Spring break

Could intermittent resting help you get your groove back? Emerging evidence suggests that ‘snacking’ on rest, by giving your brain and body a break every 90 minutes, could be the key to maximising your health, mood and vitality.

How intermittent resting can help you get your groove back.

Nahid de Belgeonne is sitting on a park bench. Her eyes are closed; her hands folded in her lap. Despite being dressed top to toe in activewear, to anyone walking by, it looks like the 53-year-old is doing, well, nothing. And that’s the point. This 10-minute post-run meditation is the most important part of her daily workout. She’s practising intermittent resting – and it’s the closest thing to a sciencesanctioned snooze we’ve ever heard.

You’re probably already familiar with the term intermittent fasting – cycling between eating what you like and restricting your food intake via techniques such as the 5:2 and 16:8. For the uninitiated, the theory goes like this: by giving your body a break from food, you can not only lose weight, but also potentially improve your metabolism and reduce your risk of certain diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes.

Now, health and fitness experts are talking about intermittent resting – the idea that the body also needs to cycle through small bursts of inactivity (activity fasting, if you will) in order to perform at its best. So, can scheduling rest with the enthusiasm you usually reserve for scheduling social activities really support your health and fitness goals?

Nahid, who used to work in the fashion industry, pursued a meticulously diarised fitness regimen of kickboxing and sprinting, so the idea of taking time away from a workout to meditate was laughable. Then, in 2003, in her mid-30s, everything changed.

“I was constantly ill or stressed – always busy, but usually achieving very little,” she recalls, describing the state we now understand to be burnout. She spent the following year dismantling, then rebuilding her life; she quit her job and retrained as a yoga teacher, focusing on more restorative practices, such as guided meditation and slow-flow yoga. And as Nahid discovered more about the power of rest, she began to consciously create pockets of it – a kind of deliberate downtime.

That she felt happier, healthier and more productive as a result of her new regimen will come as news to no one. But she also credits it with making her fitter and stronger and improving her quality of movement. She now trains others in the art of snacking on rest via her yoga-meetsmeditation technique, The Human Method.

RHYTHM AND SNOOZE

Pressed on the science, Nahid explains that her theory is based on the body’s ultradian rhythms. The sister system of circadian rhythms, which control your 24-hour sleep-wake cycle, ultradian rhythms refers to the cycles that the systems in your body move through during the waking day. The concept is nothing new; it was proposed in the 1950s by sleep researcher Professor Nathaniel Kleitman, whose contribution to the field of shut-eye is such that he’s often referred to as the ‘father of sleep’. That the wellness industry is finally sitting up and taking notice doesn’t surprise Dr Kat Lederle, chronobiologist and sleep coach. “We’ve seen significant scientific interest and progress in nutrition, fitness and sleep – circadian health is the next big topic,” she says.

It’s thanks to a raft of circadian rhythm research that we now understand that the repercussions of a disrupted body clock has been shown to interfere with everything from your appetite to your co-ordination and mood. Extreme disruption, such as that experienced by shift workers, has even been linked with depression.

But if the behaviour that contributes to a broken body clock sits on a sliding scale, with the shift workers whose livelihoods depend on keeping variable hours at one end, on the other you’ll find the kind of habits you know are less than ideal, but which you keep up anyway. That is, working through your lunch break, doing a HIIT session when your body is begging for yoga or scrolling the internet instead of reading a book come bedtime.

It’s in these everyday behaviours, Dr Lederle explains, that you have an opportunity to optimise your circadian health. “By becoming more aware of your body clock and adopting behaviours that support its optimal functioning, as opposed to railing against it, you can not only reduce your risk of various diseases, but improve your dayto-day functioning, too,” she says. In Dr Lederle’s toolkit is a habit that sounds a lot like intermittent resting. “I call them mini breaks, but they amount to the same thing – taking a break of up to 20 minutes every 90 minutes or so,” she says.

“For me, it’s sitting back for a moment and bringing an awareness to my breath. But I think the key is doing something that you enjoy. It’s not paying your bills or contacting your accountant – it’s something you’ve chosen to do.”

PAUSE FOR EFFECT

In recent years, there’s been a wealth of literature published on the mind-body benefits of taking regular rest breaks. It’s been shown to improve your productivity and creativity and reduce your risk of work-related illness. Considered alongside the mind-body benefits of meditation – it’s been proven to boost grey matter and improve heart rate, breathing and digestion, the list goes on – it makes a compelling case for following a more diligent approach to taking it easy.

Meditation research conducted on athletes also suggests Nahid’s version of intermittent resting (a workout immediately followed by a meditation session) could be a formula worth replicating. In 2017, researchers from the University of Miami found a group of guinea pigs in the form of the university’s football team. During pre-season training, players were tasked with doing a 12-minute meditation session immediately after they finished strength training, as well as practising the techniques in their own time. After four weeks, the researchers found that mindfulness meditation helped to alleviate the emotional and cognitive strain that can accompany a heavy training schedule. While your own workout week might take place away from the footy field, it’s evidence that meditation can be effective in helping you get the most benefit from your exercise session.

While we still have much to learn about the body clock, interest in circadian health is only set to grow. If the idea of taking a 20-minute break every 90 minutes makes your heart race (not the goal), even breaking for five or 10 minutes can help. “I’m a big believer in doing your own experiments and seeing for yourself what works for you,” says Dr Lederle. “If you’re truly free to plan your life in the way that suits you, the repercussions on your health and wellbeing could be huge.”

For me, it’s sitting back for a moment and bringing an awareness to my breath. But I think the key is doing

something that you enjoy.

Dr Kat Lederle, chronobiologist and sleep coach

Rest assured

Ready to make intermittent resting work for you? Here’s how to tune into your body’s natural rhythms.

KEEP AN ENERGY DIARY You’ll know intuitively when your energy ebbs and flows throughout the day by way of the times you usually reach for a coffee or a snack, but start consciously tuning into your feelings and noting them down. Look out for the obvious signs, such as yawning, as well as how engaged you feel in the task at hand. Keep it up for a week and see what patterns you notice. This will guide you on when you could take your own intermittent resting breaks.

TAKE THE MEQ For a more scientific approach to working out your energy patterns, complete the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (it’s Google-able and available on a range of websites). There are 19 questions designed to tell you where you sit on the sliding scale of morning person

(lark) and evening person (night owl).

DOWNLOAD A MEDITATION APP If you’re finding it difficult to focus on your breathing during one of your mini-breaks, as Dr Lederle suggests, doing a short, guided meditation could help. We like the five-minute energiser in Caitlin Cady’s Heavily Meditated app (available on Apple and Android).

TRY THE POMODORO TECHNIQUE Sure, it’s used more as a productivity tool, but it also takes advantage of intermittent resting. The idea is you work in 25-minute intervals with five-minute breaks in between each session. Give it a go with one of the many free Pomodoro Timer apps available.

MAKE IT STICK Your body clock is like a baby – it loves routine. “Anything you do that’s part of a routine will help your body clock know what to expect, be that the time you do a workout or when you eat your lunch,” says Dr Lederle. Once you’ve identified your energy peaks and troughs, schedule your breaks accordingly and stick with it.