212. How to Feel Rested Again (When Sleep Isn’t the Problem)

Samantha Hawley (: 00:09

Welcome back to Journal Entries. Today we have Dr. Sandra Dalton-Smith here. Welcome to the show.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 00:17

Thank you so much, I'm happy to be here with you.

Samantha Hawley (: 00:20

my gosh, I just have to start off by saying that I'm fangirling a little bit. I know I just said this a little bit before recording, but back in January of 2023, episode 15 of this podcast was all about your work. It was all of, I think the title was The Seven Types of Rest. And I've referenced your work in so many different episodes and with my clients.

And so having you here on the podcast talking about it in the flesh in your own words is so surreal and so exciting to me. So I am excited to have you here and to dig right in.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 00:57

I love to hear it. I love hearing how you're using the framework and actually putting it into a pack.

Samantha Hawley (: 01:03

Yeah, so I was actually curious before the strategic questions about how you actually got into the work and what inspired you to even question the different types of rest because I feel like a lot of ambitious working moms who are the listeners of this podcast, I think that we get seven to eight hours of sleep, at least that's the goal, and then we wake up tired and we just think, I'm still tired, I need a nap later.

But your research shows that it's way more complex than that. It's a lot more than that. So I'm curious, what made you dig into this work initially?

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 01:40

Yeah, initially I burned out. That was a simple answer. So I burned out and I didn't want to quit my job. I know that's kind of the natural response. If you feel like you get to a place within your career, your particular profession, where it's overwhelming, you want to just, you want out. But I love Madison. I didn't want out, but I wanted to find out why sleep wasn't helping because I was getting eight hours, sometimes even nine hours of sleep and I was still waking up exhausted.

Samantha Hawley (: 01:43

Yeah

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 02:09

And so my background's in biochemistry and so when you don't know the answer, you research it. And so that's what I did. I started researching and looking at what are some other reasons I could be tired. And there wasn't a lot of information, but I knew that there had to be some underlying issue. So I started asking myself the question, okay, if I'm fatigued and I feel drained, that's the word I'm using, I feel drained, where is the energy going?

because you don't get drained without pouring it out somewhere. So I started looking at the different parts of my life where I was pouring out, where I was expending energy. Then I started asking myself the question, am I doing anything to pour back into that area? And in many instances, I wasn't. There wasn't anything I didn't even know what to do in some of the ways of energy drainage that I had listed down. I had listed things like, I feel like I'm draining my sensory.

energy because I'm in the ICU with all of these ventilators and you know cardiac monitors going off but how do you replace you know what I mean and so there was all of these different elements that nobody was talking about and that's where it all began.

Samantha Hawley (: 03:23

Wow. So let's talk about the basics first. What is the difference then between sleep and rest? Because like you said, we know that we're tired. I almost said sleepy, but maybe it's not sleepy. We know that we're fatigued. And you point out that there is a difference between sleep and rest. So what is that difference? Because we use that interchangeably.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 03:49

Yeah, unfortunately we use it interchangeably. Sleep is a type of rest, but rest isn't summed up in sleep and that's the problem. So sleep falls under only one of the seven buckets. And so sleep specifically refers to the physical type of rest. And even with that, the passive form of physical rest, with there being passive and active forms of the different types of rest. And so if we look at sleep being the same thing as rest,

Samantha Hawley (: 03:52

Hehe.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 04:18

then what happens is you block out some of the types of rest that can never be restored through sleep. Like you can't restore your emotions while you sleep. You can't restore your creativity while you're sleeping. You're not going to pour back into your social relationships. And so in some of these situations, if you're using sleep to mean rest, you're gonna omit some of the types of rest that you may actually be deficient in.

Samantha Hawley (: 04:50

So let's dig into then the seven different types because resting is where sleep is one. And then you mentioned a couple other ones. So can you give us a quick rundown of what are the six other types for those that didn't take your rest quiz, which I'll link in the show notes or listen to episode 15 all the way back in my day.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 05:09

Yeah, so the seven include physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, social, sensory, and creative.

