Lie down, sit still, take a break: Your brain needs a rest

Downtime is a necessary part of life. Science shows it helps us to be healthier, more focused, more productive and more creative. Yet, somehow, we often lose sight of this.

“Downtime is important for our health and our body, but also for our minds,” says Elissa Epel, a professor in the psychiatry department at the School of Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco.

Epel and others acknowledge that many of us feel as though we’re wasting time if we aren’t getting things done, but research points to the costs of always being “on” and the importance of giving our brains a break. Our brains aren’t built to handle constant activity.

Even the briefest moments of idle time, or pauses, are important, says Robert Poynton, author of “Do Pause: You Are Not a To-Do list.”

Short pauses - whether you take a few breaths before entering a room or walk through the woods for 10 minutes - can lead to necessary self-reflection.

“I think we feel that we need to be getting on with things,” says Poynton, who is an associate fellow at the University of Oxford in England. But “if we’re always getting on with things, we haven’t taken any time to decide or examine whether what we’re getting on with is the most interesting, important, fruitful, delightful, pleasurable or healthy thing.”

Avoiding brain overload

Downtime is different from boredom, which signals that whatever you’re doing isn’t engaging you, as The Post reported last year in a Brain Matters column on what boredom could be telling you.

Well-established research has shown that low-level daily stress can create such intense wear and tear on our body’s physiological systems that we see accelerated aging in our cells, says Epel, who co-wrote the book “The Telomere Effect.” Epel added: “Mindfulness-based interventions can slow biological aging by interrupting chronic stress, giving us freedom to deal with difficult situations without the wear and tear - and giving our bodies a break.”

Research has shown the many benefits of resting, even briefly, for brain health.

One small study published in the journal Cognition found that those who took short breaks had better focus on a task when compared with those who didn’t take a break. Sustained stimulation, the study authors suggested, can cause our brains to become habituated to an activity, eventually leading us to process it as unimportant.

A 2022 meta-analysis published in the journal PLOS One looked at how “micro-breaks” can affect well-being. The review found that breaks as short as 10 minutes can boost vigor and reduce fatigue.

Periods of rest can be especially beneficial on long work days. In 2021, when many Americans were working remotely all the time, Microsoft conducted a study that followed two groups of people: The first had back-to-back Zoom meetings, and the other group took 10-minute meditation breaks between meetings. Microsoft monitored brain activity of 14 participants in the study using an electroencephalogram (EEG).

In the first group, “what you see is a brain that’s filled with cortisol and adrenaline,” says Celeste Headlee, a journalist and author of “Do Nothing: How to Break Away From Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving.” “It’s tired, it’s stressed, it’s probably more irritable, and it’s probably less compassionate.” The other group? “You can see in brilliant color what a difference [the breaks] make,” she says. “Those are brains that are relaxed.”

The smartphone trap

There’s a stark difference between downtime and boredom: The former is a necessary activity that revitalizes us, while the latter is an unpleasant state in which we want to be doing something else, says Andreas Elpidorou, a University of Louisville philosophy professor who studies boredom.

“Boredom is what we experience when our task or situation doesn’t properly cognitively engage us - it doesn’t sufficiently interest us, stimulate us, capture our attention or afford us with meaning,” he says.

It’s tempting to reach for our phones when we’re bored because they are an easy way to avoid this uncomfortable feeling.

While there is nothing inherently wrong with this (we all do it), it is not a great solution to boredom because it is a passive activity, says James Danckert, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, and co-author of “Out of My Skull: The Psychology of Boredom.” Danckert added: “What boredom really wants you to do is intentionally engage in something that’s meaningful.”

New research has begun showing the negative effects our cellphones can have on our health. Smartphone addiction (which Danckert says afflicts 4 to 8 percent of people) is becoming increasingly common worldwide. It has been linked to physical health problems, such as digital eyestrain and cervical disc degeneration, as well as anxiety and depression. Some recent research also suggests it can affect the structure of our brains: Two studies found smartphone addiction was correlated with lower white matter integrity and lower gray matter volume in the brain.

Not a modern problem

But our inability to take a break is hardly a new problem.

In the popular 1994 mindfulness book “Wherever You Go, There You Are,” Jon Kabat-Zinn said we filled all of our waking hours with busy-ness, doing and self-distraction. “Life affords us scant time for being nowadays, unless we seize the opportunity on purpose,” he wrote.

In Henry David Thoreau’s 1854 classic “Walden” - drawn from the two-plus years he lived in a cabin near Walden Pond in Massachusetts - he wrote, “It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: ‘What are we busy about?’”

Most Americans think of downtime as something that is extra or indulgent - a treat that has to be earned only after we’ve done all of our productive tasks, says Amber Childs, a psychologist and associate professor at Yale School of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry. But research would suggest the opposite: Downtime is a basic human need.

“There’s not a place where it’s built in to say this is a normative, expected, appreciated part of what it means to be alive, what it means to be well, what it means to be whole and what it means to be thriving,” she says.

Weaving downtime into your life

Give your mind and body a reset with these three tips.

Focus on nothing. Downtime should leave you feeling rested, regenerated and recharged, Childs says. It can be as simple as relaxing by a fire or sitting outside and letting your mind wander.

Work your way up. Sitting still for 30 minutes a day is great, but it’s not achievable for everyone. Start small: The next time you’re waiting for a takeout order or a ride home, don’t do anything. Instead, simply exist.

When in doubt, lie down. Epel’s research has looked at the benefits of deep rest, a restorative state that can improve our physical and psychological well-being. You can achieve deep rest through yoga and mindfulness meditation, but Epel said the ultimate method is simply lying down on the floor.