Name: Doug Belshaw's review of Rest Is Resistance by Tricia Hersey
Item: Rest Is Resistance
Author: Doug Belshaw

Tricia Hersey

Disrupt and push back against capitalism and white supremacy. In this book, Tricia Hersey, aka The Nap Bishop, encourages us to connect to the liberating power of rest, daydreaming, and naps as a foundation for healing and justice. What would it be like to live in a well-rested world? Far too many of us have claimed productivity as the cornerstone of success. Brainwashed by capitalism, we subject our bodies and minds to work at an unrealistic, damaging, and machine‑level pace –– feeding into the same engine that enslaved millions into brutal labor for its own relentless benefit. In Rest Is Resistance, Tricia Hersey, aka the Nap Bishop, casts an illuminating light on our troubled relationship with rest and how to imagine and dream our way to a future where rest is exalted. Our worth does not reside in how much we produce, especially not for a system that exploits and dehumanizes us. Rest, in its simplest form, becomes an act of resistance and a reclaiming of power because it asserts our most basic humanity. We are enough. The systems cannot have us. Rest Is Resistance is rooted in spiritual energy and centered in Black liberation, womanism, somatics, and Afrofuturism. With captivating storytelling and practical advice, all delivered in Hersey’s lyrical voice and informed by her deep experience in theology, activism, and performance art, Rest Is Resistance is a call to action, a battle cry, a field guide, and a manifesto for all of us who are sleep deprived, searching for justice, and longing to be liberated from the oppressive grip of Grind Culture.

A Manifesto

Rest Is Resistance

Doug Belshaw

Because grind culture is a curriculum that has been forced on us and reinforced through corporate and academic culture, it is always present.

Even if your timeline is curated to only include joyful, thought-provoking, and encouraging messages, detoxing is still necessary and valuable. Your mind needs space for silence. Space to process what it is feeling without the participation of others. Your brain needs deep, consistent sleep, rest, and silence to make new connections, for memory retention, and to download. Our mental health is strengthened when we are away from the glare of computer screens and not absorbing the thoughts and ideas of thousands of people during one day of endless scrolling.

You are worthy of rest. We don’t have to earn rest. Rest is not a luxury, a privilege, or a bonus we must wait for once we are burned out. I hear so many repeat the myth of rest being a privilege and I understand this concept and still deeply disagree with it. Rest is not a privilege because our bodies are still our own, no matter what the current systems teach us. The more we think of rest as a luxury, the more we buy into the systematic lies of grind culture.

The idea of rest as resistance and rest as reparations can be challenging to distill in a few lines when I am asked to do a quick take. It’s counterintuitive to believe rest to be not a place to waste time but instead a generative place of freedom and resistance. We have never learned this in our culture. The thought of not doing, even for a short time, is seen as lazy and unproductive. So an explanation for rest as a form of justice is layered and nuanced. I have learned that one of the most concise and true ways to share the message of rest is to say: “Rest makes us more human. It brings us back to our human-ness.” To be more human. To be connected to who and what we truly are is at the heart of our rest movement.

I believe academia is the headquarters for grind culture, and it is a full-circle moment that the energy and idea for The Nap Ministry came to me while I was suffering from exhaustion in a graduate school program.

Many people believe grind culture is this pie-in-the-sky monster directing our every move, when in reality, we become grind culture. We are grind culture. Grind culture is our everyday behaviors, expectations, and engagements with each other and the world around us. We have been socialized, manipulated, and indoctrinated by everything in culture to believe the lies of grind culture. In order for a capitalist system to thrive, our false beliefs in productivity and labor must remain. We have internalized its teachings and become zombie-like in Spirit and exhausted in body. So we push ourselves and each other under the guise of being hyperproductive and efficient. From a very young age we begin the slow process of disconnecting from our bodies’ need to rest and are praised when we work ourselves to exhaustion. We tell our children to “stop being lazy” when they aren’t participating in work culture with the same intensity as us. We lose empathy for ourselves first and push excessively. We become managers, teachers, and leaders who fall prey to the allure of a capitalist system and treat those we have the honor of working with as human machines. We become rigid and impatient when our checklist isn’t completed to perfection. We become less human and less secure. We believe we are only meant to survive and not thrive. We see care as unnecessary and unimportant. We believe we don’t really have to rest. We falsely believe hard work guarantees success in a capitalist system. I have been told this constantly for as long as I can remember.

