7. Transformative Power of Rest and Self-Care

Have you ever felt trapped in the relentless cycle of busyness, only to find yourself utterly burnt out? On this episode of Between Heart and Brain, I, Sara, candidly share my own journey from overworking to embracing rest and self-care. Discover how the culture of constant busyness nearly led me to a breaking point and the transformative strategies I adopted to reclaim balance in my life. From ensuring a solid seven to nine hours of sleep each night to indulging in light-hearted activities that nurture the soul, we explore the multifaceted nature of rest and its profound impact on stress management and self-love.

In the second part of our conversation, we delve into the critical relationship between physical rest and overall health. Drawing from my personal experience with the keto diet, I underscore the essential role of sleep in achieving and maintaining weight loss, while also touching on the often-overlooked aspects of eye care in our digital age. This episode serves as a heartfelt reminder of the importance of listening to our bodies, whether it means taking time for relaxation, ensuring proper nutrition, or simply stepping away from screens. Join me as we navigate this empowering journey together, striving for continuous growth and a more fulfilling life. Remember, your support is invaluable as we inspire each other to prioritize self-care and live empowered lives.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi, welcome to the podcast between hard and brave. I'm Sarah, and I'm here to be with you in your personal growth and self-improvement journey, and I'm here to share my own life experiences with you. I'm a yoga teacher, a business intelligence manager with a master's degree in IT, and Nobel Queen International 2023 with health and wellness advocacy. I'm so excited to start this journey with you, to uplift you with positivity, the power of mindfulness and yoga and the freedom of conscious living. So let's start together and take a moment for yourself. Take a moment for yourself. Hi, good day, good morning, good night, good evening. Wherever you are and you're listening, thank you for being here If it's not your first time. As usual, thanks for coming back to the podcast, and welcome if it's your first time to listen to Between Heart and Brain.

Speaker 1: 1:04

Today's episode is dedicated to discussing the importance of rest. Why did I decide to talk about this today? I find it an overlooked topic, especially nowadays, that being busy is like an honor badge that people wear, like the busier you are, the more you're contributing, or it adds to the importance of that person, or whatever is the logic behind it, which makes it hard not to fall for the trap of wanting to always be doing something. I myself am guilty of that, not just for a short period of time, but actually for a really long, while For a few years I spent a lot of time being busy. I spent a lot of time being busy. Some of it was spent for doing things that I enjoy, like painting, like yoga, cooking and most of it was mostly professional. I did enjoy my work, but after some time it became overwhelming because I forgot about resting. I pushed myself to the point of burnout, so my practice wasn't sustainable anymore. At some point I felt tired, I couldn't put in any more effort in what I was doing and in the end I had to step back and take time to rest longer than I should have in the first place, because when I had to prioritize rest and a balanced lifestyle, I did not. So this episode is created for you who cannot find time for rest.

Speaker 1: 3:09

Let's define rest. First of all. It's sleeping. That's one way of resting, but it's not just the physical rest that we're talking about. Also, mental rest meaning taking breaks in between something that you're doing which is complicated, or your work, or spending enough time for activities that feed your soul, maybe going to a new place. Having some tea with friends, drinking coffee with friends, laying down on the grass and looking at the sky, being beside a pool getting your tan, or whatever makes you feel comfortable. These are very important for our mental well-being, because when you dedicate a little bit of your time every day for yourself, for your mental health and well-being, you deep down you yourself know that you prioritize yourself. You gave yourself the care that you needed, and it's a good feeling to have towards yourself. It cultivates more love towards yourself. So why not practicing it more often?

Speaker 1: 4:27

I would like to mention a few things that I do regularly, which I consider them. Rest First, getting enough sleep. Every person should sleep between seven to nine hours a day. It still depends on you, but seven hours for sure. Every person needs that. When we sleep, our body has time to get rid of toxins that were accumulated when you were awake. At the same time, our brain has the chance to process memories, process information. Our immune system gets a boost. If we lack sleep, our immune system might get affected negatively, and also we are able to handle and manage stress a lot better than the times that we don't have enough rest.

