Convergence 0 – Week 5: Rest

Not yet trial-taught Not yet expert-reviewed

This week: read three short passages slowly, keep 15 minutes a day free of phones and screens, and set aside one block of at least 60 minutes in the week with no work.

Measurable goal: one work-free block of 60 minutes or more in the week, and 15 device-free minutes each day.

1. Traditional teaching

Week 4 practised doing one small thing steadily. This week practises the opposite, which also takes discipline: stopping. The three traditions below all make room for rest, but whom rest is for, when it happens and what it is for differ a great deal.

Judaism: the seventh day is a sabbath

[Traditional teaching] This tradition teaches keeping Shabbat as one of the Ten Commandments. Shabbat falls on a fixed day, from Friday evening to Saturday evening, and the rest applies also to servants, animals and the stranger in one's household.

A note on context: the next verse (20:11) gives a reason: God made heaven and earth in six days and rested on the seventh. When the Ten Commandments are repeated in Deuteronomy (5:15), the reason given is to remember slavery in Egypt and being brought out of it by God. The detailed laws of Shabbat go far beyond this passage; the Jewish reviewer will say more.

Christianity: come away to a deserted place and rest

[Traditional teaching] In Mark's Gospel, the apostles have just come back from preaching and report what they have done. This tradition reads the verse below as Jesus inviting busy people to rest with him.

A note on context: straight after this (6:33–34), the crowd follows them to the deserted place, and Jesus has compassion on them and teaches them again: here rest is not separate from service. [Inference] Most Christians today keep Sunday as the Lord's Day, and how that day is kept differs between churches. The Christian reviewer will say more.

Taoism: leave muddy water still and it clears

[Traditional teaching] Chapter 15 of the Tao Te Ching describes the masters of old: cautious like someone wading a stream in winter, plain like uncarved wood, "dull like muddy water". Then the chapter asks:

A note on context: the words in brackets were added by James Legge. [Expert judgement] Translators read the second sentence in different ways; this page follows Legge's reading. In this tradition, stillness is a way of living in accord with the Tao, not tied to a day of rest or a commandment.

Where the traditions differ

[Expert judgement] All three treat stopping work as valuable, not as laziness. But they differ on these points:

Not every tradition has a day of rest like Shabbat. In Islam, for example, Friday is the day of congregational prayer; the Qur'an (62:9–10) teaches leaving trade when the call to prayer is made, and then going back out to seek one's living. That is not a day of rest in the sense of Shabbat.

This week borrows only one shared action: stopping work for a deliberate stretch of time. You do not need to accept the beliefs of any tradition to do it, and the week should not be read as saying the traditions are "really the same".

2. What science finds

• [Verified] A 2017 meta-analysis brought together 86 publications with 38,124 workers. People who detached from work during time off (not working and not thinking about work) reported less exhaustion and better sleep. This is a correlation and does not show that detaching from work is the cause. (Wendsche & Lohmann-Haislah 2017)
• We have not found any review on keeping Shabbat or other religious days of rest and mental health.
• [Inference] People with heavy jobs and little control over their time off may find it hard to detach even when they want to. The correlation above does not mean that people who struggle to rest are "at fault".

Limits: these results are averages across many different studies and do not predict what will happen for any one person. Rest does not replace treatment for a mental health problem or a sleep disorder.

3. Practice for adults

About 15 minutes a day, plus one block of at least 60 minutes in the week.

1. Read slowly (3 minutes, start of the week). Choose one of the three passages. Read it slowly twice, the second time quietly aloud.
2. 15 device-free minutes (every day). Choose a fixed time: after dinner, before bed. Leave your phone in another room or face down, screens off. You can sit still, walk, drink tea, talk with family, look out of the window. Nothing needs to be "useful".
3. One pause within the 15 minutes (1 minute). As in Week 1: sit still and know the breath going in and out. Remember the image of muddy water clearing when left still.
4. Schedule a work-free block (start of the week, 2 minutes). Choose in advance a block of at least 60 minutes in the week with no work, no work email and no heavy housework. Put it in your calendar like an appointment.
5. Note it (1 minute, evening). One line: "Today I kept ___ device-free minutes." At the end of the week, mark whether you had your 60-minute block.

Note: [Expert judgement] if work, young children or caring for a relative leaves you no 60 minutes in one go, split it up or ask someone to cover for a while. Do not turn rest into one more pressure.

4. Kids' corner 6+

Game: "The muddy jar" (5–10 minutes, with an adult playing too)

1. Pour water into a clear plastic jar with a lid, add a spoonful of soil or sand, and close it tightly.
2. The child shakes the jar: the water turns cloudy. "Like when we rush, or it's noisy, or we're angry."
3. Put the jar on the table. Adult and child sit still together, watching the jar and breathing slowly, without talking, for a minute or two.
4. Ask the child: "What does the water look like now? We didn't do anything, so how did it get clear?"

Use a plastic jar, not glass. The adult keeps hold of the lid. Do not use the game to tell the child they "must sit still". If the child gets bored, stop the game.

5. Stop practising if

• You feel panic, have flashbacks of trauma, have a lasting sense that you or the world are "not real", lose sleep for several nights, or have thoughts of harming yourself.
• Device-free time makes your anxiety rise sharply, or when you stop working, heavy thoughts rush in and will not stop.
• If so, stop and see Get help now.
• If you have a history of psychosis, bipolar disorder or severe PTSD, ask a doctor before increasing sitting time beyond 20 minutes.

6. Foundation skills on daynentang

daynentang has a lesson on sleep (Giấc ngủ). If worries keep circling when you stop, see Lo lắng vòng vo (circling worries). Both are currently in Vietnamese only; your browser's translate option can help.

7. Practice for today

Tonight, 15 minutes before you sleep, leave your phone outside the bedroom.

Scientific sources

• Wendsche J, Lohmann-Haislah A (2017). A meta-analysis on antecedents and outcomes of detachment from work. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 2072. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.02072