122: The Seven Paths to Sacred Rest – with Dr. Saundra Dalton Smith

“Why am I tired all the time?”

That was the question Dr. Saundra Dalton Smith kept finding herself asking after working 15 years as a doctor while juggling her role as a mother of two toddlers. She was a burned-out working mom needing answers. 

In this episode, host Wade Lightheart asks some great questions covering a wide range of subtopics surrounding the topic of rest. Real rest. Dr. Saundra delivers, presenting an in-depth look at rest in seven distinct categories that fit our modern lives. She’s done the research, the polling, and the interviews over the years to bring together this vital information.

Dr. Saundra is a Board-Certified internal medicine physician, speaker, and author. She is an international wellness expert featured in numerous media outlets, including Prevention, MSNBC, Women’s Day, FOX, Fast Company, Psychology Today, INC, and as a guest on Dr. Oz’s show. 

She is the author of numerous books, including her new book Sacred Rest: Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore Your Sanity, including ground-breaking insight on the seven types of rest needed to optimize your productivity, increase your overall happiness, overcome burnout, and live your best life.

In this podcast, we cover: 

• The seven types of rest
• How Dr. Saundra found herself burned out, to begin with, including her signs of burnout
• A surprising aspect to burnout that fools people into thinking they’re NOT burned out when they ARE
• The tests Dr. Saundra took to rule out chemical/physical causes of her fatigue
• How to quantify your levels of rest (for those who like numbers) 
• Best practices for finding the rest you need
• The do’s and don’t to get truly restful sleep

Breaking Down the Seven Types of Rest

Dr. Saundra recalls when she began breaking down “rest” into a more granular, focused definition: she was working in internal medicine, and after fifteen years, she began to notice how patients would come in with the same complaints, year after year – symptoms like tiredness, brain fog, and mild depression. For years, the good doctor advised her patients to “get more sleep.” Or “you need better quality sleep.” 

After a decade and a half of listening to these complaints, Dr. Saundra began noticing her own struggles with tiredness – even after getting a good night’s sleep! At one point, she had the blue light blocking glasses; she knew all the latest techniques to enhance someone’s sleep quality – yet she still felt tired. 

This was the starting point when Dr. Saundra knew there was more to “rest” than just “better sleep.” She was doing a good job getting quality sleep, but she says, “I hadn’t taken into account that physical rest has multiple components to it.” 

Why Dr. Saundra Wrote an Entire Book on “Sacred Rest”

These discoveries on rest took several years to find. Dr. Saundra had to work through things. She conducted her research while her patients provided feedback, as Dr. Saundra began trading notes with patients. The patients would come into her office and tell her what worked for them, and Dr. Saundra would share with them what she was finding, and a couple of months later, they would come back and provide further feedback. Comparing notes enabled Dr. Saundra to adjust and change things, and over time, figuring things out. 

Years of back-and-forth patient consultations, including polling and surveys of patients, combined with her research, revealed things that worked and things that didn’t work. 

The stunning conclusion for Dr. Saundra was that there are multiple ways to rest in seven different areas. And results are also based on the individual. A person’s likes, dislikes, and personality affect outcomes. What are your tendencies? How do you restore and recover? 

Dr. Saundra can help you find the balanced formula of work and rest (what she calls the “work-rest ratio.”) At the core; you are who you are. And once you find your formula for rest, you can get more rest than you thought possible in this hectic world – and enjoy life at your highest ability. 

Our host Wade was excited to pick Dr. Saundra’s brain on the topic of rest. So many people are struggling with lack of energy, feelings of overwhelm, and poor sleep quality. What can you do if this is you? Tune into this episode, and discover the seven paths to sacred rest! Dr. Saundra has done her homework!

