It’s always surprising to me how many people, when asked to simply lie down and do nothing for a few minutes, don’t quite know what to do with themselves. Fingers twitch. Eyes open and close. Someone, almost always, glances toward the door as though they’ve remembered something urgent. Properly resting, it turns out, isn’t nearly as simple as it sounds.
I don’t think this is a personal failing. I think most of us have simply forgotten how.
Why Rest Doesn’t Come Naturally Anymore
Work, family, the endless small admin of running a life – it’s easy to see why rest gets pushed to the bottom of the list. It doesn’t shout the way other demands do. Nobody chases you for it. And because it’s quiet, it’s the first thing to go when a week gets busy.
But the body and mind genuinely need that downtime to do their own quiet work – processing the day, settling the nervous system, allowing tension that’s built up to actually release rather than simply accumulate. Without it, that processing has nowhere to happen. It just keeps piling up, a little more each day, until it starts to show up as the kind of tiredness that sleep alone doesn’t seem to touch.
What I notice often, in students and in myself, is that we’ve become so used to being switched on that switching off has become its own small skill – one that, like most things worth having, needs practising rather than simply wished for.
Why Yoga, Specifically
There’s no single right way to rest and I wouldn’t want to suggest yoga is the only path to it. But it does offer something particular: a structured, repeatable way of moving from “switched on” to “switched off,” rather than just hoping it happens on its own.
A restorative practice – slower, fewer postures, longer holds, supported by blocks and blankets – works directly with the nervous system rather than around it. Holding a gentle, well-supported shape for several minutes gives the body time to register that it’s actually safe to soften, in a way that rushing from one thing to the next never quite allows.
The breath does a great deal of this work too. Slowing the exhale, letting it run a little longer than the inhale, is one of the simplest and most reliable ways I know to nudge the body out of its usual hurry. You don’t need a formal class to use this – though it’s far easier to learn it properly with guidance, in a room built for exactly this purpose.
Savasana (Corpse pose): The Part People Don’t Expect to Love
And then there’s Savasana (Corpse pose)– lying still at the end of class, doing, quite deliberately, nothing at all. It tends to be the part newcomers find strangest and the part regular students come to enjoy. There’s something almost radical about being given permission to simply stop, with nowhere to be and nothing to produce, even for a few minutes.
I think this is why it feels differently for people than rest usually does. It’s not rest squeezed into the gaps of a busy day. It’s rest as the actual point of the exercise.
Letting It Take a Little Time
If switching off doesn’t come easily to you, that’s genuinely common, not a sign you’re doing it wrong. It can take a while to find the kind of rest that actually restores you, rather than just distracts you for an hour. A regular yoga practice – even just a weekly class – gives you somewhere consistent to return to while that skill builds, rather than waiting until you’re exhausted enough to be forced into it.
The body and mind both know how to rest. Most of us have simply lost a little practice at letting them.
If learning to properly rest and switch off is something you’d like real support with, my course Finding Ease: A Yoga Approach to Stress, Rest and Resilience is built entirely around this – practical tools for working with stress and the nervous system, at a pace that actually fits real life.
If you’re new to yoga and want to understand it a little better first, Yoga Basics is a good place to start.
If you’re ready to explore further, Practice and Poses is a good next step – or if you’d like to try a class, I teach in Bebington and Hooton. You’d be very welcome to join us.