On Rest
And why when I was sick for two weeks, it felt impossible to feel rested.
What does it feel like to rest? Do we know, truly, what it is to rest, deeply? I find that often the more I try to rest, the harder it becomes. And I think this is true for many people, and part of why we are addicted to things like our phones or Netflix or alcohol and drugs. When some part of us wants rest but doesn’t know how else to get it, these things help us shut off from the big or important or stress-inducing things of life.
I was talking to a friend a while ago about rest and how it’s more than just getting enough sleep at night. She seemed surprised at this idea, confirming my suspicion once again that this isn’t just me. I started explaining polyvagal theory to her but I don’t think it came out very well at the time. I figured now is as good a time as any to discuss the concept of rest as a state, and not a destination or activity (despite my own habit of thinking of it as a destination anyway).
We have three dominant states within our nervous systems that capture a wealth of different reactions and trauma responses within each. Which state we are in depends on the activation of our central nervous system, mediated by our vagus nerve that runs along our spine and is connected to all our major organ systems including the brain, heart, lungs, and digestive organs. There are two branches of the vagus nerve active at any given time: ventral vagal and dorsal vagal. The ventral vagal branch is responsible for our ventral state and our sympathetic state. When we are in a ventral state, we are awake but calm, grounded, and feel a sense of connection to both ourselves and others. We feel safe here, knowing we have support and that we belong. Our skills for social connection kick in when we are in this state and we feel more comfortable asking for help or sharing our feelings with others. The sympathetic state, activated by our sympathetic nervous system, is responsible for our fight or flight response. We are in a sympathetic state when we notice our heart rate increasing, our breathing becoming more shallow, our pupils dilating, and our body becoming more alert and ready to move. When this state is active, we might feel like we just can’t settle.
If we experience something stressful that leaves us with the feeling that (1) nobody will come to help us if we call for help and (2) we have no way of escape or fighting our way out of the situation, the dorsal branch of the vagus nerve becomes activated, and we move into the dorsal state. Our bodies freeze or shut down and the blood drains from our limbs, centring around our respiratory system to ensure our heart beats for as long as we’re alive. We might feel numb or dissociated and immobile.
On any given day, our bodies and nervous systems are moving through these three different states multiple times a day, and this is healthy. Our dorsal system is active when we’re falling asleep or waking up; our sympathetic system is active when we realize we’re running late for work; and our ventral state is active when we see our co-worker and smile to greet them. All three systems are not only healthy, but necessary to function, so we don’t want to shut any of them off or never feel any certain one over the other. If we did, we would just be in the dorsal “shut down” state anyway. The problem comes up when we notice ourselves “stuck” in one state over the others, or constantly having a “fight or flight” or “shut down” response to things that ultimately don’t require that response from us. I know I hold tension in my shoulders, neck and jaw from an historically over-activated sympathetic nervous system response that is ultimately trying to protect me.
This is particularly important to notice because when we are in an activated sympathetic or dorsal state, our prefrontal cortex isn’t functioning at its fullest capacity either. For a great visual of this, watch Dr. Dan Siegel’s brief video on the hand model of the brain. When in this state, our perception of the future diminishes and we lose access to areas of the brain that support problem solving as well as our sense of connection with others. We feel increasingly isolated and helpless, with no way of seeing a way through. If we spend most of our time coming back to a shut down or fight-or-flight state, our perception of the world shifts from one of possibility and connection to a depressing or anxious and isolating one. We stop noticing when good things happen, when people have reached out, or when we have been successful. Conversely, when we have the ability to be flexible within our states we can remember what it is like to be connected with others and increase our sense of safety overall.
Different states can be active together at the same time as well. When we are playing, our sympathetic and ventral states are active together. When we find stillness (and where I imagine deep rest can take place), ventral and dorsal are active together. Part of this therefore is not only learning how to come back to a ventral state after experiencing dorsal or sympathetic, but it’s also learning ways to rest and feel safe in the midst of all the states as well. Giving our bodies the experience of activating sympathetic or dorsal in safe ways (i.e. running or playing with a niece or nephew, playing a sport, meditating, etc.) helps build our capacity to access safety when experiencing sympathetic and dorsal states otherwise. If I’m able to provide myself with lots of experiences of safety while experiencing sympathetic or dorsal, the next time I experience a sympathetic or dorsal state due to stress, my body will remember that my ventral safe state is also still accessible if needed.
