The 7 Types of Rest (and Why Sleep Isn’t Always the Answer)
We talk about exhaustion like it has one solution: sleep more.
While sleep absolutely matters, it turns out it’s often not the kind of rest we’re actually missing.
When I first learned there are seven distinct types of rest, it stopped me in my tracks. It explained so much about why so many of us feel bone tired, even when we’re technically “doing everything right” and getting 8 hours of sleep per night.
Turns out, more sleep isn’t always the answer.
More intentional rest usually is.
Why We’re So Bad at Treating Exhaustion
As I went down the research rabbit hole, something became painfully clear:
Most advice for managing exhaustion is… wildly off.
“Self-care” advice aimed at women often boils down to massages, pedicures, and bubble baths. Men are told to stretch after lifting and maybe eat a vegetable. Not once did I see an article mention that there are multiple types of rest and that the wrong kind of rest won’t help you feel rested at all.
Speaking from experience, massages and pedicures do absolutely nothing for my exhaustion. Sometimes they make it worse, because now I’m still tired and annoyed that I spent a bunch of money trying to fix something that didn’t work.
That spiral usually ends with guilt and self-doubt:
Why didn’t that help? What’s wrong with me?
Turns out: nothing.
I just wasn’t tired in the way those things address.
Rest vs. Self-Care (They’re Not the Same)
Rest can be a form of self-care…but not all self-care is rest.
At its most basic, self-care is everything that supports health and functioning: eating, hygiene, boundaries, relationships. Eating vegetables and flossing are self-care. They are not rest.
Rest is about reducing load on specific systems in the body and nervous system. If you’re exhausted, choosing the wrong type of “self-care” won’t restore you, no matter how aesthetic it looks on social media.
The 7 Types of Rest
The seven types of rest are:
Physical
Mental
Emotional
Spiritual
Creative
Sensory
Social
Most of us are depleted in several at once.
Here’s a practical breakdown.
Physical Rest
This is the one we usually think of first: sleep, naps, stretching, gentle movement.
For active folks and athletes, one of the clearest signs you need physical rest is persistent soreness or declining performance. You cannot fix that by training harder. You fix it by resting.
The sweet spot is a combination of:
Passive rest (sleep, naps, days off)
Active rest (Pilates, yoga, stretch therapy)
That pairing can completely change how your body recovers.
Mental Rest
Mental rest means giving your brain a break from constant stimulation and expectation.
This can look like:
Meditation
Social media breaks
Time outside
Better time boundaries and fewer “always on” demands
When the brain never gets a pause, we see mental fog, irritability, poor sleep, and feeling overwhelmed by normal daily tasks. Your brain was never designed to fire at 100% all the time. Turns out our moms were right. Boredom is good for your brain and our constant state of mental stimulation through our phones, laptops and devices is draining us.
Emotional Rest
Emotional rest is the ability to be honest about how you’re actually doing and to feel your feelings without performing, fixing, or people-pleasing.
It often requires:
Stronger boundaries
Saying no
Stepping back from emotionally draining situations
Being truthful instead of “fine”
If you’re navigating chronic stress—caregiving, health issues, financial strain, relationship challenges—emotional rest can feel impossible. But it often starts very small:
Taking a break from news or social media
Saying “I’m not okay today”
Declining a request you don’t have capacity for
Acknowledging that you’re tired, sad, or overwhelmed
Small honesty creates space. Space creates rest.
Spiritual Rest
Spiritual rest isn’t just religious practice. It’s about connection and meaning.
If you’re feeling disconnected, ungrounded, or purposeless, spiritual rest can come from:
Community
Service
Nature
Practices that remind you you’re part of something bigger
Creative Rest
Creative rest is reconnecting with wonder and inspiration.
It can be hiking, painting, watching a bee pollinate a flower, or sitting in an audience instead of producing something. It’s about receiving, not output.
One thing worth naming here: hustle culture has convinced us that every hobby should be monetized. The moment a hobby becomes income, it stops being restorative. It becomes work.
