A friend asked me the other day how long I have felt depleted for, and truthfully, as I thought about the answer to that question my eyes watered. I can’t quite remember when I last felt energised. Each day I carry a heaviness in my upper back and neck, a fog in my head like I once had brain surgery and they forgot to take all the cloths out that soak up the blood. Sodden fabric jammed between my ears. A punctual lethargy that strikes upon waking.
I’ve dedicated significant time and resources to understanding why this body seems to lack vitality. The most perplexing thing is that I know I’m not alone in it. I can fairly safely say that most people I know are feeling worn out, pretty much all the time.
We’re mostly aware of why: the million and one things we’re all trying to achieve in a society that does little to support us in getting there. But knowing why doesn’t tell us how to get out of merely surviving and moving into that energetic place that lives in our youthful memories. We’ve learned to override the small signals our bodies communicate with us.
Most of us assume the answer is taking a long break - deep rest, taken in one large dose. For me, that’s looked like contemplating a 6-month sabbatical, or a day a week fully switched off from the tech world, or hours on the couch with no one except my sweet cat. We keep conceptualising recovery at the wrong scale. We’re aiming for the impossible and exhausting ourselves further in our failure to reach it.
But what if deep rest isn’t about finding hours, days or weeks to luxuriate in, but small, consistent fragments of time to recover from moments that just demanded something from us?
That reframe came to me recently in a short course called “Recover” run by Jo Buick at Taking Good Care. The exercise that stuck: instead of scanning my week for a free block to rest in, I was asked to notice, in real time, the exact instant my body tensed, and to do something about that, immediately, rather than banking the tension for later. It sounds small but it has rewired how I move through my days. Consistent micro-practices are deep rest.
Now I’m stretching awkwardly at my desk when I notice tightness in my body. Walking the short distance to refill my drink bottle. Pressing play on a 13-minute yoga class while dinner cooks. Sipping tea in the sunshine. Watching the wind dance with the trees. Journaling for 6-minutes. None of it looks like rest from the outside. All of it is.
We don’t all need a 6-month sabbatical, but we do need to notice when we’re hungry or thirsty and actually take steps to satiate that. We need to catch our heart racing, or our voice going shrill and meet it with one steady and slow, steady exhale.
So throughout your day, rather than fantasising about rage quitting your job, pause and ask yourself, “How am I feeling? How do I know? What do I need?”
The answer might be a deep breath, a sigh, a regulatory moment to screw your face up and wiggle, a sip of warm tea, a mad jump up and down, a quick conversation with one of your favourite people or noticing that your toes are cold and putting on your socks.
What it probably won’t be is scrolling on your phone. It feels like a pause but it’s not a micro-practice. It doesn’t create space for what you need. It just asks for your attention.
I recently heard the sentence “a cup of tea won’t save your life” and I felt like shouting: it can. Not the tea itself, but the pausing. The tiny practice of tuning in. The willingness to notice you need something and give it to yourself in a world built on systems that profit from you not doing that.
We have learned to ignore small bodily requests until they become enormous ones. Recovery might begin by answering ourselves sooner. The small revolutionary act is attention itself. Catching the instant you need a moment to recover, and letting yourself have it.
Not later, now.
P.S. You may have noticed it’s been an age since I posted anything here. I'm grateful to May Ngo, whose gentle guidance and encouragement have helped me find my way back to writing and sharing it. Thank you May.