The way we do this is by identifying first when we are in each of these states, and then noticing what brings us to these states, and what shifts us out of them. If I know that speaking in front of others is going to bring up a sympathetic response in me, I’m going to do what I can to (1) maybe reduce the amount of time I have doing this activity as well as (2) explore ways to bring safety and ventral into the activity — like asking a loved one to attend the presentation with me, or keeping a small token that reminds me of this person and that “they are always with me” in my pocket. Pets have been found to be an excellent way to connect with ventral energy, so picturing your beloved pup or kitten or even looking at a photo of them right before you go on for your presentation can bring your nervous system into a more relaxed, connected, and open state.
Movement like dance, shaking, stretching, drumming, deep breathing or humming, yoga, and exercise can all help us move through these states back to ventral as well, in part because they signal to our body that we’re doing something about whatever threat got us activated. And many of our present-day threats aren’t things that require movement necessarily to survive them — the stress of a job or family issues or a broken friendship activates our nervous systems the same ways a tiger chasing our ancestors did. We feel these things in our bodies, and so our body has to move in order to complete the process of coming back to ourselves and resting. This is why I think rest can feel so difficult to attain if we’ve gone through a full day of work or family issues while sitting at a desk or driving in our cars and haven’t actually moved our bodies in a way that they want to.
This is also why the often over-used self-care regimens of regular exercise and meditation have a lot of research backing them — they help support our nervous system regulation, and when we do these things regularly we’re consistently providing our body with ways to shift out of an activated state into ventral. When I go for a run, I’m intentionally activating a sympathetic response in myself in a contained and healthy way so that my body can feel itself moving quickly and feel that I’m doing something about whatever anxiety-inducing threat I experienced earlier in the day. It doesn’t need to solve any existential problems, it just needs to move into ventral. When I’m in ventral I have full access to all my problem-solving powers in ways that I don’t when sympathetic or dorsal are activated anyway.
I add the statement “over-used” because what works sometimes doesn’t necessarily work all the time, and ultimately your body and your system is your own, and only you can know what will work for it at any given point in time, which often takes some trial and error. What works for one person might not work for you, and vice versa. I love running and find stillness and clarity often by running through the forest and up and down a few hundred metres — there’s a satisfaction and sense of safety and connection I get when I do these things. But I don’t think that’s everybody’s cup of tea and I would never tell someone “you should just start trail running;” that just won’t work for everyone. Additionally, it doesn’t always work for me. Some days what my body needs is to just activate dorsal for a bit, get cozy, and give myself some compassion for how hard life can be sometimes. As I said before: all of these states are healthy and necessary, and serve an important purpose in our daily functioning. Once we know how each of these feel in our bodies we can not only know when we’re in one state over another, but we can also use them to regulate and bring rest to our bodies.
Our fight-or-flight and shut down systems are necessary and support us in letting us know when something in our environment is not okay or is a threat to something important to us. Sometimes we really need to fight back or get away. We also need to know what safety feels like in our bodies in order to rest and recover fully; not just so we can problem-solve better, but so we can know more about the truth of being alive: that there are terrible things in this world, and very real threats, but there are sometimes very real differences between what is threatening and what is experienced as threatening, and when we learn this we can learn just how resilient and whole we really are. When I was sick, my body wasn’t just trying to heal: I was experiencing a social threat that I associated with having to call in to work sick for so many days and a pressure I felt to be there for others at the cost of my own well-being. When I notice myself feeling unsettled or biting my finger nails or clenching my jaw, I can be curious about what my body is trying to tell me: about what areas I might need to fight back on or let go of, or open myself up to. I think there are places for each of these responses within ourselves, and when we allow them all to exist, we can find rest.
If you’re interested in diving more into this and finding ways of building awareness and practices around your own nervous system, I recommend Deb Dana’s book Anchored: How to Befriend Your Nervous System using Polyvagal Theory