Speaker 1: 5:23

This culture of having to be busy sometimes makes us not spend enough time or not track the quality of our sleep. There are so many things that you can do to track that, using watches or people who don't like to wear watches at night when they're asleep, like me. I used to. Actually, actually, for a period of time when I wanted to get my sleep straight, I used to track it on my phone. So, before going to bed, for one hour I do not use my phone because you know it does actually make you feel more awake if you look at the screen. So I do not use my phone and when I'm about to sleep that's the time I just pull up the screen, press the sleep button and go to bed and from there I can see, over a week or a month or a few months, how well I've been sleeping Since high school.

Speaker 1: 6:24

When I was in high school, I started to sleep less and less. Of course, when you're younger you can stay awake for a longer period of time, but that time I had this thinking that, oh, if I sleep, I'm missing out on life. So I wanted to be awake purposely. I guess a lot of excitement for life, but I missed out on the fact that sleeping is joyful in itself. It's such a sweet feeling and it's necessary. It's not a luxury, it's a necessity.

Speaker 1: 7:01

Another thing that I do for my rest or my mental rest, my emotional rest is to read books that are very light in nature. They're not mind-boggling, super fun to read. It could be a funny book or it could be. For me, usually it's the things that are very feminine. Of course I'm a woman and when I spend time reading a book I usually want it to be really for the women's or the girls world, or I watch a series that give me the same feeling. I consider this my rest time. There are also movies or series that are a little bit more serious and the topic is again more serious or it's much deeper. It needs a lot of attention. So I don't consider those rest, even though I'm just watching tv. But there are series or shows that you kind of can just kind of switch off your brain for 30 minutes when you're watching an episode, and those are the things that I would do. If not every day, every few days, I would definitely do that just for my own well-being.

Speaker 1: 8:18

Aside from that, I make sure to see the daylight in the morning. There are a bunch of studies that show seeing the light, seeing the sun rays, seeing the sunny days, does affect your mood positively, elevates your happiness, your contentment with life, and that's why in countries that is mostly cloudy there is a high rate of depression. There are studies that say that these two are related. And in countries that is more tropical or sunny because of the weather, of course that is more tropical or sunny because of the weather, of course people tend to be a lot more active or happier maybe in general. So I try to get that sunlight, even during weekends. So I know that a lot of people like to sleep in when it's their weekend. They want to get good rest, they want to stay up till late at night and then sleep the rest of the day. But for me I try to still see that 8 am sun, 8 am sun, 8 am brightness, and that gives me happiness. One more thing is before sleeping.

Speaker 1: 9:38

So, yeah, self-care, skincare routine. Honestly, for me, skincare routine is not. I wouldn't consider any sort of rest. For me it's work. I don't enjoy it as much as I should. I know a lot of people do a good for you, you're lucky, but for me it's really work. So I have to have discipline and put on my before bed serum and cream and such. But there is another thing that I do consider it self-care and some sort of rest for me is my lavender tea. Before bed I brew some lavender, the flower itself. If you know me, you probably know I already have an online tea shop as well. It's called surati s-o-o-r-a-t-e-a, and I love the lavender myself so much. It's good for hair, for skin and for relaxation. The scent, the aroma itself. So what I do is I put that a little. Of course, the water is hot and boiling. After 10 minutes I add some cold water and then honey, because you cannot add honey to hot water or very warm water because it produces toxins. So I have to make sure my tea is not hot and then add some honey and I have my own tumbler or my own mug that is dedicated for this specific part of my day or night and I just drink it while I'm in bed, maybe I'm watching something, and once that's done I put it aside. So for me, this part is also rest. It makes me feel a lot better emotionally and I know that I'm consuming something that's really good for my body, for my health. So I consider this rest.