Episode Resources: 

Dr. Saundra’s website
I Choose My Best Life website
Dr. Saundra’s Book: Sacred Rest: Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore Your Sanity
Take a Free Quiz on the Rest You Need
Twitter Handle: @DrDaltonSmith
Facebook Page: Dr. Saundra Dalton – Smith
Instagram: @DrDaltonSmith
Pinterest: @DrDaltonSmith

  

Read The Episode Transcript:

Wade Lightheart: Good morning, good afternoon and good evening. It's Wade T Lightheart from BiOptimizers with another edition of the Awesome Health Podcast. And today we're going to learn about the seven types of rest and its effect on your productivity relationships and overall happiness in the middle of a chaotic life. And boy, we know that life is chaotic, but the good news is we have Dr. Saundra Dalton Smith, who is a board certified internal medicine, physician, speaker, and author. She is an international wellness expert featured in numerous media outlets, including prevention, MSNBC women's day Fox fast company psychology today, Inc. And as a guest on the Dr. Oz show, she's the author of numerous books, including her new book. We'll talk a bit about it today, Sacred Rest, recover your life, renew your energy, restore your sanity, including ground breaking insight on the seven types of rest needed to optimize your productivity. Increase your overall happiness, overcome burnout and live your best life. Dr. Saundra, welcome to the show.

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: Hi, thanks for having me.

 Wade Lightheart: Well, I mean, you know, why I love doing this show in particular is because I've seen so many really great experts such as yourself get on television shows or these little clips, and they kind of cut this little piece. They throw out a little titillating sound bite, and you don't get the context. You don't get the depth. And it's kind of like, Ugh, and then you're lost. I want to go a little bit deeper because I have never heard anybody talk about the seven types of rest. And my business partner is big on the whole sleep program. Is anybody know he's going to vote 50, 60,000 tied up in his sleeping technology at his house. Like, it's pretty wild. I want to know how did you get into this whole concept about rest and its importance and why you've got so much traction around this topic right now?

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: I got into it very organically. I burned out about 15 years into internal medicine practice. So I can't say I started out wanting to research rest necessarily. It was really more of, I need to survive and I can't survive at the rate. I'm going, I think internal medicine training or medicine training in general really is lends itself to burnout. I mean, from residency on that's the lifestyle and the mindset of the profession. So when I got to that place, I mean, it's how everybody felt. Everybody around me was tired, was exhausted. It was kind of just moving forward in the middle of their exhaustion. And what I noticed was that a lot of high achievers, a lot of people who have, who are well-schooled and well-versed and kind of have learned how to push past all of that tend to be able to function even in their burnout. And I think that's the confusing thing for a lot of people, because they say, well, you're not burned out. You're still going to work every day. You're still getting things done. You're still accomplishing things, but you can be burned out and still be producing. And that's the place that I was at. And it was a miserable place to be.

 Wade Lightheart: I, when you say that, I always think of those old,Buddhist kind of pictures, where they showed the ox kind of walking in the field and you see the these ox, like in their kind of glazed eyes and they're doing an incredible amount of work plowing the field. But when you see the oxygen, it doesn't have the joy of life. It doesn't have the zest. It seems yoked to its burden. And unfortunately, with a lot of high performers, there's kind of these associated,benefits in the public domain. They're like, Oh, you're a doctor. Oh, you live at a certain address. Oh, you drive this car. Oh, you have this life. Oh. But like, there's all these associative things that come with the ID. And when I used to coach people like that 20 years ago in person right now call it the golden handcuffs. It's like the golden handcuffs of success. You've done it. You've nailed everything. You're at the top. And you're like, I just want to go build a boat in Bali. And you can't because society would think that you've lost your mind or whatever. And then a lot of times it leads to trouble. What was the type of things that happened for you in this kind of burnout situation? And it's ironic because you're someone who studies internal medicine and it's such a juxtaposition.

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: Yeah. Well, you nailed it. I mean, that's exactly the position that I was in. I was at the time I'd already written a couple of books and, doing media and doing all of these things, not specific to rest, but to really the mind body spirit connection, which is the area that I initially started off on. And, people were looking at my life and the thing, those were exact things, Oh, wow. You're so successful. You've gotten, you've reached this pinnacle of success that within medicine, a lot of doctors are looking for, but even in that place, there was just no joy. And for myself, it started to have a lot of other symptoms attached to it. So I have two children at the time, they were both toddlers, married. So I had other pressures, not just my job, young children at home, a marriage.

