Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto

by Tricia Hersey

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.

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.

We will no longer be a martyr for grind culture. Grind culture is a collaboration between white supremacy and capitalism. It views our divine bodies as machines. Our worth is not connected to how much we produce. Another way is possible. Our shared history is one of extreme disconnection and denial.

Rest is a form of resistance because it disrupts and pushes back against capitalism and white supremacy.

Our bodies are a site of liberation.

“How do I rest and work so I can make a living?” or “I would love to rest more but I have bills. How is it possible?” I have been presented with the desperate question by so many exhausted people and it speaks to the crisis we are in as a culture. Capitalism was created on plantations. The roots of it are violence and theft.

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 ...

We will be disrupting and pushing back against grind culture for a lifetime.

To be colonized is to accept and buy into the lie of our worth being connected to how much we get done. Keep repeating to yourself: I am enough now. There is no way around this. We have all participated willingly and unwillingly in the allure of grind culture. We have done this because since birth, we slowly are indoctrinated into the cult of urgency and disconnection via white supremacy culture.

All of culture is working in collaboration for us not to rest, and when we do listen to our bodies and take rest, many feel extreme guilt and shame. Embrace knowing that you have been manipulated and scammed by a violent system as powerful evidence. Now with this knowledge you can grieve, repair, rest, and heal. We can rejoice for the beauty of a veil being removed.

So, stay here in rest, even for a few minutes each day before leaping into the comfort of intel...

Resting is an embodied practice and a lifelong unraveling. It is not something that can be trendy, quick, or shallow. Resting is ancient, slow, and connected work that will take hold of you in ways that may be surprising. Let deprogramming from grind culture surprise you. Let your entire being slowly begin to shift. Get lost in rest. Pull...

Grieving the reality of being manipulated to believe we are not enough, divine, or valuable outside of our accomplishments and bank account is a central part of our rest work. It is sad and disturbing.

But you cannot simply just tell someone who has been traumatized by capitalism since birth to consistently lay down and rest without addressing the reality of our brainwashing. When we finally wake up to the truth of what a machine-level pace of labor has done to our physical bodies, our self-esteem, and our Spirits, the unraveling begins.

This blatant disregard of his body and the unnecessary embarrassment he and other students suffer in public school systems begin the process of learning to ignore the needs of your body. The brainwashing starts.

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.

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 compl...

Resting is about the beginning process of undoing trauma so that we can thrive and evolve back to our natural state: a state of ease and rest.

we hold ourselves and others to the lie of urgency

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.

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.

“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

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.

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.

Exhaustion keeps us numb, keeps us zombie-like, and keeps us on their clock. Overworking and the trauma of burnout continues to degrade our divinity.

Our work is to slowly and deeply cultivate an expansive inner knowing that trusts our intuition and views rest as a physical and psychological disruption.

taking your time and disrupting the dominant culture’s need to rush is liberation.

Release the shame you feel when resting. It does not belong to you.

We are born knowing how to rest and listen to what our bodies need. It’s second nature and an inner knowing. Infants and children follow their body cues and, without doing so, would not survive. This inner knowing is slowly stolen from us as we replace it with disconnection. We have been bamboozled and led astray by a culture without a pause button.

Sometimes liberation is not possible, but survival and quality of life are.

As a culture, we don’t know how to rest, and our understanding of rest has been influenced by the toxicity of grind culture. We believe rest is a luxury, privilege, and an extra treat we can give to ourselves after suffering from exhaustion and sleep deprivation. Rest isn’t a luxury, but an absolute necessity if we’re going to survive and thrive. Rest isn’t an afterthought, but a basic part of being human.

The Rest Is Resistance framework also does not believe in the toxic idea that we are resting to recharge and rejuvenate so we can be prepared to give more output to capitalism.

Our drive and obsession to always be in a state of “productivity” leads us to the path of exhaustion, guilt, and shame. We falsely believe we are not doing enough and that we must always be guiding our lives toward more labor.

We are not resting to be productive. We are resting simply because it is our divine right to do so.

We are not resting because social media has stolen our ability to exist without it. A perfect plan to keep us distracted and addicted. The algorithms guiding our every move, putting unnecessary pressure

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

The developers and designers of our current platforms are not leaders of a billion-dollar industry simply so we can all stay connected to our family, friends, and communities. It is used for this successfully by many, but please remember it is not the goal for capitalists. The goal is to keep you scrolling long enough that you become a consumer.

We are not resting because we are online for hours and hours a day, distracted and exhausted. This is why we must view rest as the ultimate disruption of capitalism’s tricks and plans. An exodus and intentional detox from these platforms are the North Star for our rest practice.

True liberation to me is to not be constantly attempting to prove our worth and ticking off to-do lists. To just be.

There is no rush. There is no urgency. Unravel from the lies of white supremacy culture.

We must be focused on knowing that our bodies and our worth are not connected to how many things we can check off a list. You can begin to create a “Not-To-Do List” as you gain the energy to maintain healthy boundaries.

Understand exhaustion is not productive. You are not resting to gain energy to be more productive and to do more.

Reimagining rest is about more than naps. It’s an ethos of slowing down, connecting, and reimagining.

Closing your eyes for ten minutes. A longer shower in silence.

Taking regular breaks from social media. Not immediately responding to texts and emails. Deep listening to a full music album. A meditative walk in nature.