Samantha Hawley (: 05:15

Okay, now do each one have the active versus passive or just a few of them?

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 05:21

Just a few of them, like for example, sensory, most people are sensory overwhelmed. all of it's active, that's how they were coming overwhelmed. So a big part of what they're needing is the passive forms of getting restorative practices, taking away, reducing the noise, decreasing the screens. And so that one has a lot of kind of taking away of things. And then you have others that have both, like social. Social has a passive version where you're just

Samantha Hawley (: 05:31

you

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 05:52

You need some alone time because you're an introvert, but it also has an active version where you need to be around life giving people. And you need the energy that comes from being poured into. And both introverts and extroverts need both kinds, just the quantity of each kind differs.

Samantha Hawley (: 06:10

That makes sense, and when I've described it, I've always gotten tripped up over that, to be honest, especially with social because I am an introvert. However, I'm really good at pulling back, and I feel like from my rest that I actually do need to get out and around people, and that is what fuels me. And you're so right that sleep can never fulfill that, and I'm all about emotions and journaling through that and whatnot, and sleep is...

can never fulfill that sort of need that our bodies and our minds require, I think. And something that you posted on LinkedIn, believe, is you said, cessation alone is not restoration. So basically that rest isn't just stopping, it's actively pouring back into the places where life has drained you.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 06:49

Mm-hmm.

Samantha Hawley (: 07:06

And you said that that's essentially what you found in your research too. Can you explain that a little bit more? Because I do think that people, especially my listeners, think rest, even in the seven different ways that you've described, not just physical rest, they think, okay, I just need to stop. I need to stop and journal. I need to stop and just physically stop instead of being more active.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 07:34

Yeah, probably the best analogy I can give for that is in my role as a physician, when someone comes in and let's say they've cut themselves and they're bleeding and I asked the nurse in the ER to suture them up, I stopped the bleeding and sent them home, but did I send them home restored? Because that's what oftentimes we're doing when we say we rest like with a vacation or if we say we rest with a weekend and we're just gonna hang out at our home and do nothing.

you stop the bleeding, you stop the energy drain from the work that you typically do on your nine to five, but did you do something to actually pour back into the place of that deficit? Because just stopping just keeps it from getting more depleted. It doesn't actually restore it. It doesn't bring it back to a healthy level of energy and a place where you actually feel restored.

Samantha Hawley (: 08:27

So let's talk about mental rest then, because that's one that a lot of my clients and my clients are like high achieving women that are decision fatigued. And so they struggle, I think, with mental rest. Well, all of the forms of rest, but mental rest, think, is pretty high up for them because their brain just never shuts off is what I'm hearing from them. And they are just exhausted mentally.

sometimes more so than physically. And so could you explain mental rest and then how would you, how do you get that sort of mental rest when your brain won't stop?

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 09:07

Yeah, that's a lot of people. so with mental rest, just to define it, is when you have that continuous chaos in your mind, you're not able to get to that calm, quiet place. And so the person who has this is the one who oftentimes is when they try to go to sleep, they are thinking all the thoughts, they're going over their to do list for the next day, or they're ruminating over conversations that they have. And so that rumination process is a huge aspect of

the mental rest deficit. Your brain is just over and over again, thinking the same thoughts and reprocessing. And so one of the things that a lot of people find very helpful is brain dumping. And so a way of doing that is, let's say if it's occurring to you only when you're about to go to sleep, you may have a notepad or I mean, you could use your phone technically, but I prefer that you actually use paper and pencil to some degree, something that's not a device that's going to give you blue light.

but a way of just jotting down whatever you're ruminating over. And in the jotting down, what ends up happening is your brain then gets permission to release it. If you think about it, most of the time when your brain, in its history of learning you, when it ruminates, rumination is an opportunity, is what your brain does whenever you're trying to memorize something. So you were trying to memorize a spelling test or a chemistry test. You thought about it.