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: And so with all of that, what I found was that my relationship started suffering. I really couldn't even enjoy parenting because it felt like just more work that I had to do. I would get home from my, pick them up daycare and get home. And I'd be like, Oh, I need a nanny who can take these kids. There was just no fun in any of the blessings that were in my life. And so it then started to affect my overall sleep quality. It started to affect how my body felt. As a physician, I treat sick people, but I don't expect to get sick very often. And I was staying chronically fatigued, chronically ill, having what I call the underlying, just poor immune function system, where anything that presented itself to me, of which I got much presented every flu season. I was constantly fighting things. And it wasn't that I wasn't following all the precautions. I just was weakened on every front. And so mentally, physically, emotionally in every area of my life, I was seeing the side effects of being burned out.

 Wade Lightheart: What was that moment where you were able to accept the signs? Was there a trigger event? Was there just a day? Was it a point where like, I can't do this anymore. I need to find a better way. What was that moment for you?

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: Yeah, there was a moment and I can't tell you if anything triggered that day, because honestly it was just another day, another day of running the race. And so that particular day I remember coming home, I just picked up my kids from daycare. And the second I walked in the door, I was, I put them in front of the TV and I was like, okay, they're safe. At least they're, they're not going to move. They're going to be glued to whatever that is on the screen. And I remember just laying out in my four-year laying on my four year in my home, looking up at the little like light fixture chandelier thing in there, and this gigantic four yard area in my front, right after my front door entrance. And I'm staring up there looking at this and it honestly symbolized everything that I felt like my life, it looks so beautiful, but I'm sitting there laying on the floor and I'm thinking as beautiful as my life looks on the outside is as bad as it feels to live it.

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: And I refuse to keep living this charade of a life something's got to change. I'm not going to, I don't care how many dollars are in the bank or how many accolades I have in my media portfolio. This is not the life that I want to live. And if I did the work to get to build this life, I can do the work to build the life I truly want to live. And that was the switch. That was the switch that changed. And it started me on a journey of evaluating what had me so tired because that's the comment I was telling everybody. I'm so tired. I'm so exhausted. It was an ongoing conversation about the same thing. And so that started the journey of figuring out how can I get to a place of not being tired anymore?

 Wade Lightheart: Yeah. I want to commend you because I think so many people have those kind of lucid moments where they see the train is kind of going off the track and the lights are flashing and you're getting this feedback and in a fast paced society that we live in today, it seems so easy to just not pay attention to those things which have dire consequences. Family-Wise, relationship-wise, health-wise, business-wise like something's going to break at some point and you had the courage to identify that and make a shift. So where did you begin your investigation and what did that investigation entails when you're searching for the sources of your tiredness?

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: Well, the first thing I just assume I needed more sleep because, I had young kids, I was working ridiculous number of hours. I was thinking I'm tired because I'm not prioritizing sleep. So that's where it began. I started with, okay, I'm going to make a effort to definitely get at least seven hours of sleep every night. Cause I was probably getting closer to like four to five before then. And so I made an effort specifically got seven, sometimes even eight hours of sleep on a consistent basis for a few months. And honestly I felt a little bit better, but I was still tired. And I think that's when really something kind of stirred up in me. How is it possible to get the recommended hours of sleep that everybody's telling you that if you get you're going to feel so great and still feel tired and still not feel energized.

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: And that's when I started to wonder, are there places of my life that sleep isn't restoring that sleep. Isn't actually filling back up those energy buckets that I'm pouring out in every day. And that's kind of the, probably the starting point for where these seven types of friends came from. And honestly, as a physician, I did the battery of tests on myself. I made sure my thyroid was working. My adrenals were good. My cortisol levels, I did the full workups, same as I would on any patient who comes to me and says, I'm tired and I'm sleeping and something's wrong. But just like with most of those patients, all of my lab work was fine. There wasn't anything I could specifically say, this is why this has a deficit chemically. And that's, what's causing you to feel tired. There was nothing like that. And so that really started making me look at what are some lifestyle issues that maybe are not being addressed with sleep that are still places that are staying depleted in my life.

