The Right Conditions for Rest

The last year has been one of the hardest of my life, following the death of my mum. I thought I was doing okay (as okay as you can be), but by the end of January, I had completely burnt out and had to take some time off work. I quickly discovered, as the saying goes, that no one was coming to save me—I had to save myself.

I promised myself that I’d take a couple of nights away at a wellness retreat. I thought that would be the answer: time alone to eat well, exercise, be pampered, and recharge. But it was my husband who suggested that maybe I needed to be in a better headspace before I went. He was right.

Even though I waited a couple of months, I still struggled to switch off. I had trouble sleeping and kept myself connected to external stressors through my phone—despite the retreat offering a phone safe that could be locked with a timer! When stress is constant, our cortisol levels stay elevated, and the body forgets how to come down. It resists, and that’s how burnout happens.

This year, I’ve been doing a fair bit of additional training, including studying Restorative Yoga. It’s not the same as Yin Yoga, which focuses on sensation and finding your edge. Restorative Yoga is about deep rest. Just those two words alone sound completely lush to me!

Deep rest helps shift the nervous system, allowing the body to repair and heal. One of the key lessons from the training was that rest requires the right conditions: stillness, quiet, warmth, and time. And we can’t just drop into deep rest on demand—we need to be guided there, gradually, through stages.

Nature teaches us this, too. For a seed to germinate, it needs water, oxygen, the right temperature, and sometimes light. It takes time, and that time varies. A stunning sunflower doesn’t bloom overnight—just as physiological changes in the body don’t happen instantly. This helped me understand why I didn’t come back from my wellness retreat feeling instantly renewed. In fact, it’s taken me the whole year—including six months of therapy—to even start feeling “better”.

In a world that demands instant results (we want to “Amazon Prime” our lives), it’s easy to get frustrated when a single yoga class doesn’t transform us. But transformation requires consistency. It requires making time for rest—before it’s too late.

I know one of the reasons I burnt out was because I didn’t prioritise rest for a very long time. I felt like I couldn’t—for so many reasons. One phrase you’ll often hear me say is that yoga helps us tune in to the subtle messages our bodies send us—the whispers—before they become screams. I ignored those whispers, but I hope that you not only listen to them, but act on them.