Creative rest requires permission to:
Be messy
Be bad at something
Create without outcomes
Scribble. Play. Make something pointless. Go outside. Get messy.
Sensory Rest
Sensory overload happens when the brain takes in more stimulation than it can process: screens, noise, lights, notifications, constant input.
When this happens, the nervous system shifts into fight, flight, or freeze.
Sensory rest is the antidote:
Screen breaks
Quiet walks
Driving without music
Soft lighting
Stillness
Fun side note: boredom is a powerful creativity trigger. Your brain needs low stimulation to reset.
Social Rest
Social rest isn’t isolation. It’s spending time with people who don’t require performance.
Too much social rest leads to loneliness. Too little leads to exhaustion. The goal is connection without curation.
In a world of highlight reels, being fully seen, all of our messy bits included, is deeply restorative.
Why the 7 Types of Rest Matter at Pilates Native
Pilates Native is built on three pillars: Rest, Recover, Restore. Rest comes first for a reason.
Injury prevention starts with rest
Overuse injuries come from overexertion. Chronic fatigue leads to compensations, poor muscle recruitment, and burnout…which leads directly to injury.(Yes, this is literally our specialty.)
Your nervous system drives everything
If your nervous system is overstimulated, your training will suffer. A fried brain can’t coordinate efficient movement.Movement is medicine
The body is designed to move. Pilates and stretch therapy support circulation, joint health, breath, and nervous system regulation, without adding more stress.
Yes, I Spreadsheeted This
While mapping the seven rest types, I noticed a lot of overlap, so obviously, I made a spreadsheet.
The most efficient rest practices across multiple categories.
Taking breaks from social media
Going outside
Taking intentional breaks throughout the day
During this experiment, my phone died for five days. No warning. No backup. Just… gone.
While running a business. With my spouse out of town. During back-to-school chaos.
And somehow?
I slept better. I felt calmer. I had more actual downtime.
Since then, I’ve been far more intentional with screen limits, which does mean I’m sometimes slower to respond.
If you want to explore this more deeply, I’ve created a super basic and non-fancy downloadable 11×14 PDF mapping all seven types of rest and how to access them.
And I’d love to know:
Which type of rest do you need most right now?
See you soon,
– R
Goal Accomplished! All 50 states!
Posted on July 18, 2025 by pilatesnative
Hi there, what’s up, what’s going on, how are you?
Things are settling in nicely in the new studio space. Laura and I have had some overlap with sessions, which has been fun and the 4-week trial with group classes went well. I’ve added two more classes to the schedule, the hubs did a great job hanging the barre and at some point I will get around to painting the back wall. Adding a main door has proven to be bit more involved than originally thought. Not only are the walls offset from each other by about 1.5”, the entryway is also wider at the top than the bottom by about 1.5”.
In super fun news, with our family vacation to St. Louis and Lake of the Ozarks last week, I completed my 50 state challenge!
This was a goal set when I was 15 years old and tagged along on a trip to Hawaii with my aunt. At the time, I had only been outside of Colorado to buy fireworks in Wyoming or visit my Grandma’s people at the pueblos in New Mexico. I had never seen the ocean, never been on a plane and had never gone on a vacation that wasn’t dispersed camping with the fam. My parents didn’t have send-a-kid-to-Hawaii money, so I got a work permit and spent a year working the 6am Sat/Sun drive-through-window shifts at Burger King, mowing lawns, picking up dog poo, babysitting and saving every penny. Despite spending my weekends with hair smelling like French fries and calling it an early night every weekend, being able to take a 10-day trip to Oahu was so worth it. I’m so grateful to my Aunt for changing my entire life with that experience.
While it would have been easy to bag all 50 states in a two week road trip, I wanted to really experience each place, so it took me 25 years.
My rules for a state counting were that I had to eat or do an activity in each state, not just drive through. This led to a lot of awesome meals, a lot of camping and a lot of exploring of hidden gems around the country.
My bff asked what’s next for travels and I think the next big adventures will be the Grand Canyon, visiting the Redwoods and taking trips to Belize and Costa Rica. Hopefully I can teach some Pilates in one of those locations!