 Wade Lightheart: So, what were some of those things that you found after all the testing? And I think this is really important. Just about the historical aspect is number one, you recognize there was an issue to deal with and you want it to change. Number two, you went and got some testing with some professional people to look at this. Hey, is there any chemical factors, hormonal factors what's going on here is the chemistry. Okay. And then it's like, now we've got that off the list. Now we got to really address potential lifestyle factors. So what, what part happened next?

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: Well, that's where the breakdown at the seven came. I was looking at not just my life, but I'm still working in internal medicine at the time. So I was having patients come in with the same complaints they've been coming in for 15 years at that point with the same complaints. But I had always kind of brushed it off. You need to sleep more, you need the better quality sleep. And then when it was my own journey that I was looking at, and I knew I was getting as high, a quality sleep, as I could potentially get, I had the glasses, the block light and all these things that I was using to try to force myself into this better sleep. That's where the seven types of rest came from. So the seven are physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, social, sensory, and creative. And so, under the physical, I felt like I was doing a decent job with that because I was getting the sleep, but I hadn't taken into account that really physical rest has multiple components to it.

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: So even though physical does include the sleeping component, the passive part of physical rest, sleeping and napping, I personally hadn't appreciated the active part of physical rest, kind of how I use my body throughout the day, the body ergonomics of even the chair I was using at my desk, whether or not I was doing anything to improve my circulation and lymphatics throughout the daywith leisure walking or even massage or stretching or yoga, I wasn't doing any of that stuff. So I was chronically painful and tight at my husband. One day I remember came, was trying to give me like a, like a loving massage, just not, you know, just comes behind you and just kind of rubbing your shoulders some. And I remember that I was in pain from that. I was so inflamed within my body and had never even thought about that as being a type of rest that I needed an active type of physical rest that was going to help me actually be able to sleep better. It's hard to sleep in that tight, painful, sore, toxic body.

 Wade Lightheart: No doubt. Can you identify, cause you illustrated such a breadth of types of rests. Cause most people saying, Oh, I'm tired. I need more sleep or I need a little break or whatever it is, but you've actually gone really in depth here. And I haven't heard anybody go in such extraordinary detail. Can you maybe walk through those seven types of rest for people so that they can kind of like put in their mind Oh wow. I never thought of that because it's like aha aha. Moments.

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: Yeah. Well, we talked about physical so that we've gotten covered with the passive and the active and with mental rest, we're talking about being able to clear your mental space to get to that quiet cerebral space. A lot of us deal with laying down at night to go to sleep and our brain is kind of ruminating over thoughts or doing our to-do list or checklist for the next day. Well, mental rest have the ability to get that slate clean and quieting the mental process. Being able to focus more deeply. Spiritual rest really depends on your own spiritual beliefs, but at the core of it is this ability to feel connected to something bigger than yourself. Some people experienced that within faith-based systems. Some people experienced that within certain groups that they belong to, where they feel accepted and they feel as if they are kind of contributing to the greater good emotional rest has to do with the rest we experience when we no longer feel the need to perform or to hold kind of cover up our feelings.

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: It's that very authentic presentation of our own feelings and emotions where you're not having to, as I sometimes say, put makeup on or pretty up our emotions. So it's easier for other people to consume. I think a lot of us put a lot of energy and just making sure that our emotions aren't offensive to other people. And there has to be people in our lives where we have the Liberty of just being very authentic about if we're sad or angry or depressed or whatever that emotion is that you can freely express it. Social rest deals with the recipe experience around life-giving people. And so most of us spend time with people who are negatively pulling from our social energy. They need things from us. So our family, and it doesn't mean they're negative people. So your coworkers, your family, your spouse, all of these people are needing things from you.

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: So socially they're pulling from that energy who are the people in your life who don't need anything from you. So you just enjoy being around those adult friends that when you're in their presence, you just feel energized. And the problem is most of us don't spend a lot of time with those people because those people who negatively are pulling from our social energy are a lot more demanding because they need things from us, they're pulling on that energy a lot more. And so we just had to be very aware of, are you pouring back into that part of yourself that gets revived from the presence of other positive people and then with sensory rest, it deals with looking at how your senses are involved throughout your day. So does your workspace have a lot of background noise? Are you on a lot of gadgets, devices, electronics, are there bright lights or certain sounds or other sensory inputs that you're experiencing throughout your day and how are those sensory inputs affecting you?