To be colonized is to accept and buy into the lie of our worth being connected to how much we get done.

Capitalism has cornered us in such a way that we only can comprehend two options. 1: Work at a machine level, from a disconnected and exhausted place, or 2: Make space for rest and space to connect with our highest selves while fearing how we will eat and live. This rigid binary, combined with the violent reality of poverty, keeps us in a place of sleep deprivation and constant hustling to survive. The work of liberation from these lies resides in our deprogramming and tapping into the power of rest and in our ability to be flexible and subversive. There are more than two options. The possibilities are infinite, although living under a capitalist system is to be confronted with a model of scarcity. This space makes you falsely believe there is not enough of everything: not enough money, not enough care, not enough love, not enough attention, not enough peace, not enough connection, not enough time. There is abundance.

Grind culture has made us all human machines, willing and ready to donate our lives to a capitalist system that thrives by placing profits over people.

I refuse to push my body to the brink of exhaustion and destruction. Let the chips fall where they may. I trust myself more than capitalism.

Laura Mei

Our souls are our center. An invisible, clear quiet force that is required for living. It knows the way. So, when we are not caring for our souls or even acknowledging that we have one, we are not able to possess the inner knowing we are born with. Rest is soul care because rest deliberately pays close attention to the deepest parts of you. Rest places soul care at the center of our wellness and liberation. None of us will get free without resisting toxic systems that blind us to the truth of who and what we are. Our bodies have information to share with us. Our souls are foundational to and to our resistance journey toward rest. We ignore our bodies' need to rest and in doing so, we lose touch with Spirit. The soul, while being foundational to how we navigate life, has also been a mystery to theologians and religious leaders throughout history. Many have claimed that the soul is the center of who we are and the most beautiful and powerful part of your body. What is your soul saying? Have you had moments of observing the pace of your life and it didn't feel true to your soul?

Our ability to dream, pause, and daydream has been replaced with the robbing of time, self-worth, self-esteem, hope, and connection to ourselves and eachother. Rest is a moment of embodiment and a time when connections can be created. We connect with the deepest parts of ourselves when we are rested. This is also a moment of intimacy and vulnerability. As we prepare ourselves to deal with the harshness of everyday living, rest becomes a space of physical and spiritual softness. An antidote to the hidden rage present in an exhausted body. Rest is a protest. Rest is a beautiful interruption in a world without a pause button.

Resting our bodies and minds is a form of reverence. When we honor our bodies via rest, we are connecting to the deepest parts of ourselves. We are freedom-making. What stories are we holding deep inside that are untold and uncovered because we are too exhausted? This rest work is holding space for our memories, our microhistories, and all the things that make us human.

Lay and rest in these questions. We don't have to have a complete answer to everything right now. We don't have to know everything. We don't have to be everything. We don't have to do everything. There is space for the unknown. There is space for curiosity and mystery. There is space to just allow rest to settle and answer the questions for us.

Rest is a meticulous love practice. Rest is radical because it disrupts the lie that we are not doing enough. It shouts: "No, that is a lie. I am enough. I am worthy now and always because I am here." We are enough. We are divine. Our bodies don't belong to these toxic systems. We know better. Our spirits know better.

Our worth is not connected to how much we produce. Another way is possible. Our shared history is one of extreme disconnection and denial. We ignore our bodies' need to rest and in doing so, we lose touch with Spirit. Our bodies are a tool agent for change. A site of liberation. Our bodies know. The time to rest is now.

Laura Hilliger

An important message but, as a middle-aged white guy, this book was not written for me. That's fine. Got halfway through and found it somewhat repetitive. Also, I lacked context as the author seems to presuppose the reader already knows who they are - and perhaps even follows them on social media.

Laura Hilliger &
Rest Is Resistance by Tricia Hersey

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Laura Hilliger &Rest Is Resistance by Tricia Hersey

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Laura Hilliger &
Rest Is Resistance by Tricia Hersey