The Lost Art of Rest: Why Slowing Down is Essential for True Resilience

A New Way of Being

Simon Mundie

Education, Spirituality, Self-improvement, Health & Fitness, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 523 Ratings

🗓️ 9 May 2025

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Rest is not a luxury — it's a biological and emotional necessity. But modern life has normalised exhaustion, which is why so many of us feel guilty when we slow down, and how chronic stress patterns keep us stuck in survival mode without even realising it.

We also talk about:

The link between rest, resilience and recovery
Why true healing requires time, patience, and space
How to reconnect with the body’s natural signals
Practical ways to bring more convalescence and self-compassion into daily life

If you would like to explore more you can sign up for my free mini-course on embracing balance and finding flow: https://www.simonmundie.com/restore-balance-mini-course

Or get in touch about 1:1 conversations: https://www.simonmundie.com/restore-balance-coaching

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I've heard you describe yourself as a rest activist. What would you say that meant?
0:09.5	It means that we currently are living in a society where everything is based around.
0:16.1	Success is measured by achievement, production, what you own. And consequently, so many people are burning
0:23.4	themselves out and constantly doing, doing without ever stopping. And what I see in the work I do
0:29.8	is a yoga therapist is people being burnt out, exhausted stress, but also, you know, chronic
0:36.9	fatigue, long COVID. So I'm trying to encourage
0:41.0	this idea of convalescence and rest being put back into our vocabulary and into our days. So it becomes
0:48.6	something that we can do without shame, without guilt, without people pointing the fingers. And just to add to that, I just like to say that the book is also co-authored, without guilt, without people pointing the fingers.
0:58.9	And just to add to that, I'd just like to say that the book is also co-authored, I must give her a mention, Nadine Mackay, who absolutely agrees with me. She's also a rest activist. She's a yoga
1:05.1	therapist and a psychotherapist. So there's a few of us trying to kind of birth this idea back
1:10.7	into the world that we need to bring back rest.
1:13.3	We need convalescence in order to have a healthier world.
1:17.4	What does convalescence mean simply?
1:20.0	If you are ill in particular, so if you have a virus, you actually take the time to rest and replenish and restore so that you are healthy before
1:30.6	you go back into whatever it is you're doing, be that work or family life or whatever.
1:36.8	And certainly when I was going up, that was the case. I mean, you know, if you had flu,
1:41.2	you might take two weeks off work. I had glandular fever as a teenager
1:45.2	and my doctor at the time maybe have six weeks bed rest. That would be unheard of now. Now it would
1:51.4	be take a paracetamol, take a tablet and get back to work as soon as you can. And consequently,
1:56.5	we're seeing unprecedented amounts of people with post-firal fatigue and burnout. Yeah, burnout. A lot of people
2:03.4	can even be burnt out and overwhelmed and not even realise it these days. I think because we have
2:09.0	normalized exhaustion and we've normalized stress. So many of us are running what we would call
	...

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