✨ Free Resource: Download my guide, 100 Practices That Can Increase Your Access to Rest & Renewal — filled with simple, doable ways to rest your body, mind, and spirit.

These are small, easy to incorporate practices for eight kinds of rest — from physical and emotional to creative and communal and more.

👉 Grab your free copy here! (regulatedrelationships.kit.com/rest)

Feeling exhausted even after a full night’s sleep? We dig into why rest doesn’t land when your nervous system is stuck in go mode or collapses into shutdown, and how tiny, consistent signals of safety can rebuild your capacity for calm, connection, and real renewal. Drawing on polyvagal insights, I explain why forcing sleep backfires and why micro moments—90 seconds of breath, a soft gaze toward the horizon, warm hands around a mug, gentle rocking, or barefoot grounding—can do more than a once-a-year vacation. These small cues tell your body it’s safe enough to release, and repeated often, they rewire how you meet stress, settle at night, and wake with energy.

We unpack top-down versus bottom-up permission to rest. Affirmations like “My worth isn’t tied to productivity” can help, but many of us need embodied proof: steady breathing, soothing temperature, or rhythmic movement that convinces the nervous system more than words ever could. You’ll hear practical ways to stitch these moments into a busy day without overhauling your life, plus how to navigate perfectionism, missed days, and the urge to self-criticize. Consistency matters, but it doesn’t need to be rigid; imperfect practice still builds capacity.

We also explore co-regulation—resting with others in settings like restorative yoga, meditation groups, or quiet faith spaces—so you can borrow steadiness when solo slowing feels impossible. I share what shifted for me after years of running on fumes, and how a gentle, repeatable routine can replace late-day caffeine with genuine energy. Walk away with a clear, compassionate path: choose one small step today, repeat it often, and let safety lead you toward the kind of rest that actually restores. If the conversation helps, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs a softer way to feel well.

- If you and your partner are ready to co-create the roadmap to the relationship of your dreams, join us for the next in-person "Getting the Love You Want" Weekend Couples Retreat!

For support in how to have deeper connections and better communication in the relationships that matter most in your life, follow the host, Trish Sanders on Instagram , Bluesky or LinkedIn.

✨ Free Resource: Download my guide, 100 Practices That Can Increase Your Access to Rest & Renewal — filled with simple, doable ways to rest your body, mind, and spirit.

These are small, easy to incorporate practices for eight kinds of rest — from physical and emotional to creative and communal and more.

👉 Grab your free copy here! (regulatedrelationships.kit.com/rest)

Feeling tired yet never truly restored is not a personal failure; it’s your nervous system doing its best to protect you. We unpack how trauma and challending life experiences reshape the body’s priorities, keeping you in survival cycles that block deep rest. Using Polyvagal Theory as a guide, we walk through the three core states—ventral vagal safety, sympathetic fight or flight, and dorsal shutdown—and show how a loss of flexibility can make stillness feel dangerous instead of soothing.

You’ll learn how neuroception, the body’s subconscious threat-detection system, constantly weighs cues of safety and danger. When danger outweighs safety, rest becomes inaccessible, no matter how early you go to bed. We draw a clear line between shutdown and restoration, explaining why doomscrolling until you pass out isn’t rest and why “just relax” often backfires. If you’ve lived in a loop of daytime overdrive and nighttime collapse, or if depression has felt like being stuck in molasses, this conversation offers a compassionate map that makes sense of your experience.

Subscribe for weekly insights, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review to help others find the show. Then tell us: what’s one cue of safety you can add today?

- If you and your partner are ready to co-create the roadmap to the relationship of your dreams, join us for the next in-person "Getting the Love You Want" Weekend Couples Retreat!

For support in how to have deeper connections and better communication in the relationships that matter most in your life, follow the host, Trish Sanders on Instagram , Bluesky or LinkedIn.

✨ Free Resource: Download my guide, 100 Practices That Can Increase Your Access to Rest & Renewal — filled with simple, doable ways to rest your body, mind, and spirit.

These are small, easy to incorporate practices for eight kinds of rest — from physical and emotional to creative and communal and more.

👉 Grab your free copy here! (regulatedrelationships.kit.com/rest)

Ever feel like your days are all gas, no brakes—then you crash at night and call it “rest,” only to wake up just as tired? I’ve lived that loop. Today I open the toolbox that finally helped me break it: practical, accessible ways to restore your energy by working with your nervous system, not against it. No spa days, no perfection—just small, doable shifts that add up.

We start by naming the hustle–crash cycle through a nervous system lens—how sympathetic drive keeps you pushing and dorsal shutdown masquerades as rest—and why real recovery starts with safety signals. From there, I walk through eight types of rest with concrete, everyday examples: physical rest with sleep masks, cat naps without guilt, and calmer mornings; emotional rest through better boundaries and self-compassion; mental rest via asking for help, delegating, or bartering support; and social rest by choosing people who nourish rather than deplete. You’ll also hear restorative practices you can do in minutes—slow breaths and soft sighs, grounding barefoot on grass, letting the sun warm your face—as well as creative rest that values process over product so your inner critic can finally take a seat.