What I Learned from a Year on Hard Mode
Posted on December 15, 2023 by pilatesnative
Leaving 2022, I was feeling fat, lost, alone, old and frumpy. For the first time in almost twenty years, my identity wasn’t tied in some way to engineering. I was at my heaviest non-pregnancy weight, managing food allergies felt like an endless losing game of whack-a-mole and the only peace was found at the studio. When thinking about how to shake out of those ugly feelings, I decided that I was going to jump off the deep end and spend 2023 doing all of the things that I’m really bad at or afraid of. While I anticipated doing a few challenging activities that shook off the funk, I did not anticipate the total shift of my world view.
From learning simple things like how to play chess and taking River fishing with just the two of us, to much heavier and challenging things like one-on-one Life Coaching, public speaking, dance performances, and attending a party alone, this year really ran the gauntlet. Here’s a quick list of what I learned from an entire year spent intentionally on hard mode.
1) There are so many people to thank.
The expectation of this challenge was that it would be a solo project. The reality is that there were so so many people who were ready and willing to help and who happily contributed to this year and helped me reach, push and enjoy the year. Thank you all so much!
2) Fear Patterns quickly emerged.
Pretty quickly, it became very apparent that I struggle with 3 main things. Heights, water and people came up over and over again this year. The more I immersed in these things, the easier they got. While I still may not be ready for a ski lift, I did have a blast doing a high ropes course, practically lived on the paddle board this summer and I actually went to multiple parties solo this year. (We won’t talk about the total foot in mouth moment I had when meeting a friend’s girlfriend for the first time. hahaha)
3) A little vulnerability pays off big time.
Turns out vulnerability opens a lot of doors. Every time I reached a plateau or hit a door, the key was vulnerability. There were times when the last thing I wanted to do was be vulnerable or take that next step. But, time after time, reaching out, being honest, and following up really really changed the way this year operated.
4) I didn’t die.
This sounds silly, but nervous systems aren’t always logical and mine loves to live in the BUT THAT’S A SCARY THING PANIC space. By doing scary or hard things over and over again, my nervous system actually calmed down. Surprisingly, the anxiety and panic attacks have almost completely tapered off. Yes, leaving a stressful job situation probably helped with most of that, but facing scary things and surviving has built in an extra layer of resilience into my nervous system. In clinical speak, these are corrective experiences. And man oh man, did I have plenty of those this year.
5) I’m a lot stronger than I think I am.
I am so very privileged to have a strong healthy body. This realization hit hard anytime I was doing something and realized that while my mind and nervous system were losing their shit, my body had quietly taken over and was doing the thing with relative ease. There’s nothing quite like realizing this when you’re 50 feet above ground and strapped into a ropes course harness. We tend to take our bodies for granted and this year really highlighted how capable and strong my body actually is. I am very grateful to Pilates and to my personal trainer for pushing me in a way that allowed this to be true.
6) It’s totally ok to try and fail.
There were a few times this year where I set out to do a thing and then just totally bombed. Or I set a goal and just missed it. While it was disappointing, nothing bad happened and no one died. “Failing up” is something I got real comfortable with this year.
And finally, the big one. It’s ok to be bad at things. (Yes, seriously.)
Prior to this year, my inner type-a perfectionist would have shuddered at the casualness of how I just typed this sentence. Prior to this year, I would rather not do something than to do something badly and risk any possible embarrassment. Here’s the thing. That mentality kept me locked up in a very safe (and sometimes boring!) box. Spending an entire year doing things I’m bad at gave me permission to be bad at a whole lot of things. And with that permission came freedom. Freedom to look stupid, freedom to ask a ton of questions, freedom to be silly and just in general a freedom to try things without any expectations at all.
While this year has not been easy and there were times where it was incredibly frustrating and made me cry, it has been a ton of fun. I’ve learned, grown, failed and embarrassed myself thoroughly lol. 10/10 would recommend. 10/10 would do again.
Thank you, my friends, for reading and for those of you that held space for the challenges of the year. I am so grateful for all of you.
