Why Rest Is Sacred, Necessary, and Non-Negotiable
This is a multi-part blog series that focuses on rest, why it’s so important, why we’re not getting it and how we can re-frame our cultural programing and attitudes toward rest and how rest is the best thing we could do for ourselves and the world right now.
Rest Is How We Return to Ourselves: Reclaiming the Reset We Were Born To Have
Most of us are tired in ways we rarely speak out loud. We’re not just overworked. We’re not just stretched thin. We struggle to hold it all together, to keep going, to keep up with our day to day lives.
We’re tired in our bones. We’re tired in our breath. We’re tired in our capacity to feel and respond. And it’s not because we are broken, lazy, or undisciplined. It’s because we are living in a culture that has conditioned us to override our own biology—and expects us to call it normal. It’s because we’ve forgotten our natural alignment with nature.
Every living system on this earth is guided by rhythm: ebb and flow, inhale and exhale, expanding and contracting. We are no different. Our bodies are designed to do a great many things – to move and to act – but they are also designed to reset and restore so that we can be healthy, whole, and able to bring our best selves to our lives and the people and things we are passionate about. But somewhere along the way, we were taught to honor only the movement… and to distrust the pause.
And this is costing us more than we realize.
The Biological Truth: Our Bodies Need Time, Energy, and Safety to Heal
In The Biology of Trauma, Dr. Aimee Apigian writes:
“In a culture based on busyness, fear, and disconnection, it is harder for our body to get what it needs to complete a trauma response. The three things a trauma response needs to complete for a reset are time, energy, and safety, and all three of these are often missing in our life.”
To me, this is deeply profound, and it has reframed my thinking about my own patterns in life – Jenn’s, too. What Dr. Apigian has taught me is that:
Trauma and overwhelm are not linear events—they are cyclical processes. When your body is stressed, it begins a biological sequence:
- Alert
- Activation
- Mobilization
- Completion
- Reset
But without rest, without safety cues, without pause…the sequence freezes mid-loop. This is why so many people live in chronic exhaustion, irritability, emotional flatness, anxiety, or numbness. Not because they are weak. Not because they “haven’t healed yet.” But because the cycle never completed. Rest is what allows the body to finish what it started.
Rest is what tells your nervous system, “You’re safe now. You can come home.”
Dr. Apigian continues:
“The cultural expectation to ‘push through’ creates another barrier to resets… Like a high-performance athlete who never allows recovery between training sessions, we’re taught that stopping means weakness.”
Imagine an athlete who trains intensely every day without rest.
At first, they might push through on adrenaline.
But eventually, the body begins breaking down.
We are doing this to ourselves emotionally, spiritually, and physically—believing this is just what life requires. It isn’t. What we need is REST.
We’ll talk more about how our society views rest, why rest is not only biologically vital – but sacred, and how rest is resistance, in the next few weeks.