We round it out with sensory resets like a subtle lavender ceramic diffuser, bass you can feel in your chest, and “spa showers” that change your state without adding time. Community and ancestral rest play a role too: group breathwork, restorative yoga, and the surprising power of shared quiet to co-regulate when you can’t do it alone. If sleep is elusive or life is loud, this episode gives you a menu of options so you can pick what fits your reality. There’s also a free guide with 100 rest and renewal practices to spark ideas and help you start small.

Ready to feel replenished instead of just “done”? Press play, download the free resource above and then tell me: what’s one small step toward rest you’ll take today? If the conversation resonates, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs a gentler path back to themselves.

- If you and your partner are ready to co-create the roadmap to the relationship of your dreams, join us for the next in-person "Getting the Love You Want" Weekend Couples Retreat!

For support in how to have deeper connections and better communication in the relationships that matter most in your life, follow the host, Trish Sanders on Instagram , Bluesky or LinkedIn.

What if the most transformative part of a “conscious life” isn’t the serene moments—but the messy ones where you feel flooded, triggered, and ready to explode? I share a raw, real story about a birthday plan gone sideways, how a sold-out ticket spiraled into rage and self-blame, and the small, steady thread that kept me from making the night worse: a ventral narrator offering compassion and gentle reminders through a more grounded lens.

We break down the nervous system in practical terms—ventral regulation, sympathetic fight-or-flight, dorsal shutdown—and why blended states matter when life hits hard. You’ll hear how I moved from “I failed my kid,” and blaming my partner for the failing, to being in a place (within less than 24 hours!) where I felt grounded enough to connect and repair with my husband. I'll also share the surprising insight that sometimes calm reassurance doesn’t soothe an activated body. Matching a bit of the other person’s energy—naming the sting, acknowledging the frustration—can build connection faster than jumping straight to zen. We talk about how having that ventral narrator, who can offer far kinder self-talk than the hopeless dorsal dweller part that can get swept up in self-blame, can transform a moment of dysregulated reactivity, and how to ask for the support you actually need in the heat of the moment.

If parenting guilt, partner dynamics, or inner critics tend to hijack your evenings, this conversation offers a map: notice the state you’re in, name the unmet need, and choose a tiny next step. Conscious living isn’t about perfection; it’s about shortening the distance between rupture and repair, savoring gratitude alongside growth, and trusting that you can learn in real time by deeply attuning to yourself.

If this resonated, follow the show, leave a review, and share it with someone who could use a gentler way through big feelings. And before you go, try one simple experiment today: take one step—any size, any direction—toward the life you want.

- If you and your partner are ready to co-create the roadmap to the relationship of your dreams, join us for the next in-person "Getting the Love You Want" Weekend Couples Retreat!

For support in how to have deeper connections and better communication in the relationships that matter most in your life, follow the host, Trish Sanders on Instagram , Bluesky or LinkedIn.

Rest doesn’t have to mean sleeping in or finding a three-hour window for a nap when time is not something you have in excess. We reframe rest as a spectrum of accessible practices that fit into busy, real lives—rooted in the nervous system, informed by your inner wisdom, culture and community, and designed to restore capacity without adding pressure. Drawing on a polyvagal perspective, we explore how to move from shutdown or overdrive into “safely still,” and why even 90 seconds of breath, grounding, or time in nature can create real change.

We walk through eight kinds of rest—physical, mental, restorative, emotional, social, creative, sensory and ancestral/cultural/community—and show how each can be a part of a comprehensive, replenishing daily support to our systems. You’ll hear a few simple, repeatable ideas, with more practical suggestions to come in the next episode. We discuss how honoring intergenerational exhaustion can allow space to reclaim rituals, community practices, and collective stillness as a way to support individual rest practices and that also heal backward and forward through our lineages.

This episode invites a new, expanded definition of rest as a conscious choice that can be made to allow a meaningful, mindful connection to your Self, your body, your ancestors and the greater world so that you have increased capacity to live the life you want to live.

If this conversation opens something for you, follow the show, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs gentle permission to rest. Your one small step can shift your week—and maybe seven generations.

- If you and your partner are ready to co-create the roadmap to the relationship of your dreams, join us for the next in-person "Getting the Love You Want" Weekend Couples Retreat!

For support in how to have deeper connections and better communication in the relationships that matter most in your life, follow the host, Trish Sanders on Instagram , Bluesky or LinkedIn.

Rest represents one of our most fundamental needs, yet access to it remains profoundly unequal. Some can freely embrace rest without judgment, while others face criticism, shame, and real-world consequences for the same basic human necessity. This stark reality forms the foundation of what I call "the politics of rest."

Who gets to rest without being labeled lazy? Who can take mental health days without facing scrutiny? These aren't neutral questions but deeply political ones shaped by systems of privilege, power, and policy. Wealth-holding households enjoy vacations and help with daily tasks without judgment, while economically disadvantaged people, communities of color, women, and immigrants face barriers to the same recovery time. This disparity reveals how rest has become politicized—a resource available to some while denied to others.