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: Because for a lot of people, our sensory overload occurs throughout as we are progressing with our electronics and gadgets. And then at the end of the day, we feel more anxious and irritable, but we haven't associated it back to the sensory overload that we're experiencing. So sensory rest is downgrading. Some of those sensory inputs being very mindful and intentional about what the background sounds are throughout your day, making room for silence, making sure that you're doing some of the things necessary so that your electronics aren't as interrupted as they can be limiting notifications, things like that. And then the last one is creative rest and creative rest was probably the one that was the most interesting to me because it's one that a lot of people do not believe that they need because they're not an artist or a musician or something like that.

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: But at its core creative rest is the rest we experience when we allow ourselves to appreciate beauty in whatever forms, whether that's man-made beauty like art or the music, dance or music, or if it's natural beauty like the mountains or the ocean, or going to the beach. And the benefit of creative rest is that creative rest actually helps us to restore the part of us that we use when we create or when we create anything, whether that's, if you're a marketing person and you're coming up with different designs, if you're someone who has to be innovative or think outside of the box in any capacity within your work, if you're a problem solver, problem solving is a creative process. And so I think for a lot of us, we use an, a lot of creative energy throughout the day, but we don't consider ourselves creative people because we're not creating.

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: In the way that we see other people create. So we stay in a level of creative rest deficit, and we can't understand why the sleep is not improving that well, sleep can't improve a creative or an emotional or a social rest deficit. It can help a little bit with a sensory rest deficit cause your eyes are closed. It is black and quiet usually during sleep, but it's not going to solve some of these others. And so we have to be aware of where we are experiencing a rest deficit. So we can be very intentional in doing those restorative activities to pour back into these places of depletion.

 Wade Lightheart: That's so articulate and well thought out to consider all these different areas. And I see so many people struggling to kind of consider this or associating guilt with, decoupling from the electronic stimulation that we are subjected to as something that makes them bad or they're wrong, or they're not with it or something, or they're not living, they're not at their top of their game yet. You've identified that off time is what kind of fills the well backup or recharges. Were you able to kind of, one of the areas that we're fascinated with in our company, a sub-company called Nutopia, which is neurochemical optimization for brain optimization and nootropics and things like that. And there's so many people that are dealing with depressed levels of a variety of neurochemicals, is that what's going on here. Like there's everybody's different with their own neurochemistry, but humans throughout history had four sensory deprivation, if you will, but just, you know, it got dark and there was no electricity. And then, there wasn't computers and there wasn't cell phones and there wasn't videos and it wasn't, like all of this is relatively new and it's an accelerated in the last 20 years at an almost unimaginable pace. And doesn't seem to be letting up, how does someone systematically identify these things and say, what do I focus on first? Or how do I go to next? Or are these some of the things that you covered in your book?

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: It is, it's some of the things I cover in the book. And honestly, that was probably one of the main questions that I was asked by people, as I discussed this, that's where restquiz.com came from because so many people needed to be able to quantify their levels of rest deficit. So we have a free assessment at restquiz.com that lets you quantify that. So you can see some hard numbers so to speak, but honestly, even without having to do that, what I do usually have most of my patients or clients that I work with do is I have them just take a look at your day. What is it you did? I'll use myself as an example. I may have a sensory rest deficit today because I worked on something on my computer all day long yesterday.

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: And so sensory rest may be what I need today. However, tomorrow I may be very physically active doing something with my kids on the weekend. And so as I'm doing that with them on the weekend, now I need to be aware, did I stretch after I did whatever that physical activity was? Did I relax those muscles back? Because what we do that that day is the area that we're draining. That's the bucket that we're draining the most. That's the place where we need to restore. That's the place that needs the restore to the activities and the recovery. So it changes. So, we have an assessment to give a general idea, but really it's a day to day kind of self evaluation, a self-awareness of what has been poured out today, where did I use them as energy? And am I doing something intentionally to restore the area that I depleted today?

