up in the morning or after you've had a rest and you don't feel refreshed and restored, maybe you find it hard to be still. Maybe you feel guilty for resting, or frustrated that you don't get restorative rest. So that feeling of, well, I'm resting and it's still not helping. So can we take a moment to gently reframe your body isn't failing at rest, it's protecting you.


So what I'm going to explore today is how we can get more restorative rest, because the better quality our rest, we actually need less of it, and we also benefit more from it. What I also found really helpful was the idea of banking rest for healing, or banking energy for healing. So this is someone who I interviewed, who was a recovery story, and this was when I was still on my journey, I wasn't better yet. And what she said was that she felt, I think maybe guilty or bored, or why am I bothering to rest? Because, you know, it doesn't fix everything. And she gave the analogy of saving money so we don't spend 100% of the money we have, or the money we earn, we spend what we need on, I don't know, groceries, clothes, whatever it is that we need, and we save some of it. Maybe it's very small amount we save. Maybe it's a larger amount. Everyone's different, we save some of it. And let's think of rest and energy in the same way, if we believe that we can get better, then we are going to be more able to handle this idea of not spending all of our energy if we rest we bank energy. So we're putting it into our energy savings account. And that energy that we're banking, whether it's a small amount or whether it's a bigger amount, it adds up. And that energy at rest, we put that into healing, and over time, that adds up, and we notice it. Though, if you are somebody who finds the idea of rest challenging. Certainly I found that very helpful. The idea of banking energy for healing.


Did you know that there are different types of rest. Rest is multi dimensional, and it's important to allow ourselves to experience all types of rest. As we learn to listen and start to understand our body's needs, we start to understand what types of rest we are most in need of at any time, or indeed, what types of rest we may be lacking in our lives.


So as I go through these. You could maybe start to have a think about which ones you bring into your life and which ones maybe you don't, and if there might be a space to do that. So firstly, we have physical rest. This is what we tend to traditionally think of as rest, where we stop physical movement, where we sit down or lie down, where we take a load off, stillness, lying down, pacing, micro rest. So physical rest. Next we have our mental or cognitive rest. This is quieting our cognitive load, reducing decision making, softening our internal chatter. This is where we bring stillness to the mind. And certainly this was one of the ones that I found the most challenging on things like breathing exercises and yoga nidra, I can definitely recommend to help with the mental rest. Then we have sensory rest. So this is where we are reducing input, so reducing our light sound screens, movement, temperature. We don't always have total control over these things, but again, it's about doing what we can. How can we reduce what our senses are taking in, and certainly for me, screens is the most challenging of those things. I recently discovered an app called Opal, which is really helpful for cutting down my screen time during the day. Next we have emotional rest. This is where we give ourselves permission to feel, not to perform. We don't have to hold everything together. It might be giving yourself space to cry or to let go of expectations and pressure and allowing yourself to just be as you are. I think we often try to shut down our emotions because of what other people might think, maybe we're worried about being judged by them, or maybe because our emotions feel uncomfortable. Maybe we're judging ourselves for what we're feeling. I think it's really important to give ourselves space to feel. We also have social rest. This might be stepping back from interactions that require us to pretend we're okay. It might be those interactions that take effort or energy. Social interactions, whether they are online or in person, are exhausting. We all need connection with other humans in order to thrive, but we also need our own space away from them, especially if those connections drain our energy rather than support it. Social rest might also include being really intentional about the people who we spend time with, making sure that we spend time with people who make us feel safe, rather than those who don't having boundaries around the time that you spend with people, and if you get an invitation, actually asking yourself, Is this something I want to do or not, or if it is something I want to do, how can I wake it work for me? Maybe I ask this person to meet me at my house rather than and we're out. Yeah, we also have creative rest. So this isn't just for artists. This is giving your mind a deliberate break allow your creativity to regenerate. It's about filling your well with inspiration, so that you can be refreshed and with new innovative ideas. So if you're feeling uninspired or run down or just a bit blur, you might find that creative rest is what you need. Might be a way of helping you to express yourself and remember it doesn't have to be good. It might be something that involves a lot of red pen and scribbles, and maybe that's exactly what you need the nervous system rest. This is Safety cues, giving ourselves those gentle, insistent cues of safety might be co regulation, so regulating with others who make you feel safer. It might be the breath, a breath practice that you enjoy that helps you to feel calmer or safer. It might be grounding yourself. It might be that gentle presence, allowing yourself to be present in the moment, and trying to stop yourself getting dragged into the past or into the future, just allowing yourself to be