Speaker 1: 11:33

There are times that we are so busy with life that we forget to take care of ourselves. Let's say you're living with your family and you're taking care of your family, or you're very much invested in your friend group, or you're very much interested, invested, in your work. Right now You're prioritizing it over your family and over yourself. Or you're recently a mom a new mom I cannot talk much about it because I haven't been there yet but basically you not spending a lot of time for yourself. It probably works for a while, like it did work for me when I did it for my job, but it's not sustainable. As I said, at some point you will get to the point that you just can't do this anymore. You have become a lot more sensitive. It affects even other areas of your life. It affects nurturing the relationships that you have with people, because when you don't get enough rest, you're frustrated, you're irritable, your level of happiness is generally lower. So why not invest in something that allows you to feel better in general?

Speaker 1: 12:49

It's important to mention that getting enough rest and this time I'm talking about the physical part sleeping helps with our health in many ways, in so many different ways If you have practiced yoga at least once, you probably know that the session or the practice is closed with Shavasana pose. It's a pose where you're just laying down it's also called corpse pose pose. It's a pose where you're just laying down it's also called corpse pose and you're just relaxing your whole body, and that's when you probably enjoy this a lot, especially if you know how to sit. Still, maybe it could be a little bit harder for beginners, but if you had a very intense or hard practice, you definitely want to lay down and it feels really nice and it's said to be that this is the part that your body starts to heal itself. Also mentioning also looking at sleeping scientifically your tissues start being repaired and you build more muscles let's say you're exercising so you need good rest for your muscles to be built. As I said, the immune system also. It needs rest to be able to work and act as it should.

Speaker 1: 14:12

Lack of physical rest or lack of sleep can affect a person's health when it comes to their heart. They can get heart complications, heart problems and also weight gain. If you're wondering why you're gaining weight, maybe you have to question if you're sleeping enough. I tried keto diet for about two to three weeks when I wanted to lose a few kilos, and it did work. It was a nice experience. It wasn't easy the first few days, but eventually the body gets used to it. One thing that I really noticed significantly is that it's true we lose weight when we sleep. So what is a keto diet? Maybe that's another topic which we might talk about someday. I'm not sure. But what I'm trying to point out is that whatever I did, or whatever diet I took, whatever I ate and didn't, it was only the day after that I was able to see the results. Not just because of loss of water weight. It was actually losing weight on a daily basis, on a daily basis. So the more I slept, the more I lost weight. That was the time that I believed in the saying that if you lose or if you lack sleep, you're going to gain weight. So you also want to consider that.

Speaker 1: 15:52

Also, when you're working, you're using your phone or your laptop or your computer for a long time, it's important to take breaks in between so your eyes can rest. My doctor told me to look away from your screen every 20 minutes. Look at the farthest point you can look at, which is the window beside me, point you can look at. Which is the window beside me. I try to look at the forest building or the forest tree, or the forest tree that I see, and just look at it for a while. Let your eyes rest and also use eye drops that help with lubricating your eyes, because if we don't do that, there's a possibility that your eyes might start to feel dry. That's exactly what happened to me and that's why I had to see my doctor, and thankfully, by practicing this stuff, I was able to regain the sense of freshness in my eyes.

Speaker 1: 17:03

No-transcript that we take, be it physical or mental, just looking at it. And these are the things that I've discussed. There are so many things that we do not notice. We only notice things that probably it's already at a point that it's noticeable, so you notice it. For example, you've become anxious because of lack of sleep, you've become irritable, or your eyes don't see as clearly as they were because you're always looking at a screen without any pause. So we don't always have to know everything completely to do it. We know the concept address is important and these facts about it. You can also go search more and more. You have the freedom to do so and educate yourself as much as you want, but basically what I'm trying to say is that we can prevent things without going through them, without we can learn things without going through them. So it's important to always listen to your body, because your body is always telling you what they need, what she or he needs.

Speaker 1: 18:07

Listen to your body. If your body needs rest and rest up. If your body needs nutrients, then give it nutrients. If you're find yourself hungry when you're eating, then elaborate on am I, am I stress, eating? Why? Why am I stressed? Am I getting enough rest? Or what are the factors that can contribute to this unhealthy habit of mine? Maybe I'm not eating the right kind of food or, if I'm not getting enough rest, what could be the reason? Is it because I'm overwhelmed, or is it because I have filled up my schedule with so many things that I cannot even catch up? Is it because my mind is busy somewhere that I can't relax them? Then maybe I should do meditation, you know, do an analysis of the quality of your life when it comes to feeling all right and feeling rested physically, emotionally and mentally.