 Wade Lightheart: Beautiful. One of the questions that, of course it's coming up in my mind as well. Okay. You went through this 15 years ago. How long did it take you to discover these principles and then how does your day look different today than it did then?

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: How my life is completely different from then? Well, like my kids are teams now, which is a great thing for parents out there. It's like, it's a blessing and a curse. All right, it. But, it looks completely different. And a big part of that was because it took years to kind of work through this. And because of the way I like to research things, this was primarily as I'm working through it. My patients were working with me because I would come back to them and I'd say, I'm working on this type of rest, month or this couple of months. And I share with them what I find and they'll come back on a couple of months later and tell me how it worked for them, what worked, what didn't work and we'd compare notes, and then we'll switch it up.

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: And we did this through all seven. So it was years of kind of back and forth, pulling the research. I'm doing studies, doing our own kind of polling and questioning and finding out what worked and what didn't work. And honestly, what we've found is that, and it's why in the book, I've give multiple ways of getting rest in each area, because it is so individualized based on the a person's own likes and dislikes and personality, and just your current, your own tendencies to how you restore and recover. And so it was really interesting to work through that process, but it did. It took a while to find the balance for myself of what is the right combination of work and rest, I call it my work rest ratio, because at the core I am who I am. I'm a doer, I'm a high achiever, energy kind of pressure driven kind of person. That's just my, that's my makeup. And I can't change who I am, but I also realize I can't be that person and produce at my highest level when I don't respect my own need for rest. So I had to kind of have a little bit of a self reckoning moment and where I realized my own limitations and then discovered, what is it I need to do to be able to stay at my highest level of ability.

 Wade Lightheart: That's beautiful. Yeah. I always, we used to call them in our family, the come to Jesus and all that. I was like, Oh man, I really got to deal with this. What are some best practices that and first for my listeners, I'm encouraging you, we're going to put some links to the quiz here in the show notes so that people can go in and take the quiz. What are some best practices that you find that you and your clients incorporate in order to kind of make sure they're paying attention to the flashing lights and all these seven areas?

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: Well, the very first one, because, so, and I'll just kind of give up, give this based around our current situation with so many people working from home and not in their normal office spaces. The very first thing that I find that most of us are guilty of is we don't listen to our bodies anymore. So many people tell me when we first have this conversation, one of the things I asked them to do is tell me what your body feels right now, sitting in your desk, doing whatever it is you're doing is something hurting. Is something uncomfortable that you feel the back of the chair pressing against your legs. Do you feel, are you fidgeting around because something doesn't feel right, because what we normally do is we fill the discomfort, but we just keep going.

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: We just kind of tell her body, shut up, shut up already, and let's get this work done. And I'm just trying to push through it. And what happens is that just continues to perpetuate the problem for, we got a whole generation of people with chronic back pain and everything else related to poor body ergonomics, because we don't respect the fact that our body's been trying to tell us that chair's too tall for you, or that tears too short for you or your computer screen needs to change the height or whatever it is. And so that's the very first thing I have, every person I work with evaluate. And then the second is really just their office space is your office space and your work space actually benefiting you or further hurting you. And then the next, and that's a simple switch because, you know, when I talk about these types of rest, I think many people oftentimes think, Oh, she's going to give me like this 40 minute thing I have to do to like, get rest at the end of that day or something.

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: No, these are things that you're going to integrate with in your normal day, usually, so that you can get rest in the middle of the busy day in the middle of the chaos, that may be your life so that you don't have an excuse for not getting it. One of the other things that I find that a lot of people have to be aware of, or what are ways you can downgrade your sensory input without having to kind of make these huge drastic changes. One of the things that sometimes people will come to me concerned with specifically, if I'm working with or consulting with an it company or firm, are you going to tell all our people to turn their gadgets off? Cause we work on our gadgets and I don't need you telling them that they have to turn their gadgets off.

 Wade Lightheart: They actually say this to you. It's wild the conversation.