often, we try to fix exhaustion with physical rest alone. But often it's another type of rest that's actually missing. That doesn't mean that physical rest isn't important. Of course it is, but it doesn't work alone. So it's starting to work out, what are your body's needs? And of course, there are many things that we can do that incorporate more than one of those types of rest. Switching off isn't a button. It's a downshift. We are not machines. We can't just hit the off switch, and some people do find it easier to downshift and let go than others, but it's still a process. If we think about our nervous system, we get restorative rest when we are in that parasympathetic state, or our rest and digest. This is where the body feels safe enough. In this state, we get restorative rest the body repairs and restores. We're able to access deeper sleep, and we wake up feeling more rested after sleep, so we wake up or come out of our rest actually feeling better. The body doesn't jump from alert to rested. It moves through transitional states. So this down shifting or down regulating is a process, not an event. Remember that rest becomes possible when the system feels safe enough, and safety is created through cues, not force. So you can't bully a nervous system into resting, but you can invite it the it the more pressure we feel, the less safe our nervous system is going to be. But over time, as the nervous system becomes more regulated, this process does become easier. We're less reactive and are able to feel more settled. We might find that we need micro pauses, rather than longer periods of rest during the day. You'll find that you get better quality sleep during the night and that you are able to feel more energetic, maybe more alert during your day, with less need for naps. But I want to stress that this is a process. We practice practice makes progress, and we see results through consistency. This is not a one and done, so here are some practical ways to downshift which will help you to get better quality rest. You could try doing some of these regularly throughout your day. You could even attach them to things you do already, which is called habit stacking. And you can do them as you are going to take some rest time to help to ease you in. So here are some quick ways to gently offer your body cues of safety. So a soft exhale, a longer, slower exhale, tells the body that you're safe, but a longer exhale that feels good, don't be tempted to push it too far. Visual anchors, so letting your eyes land on something that's neutral or pleasant, and name it, contact points, so feeling the weight of your body supported by the bed, chair or floor sound cues, soft, predictable sounds, so it might be rain or white noise or some gentle music that's familiar to you, micro rests. So it might be 30 to 60 seconds of intentional down shift wrinkled throughout your day, maybe even closing your eyes and sitting being still, a mission slips, letting yourself rest without needing to earn it. Pre emptive rest you might even want to write yourself a permission slip, or put it on post it note, stick it on your wall, permission to rest. And finally, a regulation, a pet, a partner, a warm blanket, a soothing voice, anything that signals that you're not alone, but you're supported.

  
Let's take a moment just now to demonstrate this, to offer your body cue of safety. So if you're comfortably able to you could place your hand gently over your heart and allowing it to rest there.


And then taking two conscious breaths. But we're not trying to force anything in a way that's uncomfortable, inviting your breath as you consciously feel it, and inviting it a little deeper, if it feels comfortable,

 
and then noticing one place in your body that feels even 1% softer, and letting your breath meet it. And if you want to stay here for longer, you can. You could even hit Pause if you need to, I'll continue to hold that hand on your heart, or to tune into your breath as I continue to speak.


So what does rest feel like when it's working? How do you know that your body is getting more restorative rest, that your nervous system is calmer and that you're starting to spend more time in that state where the body heals? Sometimes it's really obvious we just feel better. Sometimes we can't put our finger on exactly what that means, but we just feel better. But it could also look like saliva in your mouth, a slight drop in tension, a softer jaw, a slower blink, a sense of being more here, more present, more connected, a tiny sigh as you start to relax, maybe you feel thoughts slowing down a little. Maybe you feel a little more held or supported. Rest doesn't always feel blissful. Sometimes it feels like less effort, and that still counts. Learning to rest as a skill, it's something that will help you on your recovery journey. But also beyond rest is an essential skill for everybody, and it's one that helps us to find balance in our lives. Remember your body can learn to rest again. Practice makes progress. Tiny shifts matter we don't get good at something overnight. Quality is more important than quantity. You don't have to fix everything. Start by offering your system a little more safety, and the body will start to do the rest. And taking a moment to rest before you need it is important. Micro pauses, taking a deep breath before a phone call, spending a few minutes in nature, in between meetings, remembering to hydrate. These are all cues of safety that we can give the body. If you are somebody that feels guilty about rest or or taking time for yourself. If that's something you struggle with, it might be something you could gently start to explore. Journaling or other forms of creativity can be a great way to explore what you're feeling. Remembering the idea of oxygen masks can be helpful. Full on a plane during the safety demonstration, we're always told to put on our own oxygen mask before helping others rest space and regulating your own nervous system is your everyday oxygen mask. Make sure to do your own before helping others, because by doing our own, we are helping others. And maybe take a moment to think, what is one daily thing you can commit to to start with, let's start small. What is one thing that you can say no to one boundary you can set to protect your own energy. I How can you start to put yourself first?


And let's remember, if your body hasn't been able to switch off, it's not because you're. Failing, it's because you've been surviving. And survival takes energy. Rest will come gently in its own time when you give yourself space. So let's finish by taking two minutes to give ourselves space. You don't have to relax. Just let yourself be here exactly as you are. Tune into something around you that feels safe, something you can see or touch, or a smell or sound. You could hold something in your hand or touch it, maybe holding your own hand or placing a hand over your heart,


let's take a few breaths, allowing the breath to soften even just a little,

remember you don't need to be perfect. Let's meet you where you are at in this moment.


And let's allow ourselves a pause just to be


anything that shows up here is valid. Let's not try to do anything, just to be

 
noticing any sensations that show up with curiosity.


And let's say a few affirmations together, I am enough, just as I am. I have more inner strength than I realized. I am worthy of a moment of stillness,


feeling ourselves soften, taking a few more breaths,


and then maybe Taking a wriggle or a yawn or a stretch and taking as much time as you need to to come back into your space,


knowing that you can come back to this anytime that you need to. Anything. What's important here is to remember that rest doesn't have to be big or impressive. It doesn't need to be long. Sometimes taking two minutes is enough. Sometimes taking those two minutes consistently throughout our day is actually better than taking one long rest.

 
So thank you so much for joining me today. Let me know how you find restorative rest. What challenges do you find, and what shifts have you noticed after finding deeper rest? What type of rest is missing in your life, and how might you find a way to get more of it? And remember, if you have suggestions of topics you'd like me to cover, or guests that you'd like to hear from do, let me know I always love to hear from you. I'll be back next week with another awesome guest, so take care and I will see you then bye.