Have a great December.
-Rubecca
2 Truths…and a Lie
posted on June 14, 2023 by pilatesnative
“Two truths and a lie”, my college poetry professor announced. As part of a free write exercise, each of us needed to anonymously write down two truths and a lie on sticky notes, fold them up and place them in a basket in the middle of the table.
Once the basket was full, we each took turns picking out a folded square and reading them out loud to the class. After we’d laughed ourselves into a coma, we set about writing poetry with the three statements we’d selected.
Flash forward a lot of years and “2 truths and a lie” has become a super popular marketing game for business owners to share on their social media accounts.
Thinking about this game brought up my favorite “2 truths and a lie”.
My application was rejected for art school.
I took 1st place in a Girls Basketball Tournament.
I spent 6 months backpacking through Europe.
Any guesses on which of these are true and which is a lie?
Well, I was totally rejected from art school. That one is TRUE.
While I wish I’d spent 6 months backpacking through Europe, I have mostly concentrated my travel efforts on the US. This one is a LIE!
Which leaves “I took 1st place in a Girls Basketball Tournament” as my second TRUTH!
If you know me IRL, you’re probably dying laughing. I’m five feet tall. How the F did I win a Girls Basketball Tournament?
When I was 14, my brother signed up for a boys Basketball Tournament.
Seeing that it was free and included a girls event, my mom signed me up too. Two birds, one stone. It didn’t matter that my only knowledge and experience of basketball was from driveway pickup games with my brother and his friends when one team was a man down and they needed an extra person to play a “real game”. It didn’t matter that their explanation of the rules was simply “no blood, no foul” and cheating was a matter of opinion. It most certainly didn’t matter that I was 5’ tall and was on the dance team. Nope. My mom saw a chance at getting two angsty teenagers out of her house for an entire day and she took full advantage of it.
While the gym was overflowing with teenage boys, there were only two girls present.
Me and another girl who bailed as soon as she realized it was just the two of us. As she slinked out, I realized I had two choices. I could be miserable and moody on the benches, alone…all day. Ooorrr, I could play basketball. A sport I had absolutely zero genetic inclination to play and no idea about the rules. Seeing how cell phones weren’t a thing back then, basketball won over a very long day of staring at sweaty boys crowing at each other all day.
Luckily for me, it was a *skills* competition.
Shooting, layups, passing drills, dribbling through cones, that sort of thing. While the boys had a wide field of competition, I had a solo court and private tutoring. At every station, the coaches taught me the skill, spent time explaining the technique and then gave me the entire time allotted to perfect my skill before scoring the final attempt.
At the end of the day, I was thanked for showing up, for working hard and was awarded the Girls 1st place Basketball Skills trophy. Sure, no one else was there and I still have no f-ing clue how basketball works (skills trophy, remember), but I learned a very very powerful lesson.
Show up.Be there.But don’t just show up and be there. Keep the attitude. Do the work.
No one was going to give me a trophy for showing up and benching myself all day. But by showing up and doing the work, I earned that trophy.
Showing up is how I, an extremely weak swimmer, took home a 2nd place medal for my 1st sprint triathlon. When half the field bailed over a predicted Houston rain storm, I still showed up. And took 2nd place (completely drenched but not drowned).
When a company from Houston showed up randomly on the Mines campus with a request for seniors to interview, I showed up. And kickstarted a 15 year career in Welding Engineering that I loved.
When the universe put Pilates Native in my lap, I showed up. And created a dream career that includes each of you.
As we move deeper into the virtual world, with Zoom everything and replays on demand, showing up has become somewhat of an archaic practice.
This ancient practice has become my super power.
I just show up to things. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they’re fun, sometimes they’re not. But I’m not really a bench kinda gal.
And if you’re not either, Pilates Native have some awesome ways for you to show up this month, from group classes, one-on-ones, stretch sessions or Soul Stretch.
As always, I am so grateful for y’all and cannot wait to show up and see you in the studio this week. I also can’t wait to hear your 2 truths and a lie.
See you soon!
-Rubecca