THE BEST OF THE REST
The key to smashing your goals and swerving burnout? It’s all in your downtime
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 like 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 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 workouts really support your health and fitness goals?
Nahid used to work in the fashion industry. Pursuing a meticulously diarised and relentlessly active regime of kickboxing and sprinting, the idea of taking time away from a workout to meditate was laughable; she would even skip the savasana pose at the end of a yoga class. Then, in 2003, in her mid-thirties, 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, going on to set up a fitness studio, Good Vibes, in London. Its USP was focusing on more restorative practices, like guided meditations 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 regime 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 at the sleep education platform Somnia. ‘We’ve seen significant scientific interest and progress in nutrition, fitness and sleep – circadian health is the next big topic,’ she tells WH. But while much of the focus in recent years has been on how your behaviour impacts your ability to fall – and stay – asleep, it impacts your waking function, too. ‘The body clock is made up of two clusters of 50,000 cells in the hypothalamus and we refer to that as the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN),’ Dr Lederle explains. ‘The SCN is like a conductor, setting the timings for everything else that happens in the body via various different pathways, so while ultradian rhythms vary from system to system, your body clock ensures they’re working in harmony together. If your internal rhythms become misaligned, that can lead to all sorts of problems.’
It’s thanks to a raft of circadian rhythm research that we now understand that the repercussions of
‘I was constantly stressed and always busy – but usually achieving very little’
this ‘misalignment’ extend far beyond a night spent tossing and turning. 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; working through your lunch break, doing a HIIT session when your body is begging for yoga and reading the internet instead of your 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 day-to-day functioning, too,’ she says. Essentially, it’s practising sleep hygiene, but for the waking day, too. And among the tools in Dr Lederle’s ‘wake hygiene’ toolkit is a habit that sounds a lot like intermittent resting. Regular rest, it transpires, is the backbone of good body-clock behaviour. ‘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,’ says Dr Lederle. ‘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. But what seems to elevate intermittent resting from your average work break is its intuitive nature; the idea that tapping into the times when your body is best primed for activity and rest could be a useful tool for those in the business of incremental gains. ‘Mini breaks are just one example of how aligning your schedule with your body clock can support your health goals,’ adds Dr Lederle, who gives the example of planning when you exercise. Studies have confirmed that scheduling your workouts around your body clock can be an effective tool in both enhancing performance and reducing injury risk. For example, it’s thought that your body is best primed for high-intensity workouts and strength training during the late afternoon and early evening, when your body temperature is approaching its peak.
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 willing 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.
‘By becoming more aware of your body clock, you can start to function better’
While your own workout week might take place away from the football field, it’s evidence that meditation can be effective as another tool in your running belt during times when you’re ramping up your training.
While we still have much to learn about the body clock, interest in circadian health is only set to grow, and it’s a trend that’s come at a good time. Now that flexible working is less future corporate promise, more current reality for many, could intermittent resting present an opportunity to schedule your life – with all its work meetings and workouts – in a way that genuinely works for you? If the idea of taking a 20-minute break every 90 minute makes your heart race (not the goal), even breaking for five or 10 minutes can help. ‘I’m a huge 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.’