Seven types of Rest for Creatives - Part 2

In my previous post I introduced the idea that rest doesn't always have to equal sleep and started to explore the different kinds of rest we can embrace as creatives to help us to restore and replenish mind, body and creativity. I talked about physical, mental and sensory rest and in this post I'm going to introduce you to four other types of rest:

Emotional Rest

Emotional rest is one of the least visible, yet most important, forms of rest, especially for sensitive, creative people. It allows us to think about not having to hold everything all at once, all of the time. It lets us to 'put stuff down' for a while.

It’s the rest that comes from:

• not needing to explain yourself

• not holding space for others for a while

• letting feelings exist without analysing or fixing them

For me this year so far has looked like allowing myself to be quieter, to be less available, keeping my diary a bit more spacious, but when the difficult feelings of loss arrive, which they certainly did, letting myself sit with them and not pushing them away.

Some seasons are not for processing or producing, they are for letting things be instead.

Social Rest

Social rest doesn’t necessarily mean being alone. It means being intentional about who we spend time with and how, choosing spacious connection.

This could look like:

• fewer social commitments

• more time with people who feel easy and familiar

• permission to say no without justification

Creative energy is relational. It’s affected by the spaces we move in and the expectations we feel. Social rest and the space it has allowed, has given me creativity room to breathe again.

Spiritual Rest

Spiritual rest isn’t necessarily about belief systems it’s about a sense of belonging to something. This could look like: connection to nature or to something larger than productivity or output.

For me, this kind of rest arrives quietly:

• in candlelit winter yoga classes (Thanks Becs McBride)

• in seasonal cooking (Butternut Squash soup was on the menu yesterday!)

• in allowing January to be inward rather than expansive (my diary has been mostly empty with only one or two social things in each week!)

Seasonal living teaches us that not every moment is for growth. Some moments are for rooting and waiting.

Creative Rest

Perhaps the most uncomfortable one of all!! Creative rest is allowing yourself not to make, without interpreting that as failure, loss, or the end of something.

This year so far, creative rest has meant:

• not forcing myself into the studio but doing other things instead such as cooking

• trusting that creativity hasn’t gone anywhere

• remembering that fallow time is fertile

Creativity doesn’t need constant output to stay alive. It needs space to breathe and just rest.

If I look at this year so far honestly, these mid to late winter months, I haven’t been unproductive at all but I have been restoring my nervous system, nourishing my body, quieting my mind, softening emotionally and reconnecting with seasonal rhythm

Sometimes the work is rest itself.

Do you agree? Drop me a comment, I would love hear what you think.