You studied it, you thought about it over and over again, which is a rumination process. So when you're doing the same thing and it's just your to-do list the next day, as far as your brain's concerned, it's the same thing. There's a test and it's my job to hold on to this information to regurgitate it at the time of the test, but the test never comes. And so you go to bed, your brain's still trying to keep it up, it's still trying to regurgitate it.

Samantha Hawley (: 10:59

Yeah.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 10:59

When you jot it down, gives the brain permission to release it. It's as if it took the test, so now it has permission to let it go, because it's someplace safe for you to always pull on later.

Samantha Hawley (: 11:09

Hmm. I also teach my clients, I call it an emotional brain dump, but that's literally what it is. You're just dumping things out of your brain. I love the way that you describe that though, and that analogy is literally what it feels like. It's like that test that never happens. And so you're like, maybe it's the next day, maybe it's the next day. And you're just rehearsing. And that at night, I feel like is especially relieving, right? Because it's like right before bed and...

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 11:16

Mm-hmm.

Samantha Hawley (: 11:38

They say that our emotions spike at the end of the day simply because we have all day to, for things to happen to us and for our emotions to rise. So I think that that...

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 11:48

And we don't process. And I love that idea of an emotional brain dump because it actually helps then with emotional rest because often, yes, you can be ruminating over your to-do list or ruminating over something with work, but oftentimes what people are ruminating over are their worries and their fears and their doubts and their insecurities. And so if you're ruminating over those things, or maybe you're ruminating over a conversation you had with your spouse where it got heated or your child or something of that nature,

have doing this type of brain dump works as well. You're basically whatever the reoccurring thought is, you jot it down. It's not full emotional rest unless you process through it, but jotting it down, at least now it's captured. So at a time when you are willing to do the deeper emotional dive into why you're thinking those thoughts, you can revisit it.

Samantha Hawley (: 12:43

Yeah, do you find that there's resistance to rest and that resistance might be like those underlying beliefs that at first they think, I'm just too busy. That's what a lot of people say is I don't have time to rest. But then when they do your tools of journaling and brain dumping or meditating or something, they might realize something deeper of like, I have to do it perfectly or.

I'm only valuable when I'm doing something and I'm productive, something like that.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 13:18

Yeah, I think for a lot of people, rest is at odds with productivity. I think that's how they view it. If I'm resting, then I'm not being productive. And they actually don't see rest as a way of sustaining productivity, because that's really what it does. It keeps you from getting to that place of depletion, where you're pouring out of your emptiness, where you get to the end of yourself, where you start feeling burned out. And if we...

change our mindset around rest to be the thing that we do so that we can keep doing the things we want to do, then it becomes more of a priority for us because it's not kind of this extra thing that I'll do when there's time because there's never time. You have to prioritize something for there to be time. We all get the same 24 hours. And I think for a lot of people, that's a part of the problem too. They feel like rest has to be in large chunks of time.

they don't, and that's a lot of what we teach when we're working with organizations or we're working with companies with their wellness initiatives, is that you don't have to have your employees take extra breaks. You can bring restorative practices into their everyday things that they're already doing, just bringing it into an awareness so that they are adding in five minutes of this here when they're feeling a certain way or doing something that is a set it and forget it so that

it automatically is in place as a restorative practice and they don't have to actually be mindful of bringing that element in. They've already kind of set up their environment to be able to be conducive to it.

Samantha Hawley (: 14:56

Yeah, that is such a complete reframe to think of rest and how it's slowing you down and it's the opposite of productivity to then switching that and thinking actually resting in all these different ways, not just napping, actually makes you perform better and makes you more alive and more energetic. And can you talk a little bit about in the workspace? So I think a lot of us can maybe

see the direct correlation of how feeling more energized would be helpful in our personal lives, but at work, especially for women who are at a desk job or in meetings and whatnot, how have you seen people who implement more rest in their nine to five? What is the changes that you notice once they do those little things like five minutes or those set it and forget it type tools?

