Artist, poet and activist Tricia Hersey on taking steps to remedy the harmful urgency of modern life

All of culture is working in collaboration for us not to rest, and when we do listen to our bodies and take rest, many feel extreme guilt and shame. Embrace knowing that you have been manipulated and scammed by a violent system as powerful evidence.

Now with this knowledge you can grieve, repair, rest, and heal. We can rejoice for the beauty of a veil being removed. This is the beginning of the new world we can create. So, stay here in rest, even for a few minutes each day before leaping into the comfort of intellectualiszing this rest work.

Resting is an embodied practice and a lifelong unraveling. It is not something that can be trendy, quick, or shallow. Resting is ancient, slow, and connected work that will take hold of you in ways that may be surprising. Let deprogramming from grind culture surprise you. Let your entire being slowly begin to shift. Get lost in rest. Pull up the blankets, search for softness and be open to the ways rest will surprise and calm you.

I could tell ten thousand stories about moments when I have been filled with exhaustion. So many moments of watching my parents exhausted, my grandparents exhausted. Ten thousand stories and examples of moments where my body was pushed to the brink of true damage and true disconnection. I could share with you these tender quiet moments of me unaware if I could go on because my body and mind were so weary, tired, and pushed to the brink of pure exhaustion.

I feel like a legacy of exhaustion resides somewhere in all of us, but specifically resides in the bodies of those who have melanated skin. To those who are descendants of plantation labour and those marginalised, this exhaustion is deep.

Sleep deprivation is a public health issue and a spiritual issue. It is a spiritual issue for a few reasons. We have been trained to believe that everything we accomplish is because of our own pushing alone. This is false because there is a spiritual dimension that exists in all things and in everything we do.

To understand that we are spiritual beings navigating life in a material world opens us to the possibilities of rest as a spiritual practice. Our entire living is a spiritual practice. Much of our resistance to rest, sleep, and slowing down is an ego problem. You believe you can and must do it all because of our obsession with individualism and our disconnection to spirituality. Nothing we accomplish in life is totally free of the influence of spirit and community. We do nothing alone.

I am clearly stating that to centre rest, naps, sleep, slowing down, and leisure in a capitalist, white supremacist, ableist, patriarchal world is to live as an outlier. A pilgrimage infused with softness, intentionality, and community care. We will not be able to interrupt the machine of grind culture alone. We need each other in more ways than we are allowed to believe. This work is about radical community care.

This is an edited extract from Rest is Resistance: Free Yourself from Grind Culture and Reclaim Your Life (Aster) by Tricia Hersey. Buy a copy here.

Or buy a copy from Blackwell’s here.

Tricia is our guest at A Drink with the Idler, Thursday 21 March 6-7pm. Free to subscribers.

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