Speaker 1: 19:12

One thing I always tell my students in a yoga class is that to allow your body to be your teacher before me. Yeah, I am the yoga teacher in that class, but your body is your first teacher, so listen to it. If it tells you don't do something, don't do something. If it tells you that I think you can try it and you feel safe and comfortable in that post, then try it. Or if you need to sleep, I even allow them to sleep. A lot of times, students fall asleep in shavasana or they want to rest before we get to shavasana and they might feel shy about it, but I always reassure them that there is nothing to be shy about. It's basically, this practice is about giving your body what it needs, and if you fall asleep in your shavasana, then it means that your body needed sleep, so it's really good that you gave it what was needed. Or if you cannot do a series of poses or one pose and you feel like you need to lie down, you want to be in your child's pose, then by all means do so. Your body, your mat and you're there to feel better, and if that rest or that sleeping makes you feel better, that's what I want for you.

Speaker 1: 20:33

It's worth mentioning that when we are well-rested, we become more creative and more compassionate and more productive. So the effort that we put in to doing something or creating something, we see the fruits of that faster or better compared to when we are already burnt out and we're pushing ourselves to do more. One thing that my yoga teacher told me is that don't pour from an empty cup. As I started teaching and that time I was also struggling to choose between two paths in front of me, two kinds of career, and I was really mentally exhausted. I listened to what she told me and it's true. When you feel burnt out, you want to keep on going, but there is nothing left in the cup for you to pour. So before we get there, let's avoid. Let's avoid feeling or getting to the point of burnout. Let's give ourselves the rest that we deserve. By the way, I want to share this with you.

Speaker 1: 21:58

For so many years, I forgot the sweetness of taking an afternoon nap. I wasn't able to simply fall asleep in the afternoon. I had to wait for night time, when I'm already tired, and go to bed at night, get my eight hours of sleep. That's the time that my sleep was already regulated. So I continuously got eight hours of sleep every night, but I still couldn't fall asleep at night Sorry, in the afternoon and when I saw people around me they're able to, like take a nap I was like that must be sweet, I don't know. But anyways, I can get my rest at night.

Speaker 1: 22:50

Until I started practicing yoga regularly, many times. Started practicing yoga regularly many times a week, maybe five times a week. I'm not saying that that's what you should do. I believe three hours a week is a good amount of time to be spent for practicing or working out, but that's what I was doing five hours a week, seven hours a week. So that made me feel a lot more tired. I also started to walk a lot more. Instead of getting just using a car to go to the places, I used to walk more. So my body felt tired and I started sleeping in the afternoon. Oh my god, that's such a sweet feeling, that's wow.

Speaker 1: 23:28

So what I'm trying to say is that if you find it hard to get good rest, also pay attention to how active you're being. Maybe you're just not active enough If you're always at home. Let's say you have a work from home set up so you wake up, you sit behind your computer, you don't go out much, you don't run, you don't exercise, you don't walk, and when it becomes nighttime you don't feel that sleepy by 10, 11, 12 or 1 even, and you end up being awake until 3 or 4 in the morning and having to push yourself to wake up, and you end up sleeping only four or five hours a night. So it's also important to notice how active you're being so that you can get good rest as well. Thank you for listening and I hope that you found this episode useful, and I really do hope that you give yourself the amount of rest you deserve. Hope that you give yourself the amount of rest you deserve.

Speaker 1: 24:33

Thank you, dear listeners, for joining me on this empowering journey today. As we conclude this episode, remember that your potential is boundless and your journey to a more fulfilling life has only just begun. I'm here to support you every step of the way, so keep coming back for more insights and inspiration, and remember this podcast is proudly independent, created with a passion for making a positive impact. Your support means the world to me, so please consider subscribing and sharing it with the people you know. Together, we can inspire more individuals on their journey to empowerment and a better life. See you soon for more life-changing discussions. Until we meet again, stay empowered.