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: But as we're going through the proposal stage. No, I'm not trying to change who they are or change their profession, but what are ways we can do that so that they downgrade their sensory input. And I'll just give a simple example. So many of us went to zoom meetings within our companies and corporations. And so you may have 20, 30, 50, a hundred people, on a Zoom call, all these little boxes with all these people and the Zoom call, a simple way to downgrade the sensory input is to have a universal company, virtual background. So instead of having every little box with his own design and its own thing, everybody has the same background. And when you purposely choose a low sensory or creative rest type background, for example,I think of like 68% of people,hen polled said that the colors that are related to the ocean, like the teals and the blues and aqua, those kinds of colors tend to have a relaxing effect on them.

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: So can everybody just have a teal background or whatever color that's appropriate for your company, light blue, and now we've downgraded the sensory input without anybody having to do anything other than click the virtual background. Just really simple things that people can do to try to start alleviating some of the excess of sensory input turning down the notifications on your gadgets. We, you can still use social media, but does it need to interrupt your day at well, we can turn those off and then choose when to go into our social media apps without them telling us, Oh, somebody just posted something

 Wade Lightheart: Beautifully said, I want to talk about a topic that's really close to home. I think for a lot of people and something that's people are suffering from, this is our sleep awareness month that we're talking with our magnesium product and sleep sanctuaries and just making people aware of the importance of sleep. Can you talk about maybe some of the, some of the challenges that people have in maybe setting up their sleep or what are the no-nos around sleep and maybe what are some of the do's around setting up their sleep? Because so many people have really not really thought this one out and it's so important.

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: Well, I think one of the things to be aware your body, your mind, you are not like a light switch. And I think that's what many of us treat our sleep habits. Like, I'm going to work up until the moment I'm ready to go to bed. I'm going to flick the switch and drop over into deep non realm sleep. And that high restorative sleep, within moments of flicking the switch off and laying down, and it's just not realistic. The body has to be prepped. The mind has to be prepped for sleep. We talked about, mental rest, a mental rest deficit can be what happens when someone lays down and their brain won't shut up so that they can't go to sleep. One of the very simple tactic that helps a lot of people with that can be something called brain dumping or mind dumping is another term for it, where you write down whatever it is that's ruminating through your headspace.

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: So that rather than have your mind kind of going through those thoughts over and over again, you put it on something concrete to get the brain kind of permission to release it and to let that thought go, cause now it's safe. It's on that piece of paper. You can pick it up tomorrow to do whatever it is telling you to do. I think it's important to prep your body for sleep as well. And to be aware that if you're painful or tight or tense, it's going to be harder for you to go into a deeper level of sleep. So to take a few moments to do that quick assessment, do some shoulder shrugs or yoga or stretches or deep breathing whatever's required to kind of get your body settled so that you don't feel the tension as you're laying down to make sure that your even your sleep space is a temperature that feels comfortable to you.

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: Most of us tend to sleep better with cold cooler temperatures rather than hot temperatures. So to make sure that your sleep space actually is of a comfortable temperature for you, whichever you prefer to try to get the room as dark as possible is always helpful. Particularly with that sensory rest, that's all kind a part of that. Many people have a lot of kind of lights in their bedroom that they're not aware of. So clocks facing them with the bright red and blue lights, staring them in the eyes the whole day long, which your eyes are closed. And I know people think, well, my eyes are closed. I don't really see the clock, but your body still has all that light kind of reflecting at it.

 Wade Lightheart: Yeah. We have light sensors in our body that actually pick up light, right?

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: Yeah. Whether your eyes are seeing light, your body's still being exposed to this light all night long. So if nothing else, if it doesn't have a dimmer to at least dim the intensity of the light to turn it, you don't necessarily have to have it facing you. Can you have it looking somewhere else in the room? So that you're because I think many people don't trust their bodies to get into a cycle of sleeping and waking so that they don't have to have alarms and systems and all of these things going off. But if you get to a place where your body is getting well rested and getting a consistent level of sleep, your body will get into a habit of, I get seven, eight, whatever your normal amount is. And it will wake up and go to sleep at the same time, because it will have gotten into a cycle

 Wade Lightheart: Beautifully said, and so well illustrated leads me to the next thing. I guess let's talk a little bit about your book and the book that you wrote, why you wrote it and why it's so important for people to kind of get it, read it into learn about these things. Not just as listening to us on a, on a podcast, but to really dive into and take the time to integrate these things. Cause it's going to take some time, right? It's going to take a bit of time for people to learn these things. How long does it take people to learn why like this, you illustrate this in the book. Talk a little bit more about the book, if you could.

