How Rest Can Restore Your Body and Mind

December 23, 2025

A middle aged woman relaxing in the living room of her apartment

If you’ve been running on fumes and the idea of slowing down seems impossible, you’re not alone. Many people lead hectic lifestyles these days, but without adequate rest and downtime, the hectic pace will eventually take a toll.

“Life creates all kinds of pressures that make us feel like we’re supposed to be able to ‘do it all,’” says Bailey Brimus, LISW, a health and wellness coach at University Hospitals. “I work with patients to explore what their days look like, and 99.9% of the time there is an opportunity to fit in leisurely or relaxing activities.” The trick is figuring out how.

The Hidden Costs of Too Little Rest

There are many reasons people struggle to prioritize rest despite feeling exhausted or burnt out. Between work pressures, family and household duties, exercising, social obligations and everything else you’re trying to squeeze in, striking a balance can be tough. It becomes tougher if you’re struggling to make ends meet or if you or a family member has a chronic health condition that requires special care.

While understandable, not taking the time to rest can snowball and lead to other problems. Sleep is vital to both the health of your body and your brain. Experts recommend that adults get about seven to nine hours of sleep a night, yet one-third aren’t getting that much. If you’re not getting enough good quality sleep, it can raise your risk of:

Stress, low mood and irritability
Anxiety and depression
Getting sick
Metabolic issues, weight gain and obesity
Problems with attention, alertness, memory and cognitive function
Type 2 diabetes
Heart disease, high blood pressure and stroke
Relationship problems at home, at work and with friends

“Without proper sleep and healthy sleep habits, all eight dimensions of our well-being are going to be affected: emotional, physical, spiritual, intellectual, social, occupational, environmental and financial,” says Brimus. “For example, if you’re not getting enough rest or sleep, you may be more likely to decline social gatherings, or you might not be able to perform to your full potential at work.”

Prioritizing Rest and Restoration in Midlife

Midlife can bring major life transitions, from career pivots and caregiving responsibilities for aging parents to a changing sense of self and hormonal fluctuations that can cause discomfort, sleep disturbances, low mood and brain fog. These changes can increase stress and interfere with your ability to get restorative rest, which will, in turn, affect your health and mental health. It may not be possible to reduce all of these stressors, but developing good coping skills can help.

“The important thing here is to support patients in finding a healthy balance for themselves,” says Brimus. “It’s not about telling them what they should be doing, but helping them brainstorm ideas that work for them – or have worked for them in the past.” This approach increases the chances that their goals will be attainable and they’ll follow through on them.

If patients are feeling stuck, Brimus helps them find ways to get unstuck. Together, they also explore the warning signs that signal burnout and create a safety plan for managing those symptoms.

How to Build Rest and Downtime Into Your Busy Life

When Brimus does an initial assessment, she evaluates how much the patient is sleeping, as well as their habits around sleep. “Most people don’t realize how important rest and sleep are for managing mental health and physical health,” she says.

She helps patients think through how their daily choices might affect their long-term health and functioning. This may focus on how late they’re staying up on their devices before bed or whether they’re feeling burned out from not taking time to reboot. She might ask a patient, “What would life look like if you didn’t start incorporating rest and relaxation into your days?” This approach helps patients discover their own motivations for change. “It gets them thinking things, like, ‘Well, that could look really bad,’ so then we start a conversation about the kind of techniques that are going to work for them to replenish their energy,” she says.

Her work also involves helping patients find more efficient ways to manage their daily tasks. “Instead of having 20 things on the to-do list, we’ll bring it down to a couple of things that are the priorities for the day,” she says. If patients are dealing with a labor imbalance in their relationship (they’re doing 90% of the work and their partner is only doing 10%), Brimus works with them on developing healthy communication skills and delegating tasks.

Unstructured Time Is Important, Too

Getting plenty of good quality sleep is extremely beneficial, but if that’s all the downtime you’re getting each week, it’s not enough. “I think it's important, especially with busy individuals, to support them in planning unstructured time in their day,” says Brimus. “That’s when recovery can really accumulate.”

A period of time without a schedule, agenda, tasks or goals, frees you up to do activities you enjoy just for pleasure, like reading, painting or going for a stroll, or sitting quietly and thinking, meditating or even daydreaming. “Evidence shows us that connecting with nature, mindfulness, breath work and light movement, like a slow-paced walk or yoga, socializing and especially laughter, can all reset our nervous system,” she says.

Brimus knows it’s not always easy to claim free time for oneself. “I think many of us, including myself, often feel that there aren’t stretches of time we can designate as unplanned time,” she says. “But in actuality, a health coach or counselor can support you in finding some time each week that can be unstructured just for you.”

Setting Boundaries to Protect Your Progress

Once you’ve identified time in your calendar to rest and replenish your energy, you’re going to need to protect it from outside influences like work, family and friends, and even the pull of your own apps and devices.

“When we're talking about stages of change, you need to set boundaries on those things in order to make those changes happen,” says Brimus. “If a patient has developed gray, or loose, boundaries around these things, and has begun to feel burned out, depressed or overwhelmed, I use a therapeutic approach to help them set healthier boundaries and create healthier habits.”

Tips for healthier boundaries may include:

Setting timers on digital devices that remind you to disconnect.
Leaving your laptop at work, so you don’t do more work after you get home.
Saying no to invitations from family and friends if you’d rather do something else during that time.
Creating plans to help prevent you from falling back into old habits.

If you have trouble prioritizing rest and restorative activities on your own, consider talking to a therapist or health and wellness coach. “I think therapy is helpful for everyone, but in particular, it’s good for managing emotional or behavioral patterns that feel unmanageable or distressing, such as trauma, anxiety, depression and mood changes,” says Brimus. “Coaching is most helpful when you're generally healthy and feeling stable, and want help making a change in your life and sticking with it.”