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 15:53

Yeah, the changes are amazing because I think a lot of us don't realize how bad we feel until we see how much better we can feel. And so even starting with, as you mentioned, the rest quiz, a lot of people will take the rest quiz and they will get their results and they're like, my goodness, I'm awful in all seven. You can't eat the whole elephant. You pick one or two that you're gonna begin with to start doing some restorative practices. And what I tend to find is,

after fixing one or two of the areas that are showing a deficit, people automatically start feeling better because they didn't realize that they felt that bad. We have gotten used to being drained. so saying, I'm so tired or I'm exhausted, it's almost like, isn't everybody? And so when we start living like that, when you actually start feeling, I actually have energy or...

energy in my physical body. My body doesn't hurt as much. My neck is not as tight anymore. And when my neck's not as tight anymore, then I actually have, I'm in a better attitude with people when they come around. I'm not as grumpy. You start seeing kind of the domino effect of having rest in the different areas.

Samantha Hawley (: 17:06

You said something that I think is so relatable and it's, isn't everybody tired? I think that that is the belief that makes it so easy to undermine how tired we are and to make it easy to not do anything about it. But I'm curious, just going off of this question, why do you think rest is especially important for women in leadership roles?

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 17:31

Yeah, I think because women in leadership roles have a lot of responsibilities. So there's the family oftentimes, there's your personal health, your own personal well-being, and then you have oftentimes a team that you're managing emotions and relationships there as well. On top of that, you're making, in many cases, high-level decisions. And so you're needing multiple areas of these seven at high capacity.

And so when we're not aware of the level of depletion we're experiencing, it can then start impacting how you show up in these different roles. If your ability to be creative and innovative, that could keep you from getting a raise because it's like your team's not advancing because now it's like there's no innovation driving on your part of your business. If you're someone who part of your business requires you to have a

great opportunity with relationships. can network and do the things needed for advancement in your career, but your social rest scores are very low. And even if your emotional rest scores are low as well, you may flip over into people pleasing rather than being authentic. And most people can tell when you're not being authentic. And so that's going to impact their way of perceiving you. They're gonna start withdrawing.

Samantha Hawley (: 18:49

Yeah.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 18:56

to some degree and you're gonna then withdraw as well because you don't have the capacity for dealing with another person's energy and emotions. So I think it has a great impact professionally and some of those same situations move over into your personal life as well because if your children or your spouse are needing you as well and needing part of your emotional or social capacity and you've given it all at work,

They're getting the rest of you when you come home. They're getting the drained, I don't have time for you, and that doesn't lead anywhere good.

Samantha Hawley (: 19:36

So what are some of those quick tools that we can do for the seven types of rest? Or do you have a resource that can guide us towards what to do for, you know, we're all busy and we all have no time before the woman who's, you know, super busy and at the office specifically, or, you know, working from home.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 19:56

Yeah, yeah, probably the primary resource is the book, Sacred Rest, Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore Your Sanity. I purposely wrote it in tiny chapters. mean, the chapters can be read usually in less than 10 minutes. The seven types of rest, each of them, we walk through a rest strategy where you understand your current risk. You go through a very small snippet of the science and research so that you understand it. And then there's multiple ways of

restorative practices that we mentioned so that people can sample them and decide what works for them. You know, it's kind of like a blood pressure pill. The same pill doesn't work for everyone. There's a level of self-discovery, a level of really going deep into personally what restores you. And so we give some different examples so people can begin the process for themselves.