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: Yeah. So the book's divided up into two sections. The first section is going over the types of rests, what they are, how do you determine if your deficit in one of them, and then some specific tips on things you can do to start doing restorative activities in those areas. The second half of the book talks more about the, what we call, I call it the gifts of rest. Those are the things that happen kind of naturally as you rest better. And so productivity is one of them, better communications, one of them better boundaries, lots of different things that come out of resting well that we don't really always recognize as a benefit because we think what in resting, we're going to lose something, but there's a lot that we gain when we're resting. And so that's what the second half of the book talks about. And so it really kind of walk someone through the journey of first discovering I, as a physician, understanding you have a problem. It's the first step. That's kind of where we begin understanding if there's an issue to be dealt with and then going through the process of you being proactive and working through your own healing, and then seeing the benefits of that healing, not only for you, but for your family and for those that you, that you're serving in, whatever area of is your talents and gifting.

 Wade Lightheart: You're so bang on so concise. And so is there an aspect of this that we haven't covered for our listeners that you feel that you'd really like to communicate to them in regards to their rest and thinking about this and in the kind of terms that you illustrate in your book?

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: Yeah, I would probably say the number one area that I would stress to people is that I understand that you can continue to function and pour out of your exhaustion and produce out of your exhaustion, but that is not a life that anyone wants to live. That is not a life that feels good to live. And I think that is the culture that we have built up. And we have a lot of people who have come into that culture and think that's the norm. It's an it's normal for everyone around them to be exhausted, to be grumpy, to be mean, to be maintaining themselves on coffee and red bull and everything else they can pour in. I love coffee and I'm not against red bull, but can we have them because we enjoy them and not because they become a lifeline and that's, the transition is getting back to a place where we can enjoy life without having to be dependent on anything other than our own abilities to heal, restore, and to prosper.

 Wade Lightheart: Beautifully said. Can you share with our listeners where they can reach you, where they can find you, how they can get a copy of the book, all the good stuff, because I know there's going to be a bunch of people getting on here and probably learning more about your work in the world and its importance and why people really need to embrace it. So we don't put countermeasures to kind of, as runaway, digital, expansion well, we're already seeing, it's having dire consequences on people's health, people's families, people's license, most importantly, people's sense of happiness and joy. All this technology was supposed to make our lives better and easier and more joyful. Not like more, I feel like I can't get out of this, digital prison.

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: Absolutely. The books available, wherever books are sold. So Amazon Barnes and noble Books-A-Million you name it? You can find it there. And my main website is ichoosemybestlife.com and you can also learn more about me at drdaltonsmith.com.

 Wade Lightheart: So, well said. And any final thoughts that you'd like to share with our audience or, things that you've learned or maybe what you're doing in the future?

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: Yeah. Well, the main thing is just to let's learn how to rest. Well, let's be courageous. I think it's very easy to go along with the status quo and stay burned out, but it takes a courageous person to say, you know what, the best thing for me right now, and for this company is for me to get the rest that I need.

 Wade Lightheart: Ladies, gentlemen, words of wisdom from Dr. Saundra Dalton Smith, who understands that there are seven different types of rest and in her new book, which is in the show notes, Sacred Rest, recover your life, renew your energy, restore your sanity, get this book, because I believe that we are in a rest crisis. I think we are in a digital crisis. The changing events of the world has really pushed the anxiety and stress and for a lot of people, and as a medical doctor who has all the pressure in the world and every excuse not to do this, I want to thank you for your service to actually not only change your own course of life into advisor clients, but to take it and put it out into a step-by-step manner where people can benefit. Thank you so much for that. We really appreciate it.

 Saundra Dalton-Smith: Thank you.

 Wade Lightheart: Well, there you have it folks. That's another edition of the Awesome Health Podcast. I'm Wade T Lightheart. If you like it, it's a thing to do, smash the like do a share, or of course, reach out with your comments. Thank you so much for joining us today and we'll see you on the very next episode. Take care.