When I hurt my arm a while ago, I did a relaxation exercise while waiting for the medicine to kick in. I figured one run-through would be enough to release the supporting muscles, but to my surprise, I had to repeat the exercise several times to really relax.

I had no idea I was so tense.

When we were small, we knew how to rest utterly, bonelessly. As adults, we figure a good night's sleep is all we need to release the day's tensions. Yet even a good night's sleep might not be enough. Tension can sneak up on us, building gradually. And we require deep rest to counter that. If we leave it long enough, our bodies may force us to take a break, through illness or injury.

Deep rest reboots our bodies, our emotions and our thoughts. It turns us off for a bit, and then turns us back on. To get this kind of deep rest, we need to feel like we did when we were kids: utterly safe, with nothing to do, nowhere to go, and with a deep trust that when we return we will be ready to face the world.

This isn't always easy when we are surrounded by the same walls and furniture, the same people, the same little worries or irritations or uncertainties, and the same habitual responses to them all. We may need to pluck ourselves out of our usual environment or headspace and drop ourselves down into a place that asks something different from us.

It doesn't have to be grand, like a trip to the south of France (although that'd be nice), it could be as simple as taking lunch under a tree or taking five minutes after getting home from work to drop onto the bed or into the bath and go through a guided relaxation exercise (door closed, please).

Until our bodies rediscover their natural rhythms, we may need to schedule breaks. But whether we have five minutes or five days, deep rest needs us to turn ourselves right off - our lives, our routines, ourselves so that we reboot as a new person.

For me, the sore arm was a gift. It reminded me that small tensions really can add up and that we may get so used to being tense that we think we are rested when we are not. When I relax now, I work with an image of a little kid in mind to remind me that deep, boneless rest is as natural to us as breathing.

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