I've experienced firsthand how transformative intentional rest can be. After feeling burnout, particularly following the pandemic, I consciously slowed down and reduced my workload. This choice—made possible by my privilege—profoundly improved my wellness journey. Yet I recognize that many cannot make similar choices. For generations, many communities have carried the trauma of not being allowed to slow down, where resting could mean life or death. This history lives on in our bodies and nervous systems today.

Perhaps most provocatively, I suggest that depression might be viewed not as a personal failure but as a reasonable response to unreasonable demands—the body's last-resort mechanism when proper rest is systematically denied. The collapse that comes with depression isn't truly restful, as it's accompanied by shame and self-criticism, but it points to our fundamental need for recovery. Creating a world where rest is accessible to everyone isn't just about personal wellness—it's about justice, equity, and transforming systems that exhaust us by design. What's your experience with rest? I'd love to continue this conversation with you.

- If you and your partner are ready to co-create the roadmap to the relationship of your dreams, join us for the next in-person "Getting the Love You Want" Weekend Couples Retreat!

For support in how to have deeper connections and better communication in the relationships that matter most in your life, follow the host, Trish Sanders on Instagram , Bluesky or LinkedIn.

What happens when we slow down in a society obsessed with constant motion? After spending eight transformative days in retreat settings, I've gained powerful insights about rest that challenge everything our culture teaches us about productivity and success.

The truth is startling: our nervous systems are designed for cycles of activity and rest, yet modern life rarely allows for genuine restoration. We celebrate those who "burn the candle at both ends" while dismissing periods of stillness as laziness or weakness. This toxic narrative keeps us trapped in survival states – either pushing through in sympathetic activation (fight-or-flight) or collapsing into dorsal shutdown (often experienced as depression).

Looking to nature reveals fascinating parallels. Bees, the ultimate symbol of busyness, actually take regular breaks between gathering nectar. When they don't rest enough, they lose their ability to navigate – they literally cannot find their way home. Lions, apex predators at the top of the food chain, rest approximately twenty hours daily. This isn't weakness; it's what enables their power and effectiveness during hunting.

Depression itself can be understood as the body's desperate attempt to force needed rest when we've been pushing ourselves too hard. Unfortunately, it rarely provides the truly restful rest we need – the kind that happens in our regulated dorsal state, where we feel safely still, connected, and genuinely restored.

While society may not slow down anytime soon, we can begin rewriting our personal narratives about rest. This means questioning beliefs that equate rest with laziness and learning to create intentional moments of slowdown even within busy lives. Through this practice, we not only improve our well-being but contribute to a broader cultural shift toward valuing rest as essential rather than optional.

Ready to transform your relationship with rest? Subscribe for upcoming episodes exploring accessibility of rest, practical strategies for creating restful moments, and how to distinguish between collapse and genuine restoration. Your journey toward balanced well-being continues with each small step, even when depression is in your bed.

- If you and your partner are ready to co-create the roadmap to the relationship of your dreams, join us for the next in-person "Getting the Love You Want" Weekend Couples Retreat!

For support in how to have deeper connections and better communication in the relationships that matter most in your life, follow the host, Trish Sanders on Instagram , Bluesky or LinkedIn.

What do mosh pits have to do with mental health? Everything, at least that's how it turned out for me.

From the moment I stepped into my first mosh pit at Woodstock '94 with my dad at age 14, something profound happened—I felt alive again. As a chronically depressed teenager trapped in that collapsed, shutdown state, the vibration of bass against my chest, the permission to move freely without being watched, and the immediate acceptance of a community of strangers offered something my nervous system desperately needed.

For thirty years, across countless concerts, these energetic spaces have served as unexpected medicine. They've given me embodiment when depression disconnected me from physical sensation. They've provided community when isolation felt crushing. They've honored my full emotional range—joy, sorrow, and sacred rage—when the outside world was often more comfortable with me pretending I was fine.

This realization speaks to something much larger than music or dance preferences. Our nervous systems are brilliantly designed to seek what they need, often without conscious awareness. That hobby you've loved since childhood, that oddly specific comfort activity, that thing people don't understand why you're drawn to—these aren't random. They're your system's attempts to regulate, connect, and heal.

The wisdom lies in noticing these patterns. When we identify what needs are being met by our natural draws—whether healthy ones like movement and community or potentially harmful ones like substance use—we gain clarity and choice. We can consciously expand our wellness toolkit beyond our instinctive solutions.

What unconscious brilliance has your system shown in finding what it needs? What activity makes you feel alive, accepted, or embodied? Your path to healing might look nothing like the textbook version—and that's perfectly okay. Your nervous system knows exactly what it needs, even when you don't.

- If you and your partner are ready to co-create the roadmap to the relationship of your dreams, join us for the next in-person "Getting the Love You Want" Weekend Couples Retreat!

For support in how to have deeper connections and better communication in the relationships that matter most in your life, follow the host, Trish Sanders on Instagram , Bluesky or LinkedIn.