Samantha Hawley (: 20:47

Yeah, that's so great. And I am the type of person that once you know the why, it's so much easier to want to make the change rather than someone just telling you. I think this conversation is hopefully very inspiring for our listeners. But getting that book and seeing the research behind it and really understanding that will almost make it a no brainer and make you really realize that it's not just a nice to have this energy. You'll see the

drask difference between how we operate now and the mindset of everybody's tired to what life could be like. And so I think that just seeing the research aspect of it before even the solutions makes it that much more powerful.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 21:31

Yeah, I think for myself, and I know a lot of people are like me, if I can't understand it, it's hard for me to have the discipline to continue to do it. And rest, it's as easy as it sounds, has a high level of discipline that's required because for some people, particularly people similar to me, very high-strong, high-driven, productivity kind of focused mindsets, I have to be able to see that there is

specific thing that I can do that'll lead to a specific type of result. And so the research helps give me that backing before I then start the exploration of now which one of these specific things is going to do that for me.

Samantha Hawley (: 22:18

Yeah, I remember I used to have, you know, I should go back to this, but I had a calendar appointment in my phone and I labeled it rest and it was just for like 15 minutes. in there, cause I knew my brain, I would see rest and just work right on through that. And so I, in that description of the rest calendar appointment, I would put options of what to do because I knew if I had an idea of what I could do, then I might actually follow through with it.

And after learning about the seven different types, would write things. Not napping was one option because I like to nap. But then I would also write down like, go pick some weeds in my garden and things journal for a little bit. Watch a reality TV show, like doing different things like that so that I could look at that and then easily and quickly grab one of those things based on what it was that I felt that I needed in the moment. And sometimes I was.

do that multiple times a day and I felt like I got so much more accomplished and it was easy for me to just see something and go do it versus starting from scratch every time thinking, okay, what do I want to do now sort of thing.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 23:28

Yeah, I think a lot of us need to have almost like our restorative activities menu of things that we can do. have, you know, think you can, and you can, like I mentioned, go through the book and even just kind of put something together. I don't like to prescribe people their what's going to be restorative for them. I like to give ideas, but even when we're working one-on-one with clients, we always like for people to, know, given these ideas, what else can you think of? Because often,

Samantha Hawley (: 23:34

Menu I like that

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 23:56

we're already doing some things that are restorative. We just aren't mindful of the fact that we felt different after doing that activity because it was an activity. We didn't associate it with rest. We thought, I went jogging. That can't be rest, but jogging can be a great form of mental rest because you're focusing your attention down on your breathing and your cadence. so because your attention is so focused, it acts like a mindfulness activity.

Samantha Hawley (: 24:08

Yeah.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 24:25

and although your physical body's not being rested, your brain might be able to go to a completely quiet place because you're so narrowed down in your thought processes. And so we have to be a little bit more aware of how we feel going in and out of activities and if an activity drains us or if it restores us.

Samantha Hawley (: 24:45

Yeah, I find that when people put restful activities on their to-do list, that's what it becomes. It becomes a to-do list item that then they're ruminating on at the end of the day and it gets added to that list instead of what it should be, which is that restful, rejuvenating type energy. And I think you're right in that all it is is that reframe to awareness, the mindfulness around it. I'm curious.

How did you get to that point or how do you suggest helping people with that reframe to get people to realize that rest is that rejuvenation and these activities don't have to just be another to-do list item. It's actually something that can restore you.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 25:35

Yeah, rest, I look at rest as a privilege. It's a privilege I get to honor myself. And so when I wake up in the morning, the first thing I ask myself is how do I feel? You know, do I feel energized? Am I excited about jumping up out of this bed or do I feel like, let me just roll over and hit the snooze 20 more times. And so if I'm feeling like, okay, I don't really feel my best today, you know, I'm feeling a little drained. I'm feeling a little tired. I then ask my, and this is all within a matter of seconds, right?

What did I do yesterday that would have drained me that I didn't do something to pour back into that bucket? And normally was, it's pretty easy because most of the time, if you're looking at the day before, whatever it is that stretched you out the most is probably going to pop up in your head the quickest because it stretched you out, whatever it was. And so, you know, let's say if you're waking up and your body's aching and you're like, well, what did I do the day before?

I thought it would be a great idea to pick up my 150 pound dog and who knows what, take them to the vet. I don't usually pick up a 150 pound dog. You can start thinking about what it was that you did that may have led to what you feel. Then what do you need to do to undo that? Well, in the 150 pound dog situation, probably need to do some stretches because I use muscles I haven't used ever to lift up someone 150 pounds.

That kind of thing, just doing a quick assessment to see what energy was used, where did I not restore, and then sometime during today I'm gonna do something to pour back into that area, just making it just a natural part of it. That might be I'm gonna do some neck rolls at my computer. let me just make sure that I stretch a little bit in the shower or while my coffee is brewing, I'm gonna go and do a couple of stretches or something during that time.

Samantha Hawley (: 27:30

Yeah, so implementing it, making it part of your daily thought process almost. And I also think that once you start to feel the benefits of it, which is instantly usually, you're going to want to do it more. So I like that just like small question of how am I feeling and asking that throughout the day. And that will also lead you towards activity for the type of rest that you need as well, I think, right? Yeah.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 27:56

Mm-hmm, and I think most of us can tell when we're drained we can tell where we're not feeling our best but often we just have gotten used to pushing through and so just checking back in and becoming more accustomed to checking in with how you're feeling energy wise is a huge step for a lot of

Samantha Hawley (: 28:16

It's funny you say that because I'm wearing today the ring sizer to get an aura ring. And I feel like so many people outsource how they're feeling. Like I think the aura ring tells you, no, like your body temperature is higher, lay low today. I don't wear any monitor like an Apple watch or anything. So I don't know if the Apple watch does that too, but I think we outsource as much as we can, but really coming back to ourselves and.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 28:21

Mm-hmm.

Samantha Hawley (: 28:43

Asking the hard questions like we were talking about earlier of the emotional processing, but also the simple ones, the simple one of just how am I feeling today can be so simple and so life changing at the same time.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 28:59

Yeah, and I love all the apps, Oura Ring, FitBit, Garmin's, Apple Watches, Whoop bands, all the things. I think they are helpful to some degree because they do provide some information that can be helpful. example, a lot of people, you do want to get quality sleep. Don't take what I'm saying as that sleep's not needed. Sleep is definitely needed. But a lot of people, even if they're getting eight hours,

they need to then look to see how many hours of deep sleep that I get because that's where a lot of the restorations happening and you don't know that just by sleeping. So having some of these devices that give you that information. And I love that a lot of them actually do give you like a recovery score or a readiness score so that it gives you a little bit of an idea of, hey, you might not build the best today, you know, because of whatever, whatever's popping up. And it can be, I don't want,

Samantha Hawley (: 29:50

Yeah.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 29:56

people to use that to tell them how they feel because I've had clients I work with who'll say, my HRV is bad today. And I'm like, how do you feel? I feel great. It's like, OK, well, let's not let the data dictate everything. But it can be helpful additional information.

Samantha Hawley (: 30:16

Yeah, so using it to enhance the decisions that you're making and how you feel instead of believing just what the app says or outsourcing those decisions. Yes, I like it. Dr. Sandra, this was so valuable and helpful and inspiring. Thank you so much for being here and also just for the work that you do and that you're continuing to do. I know that my listeners are going to take the rest quiz for sure immediately and I'm also going to take it again. I took it a while ago, so I'm curious.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 30:18

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 30:23

Exactly.

Samantha Hawley (: 30:46

based on the changes that I've made, which one is going to be my highest. I'm curious though, where can everyone find you and learn more about your work in addition to the book that you mentioned?

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 30:56

Yeah, so the best place to reach out is I choose my best life.com. I have a podcast by the same name. And from there, you can find out about all my books. You can find out about our my business and the speaking and all the different things that we're doing.

Samantha Hawley (: 31:12

Perfect. I will put all of those in the show notes. You can click right on through. Dr. Sandra, thank you again.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (: 31:19

Thanks so much for having me on.