At the end of most yoga classes, they tell you to lie on your back, arms out, palms up. To be a body that is no longer doing anything. You don’t stretch or hold anything in, you don’t even try to relax in any particular way. This is corpse pose, “Savasana.”

By the time we get here, the room has seen every cycle of my temperament and then some. The mirrors are fogged just enough to make everyone look a little better than they probably do and everything smells faintly of eucalyptus and sweat. I’m lying on my back, which is apparently the point, staring up at the ceiling vents like they might tell me the secrets of the Nile if I watch them for long enough. The instructor tells us to “let everything go” which is a nice sentiment but also vague. How do I know if I’ve let go of everything? I can hear a woman breathing next to me like she’s in a movie about survival. And then there’s a moment where everyone settles, like we collectively decided to commit to this part where finally, nothing happens.

This is where the body is alleged to absorb the work we just did, and everything integrates (which sounds important, and sort of made up). My legs feel heavy. My hair is damp on the back of my neck, and a drop of sweat moving slowly toward my ear becomes the most important thing in the room.

I try to be still. I really do. But there is always something. An itch on my cheek, or the sudden awareness that I haven’t checked my phone in almost an hour. I open one eye for one second, just to see if everyone else is as committed to this as I am at least pretending to be. They are, or at least they’re really good at pretending.

I think this is what we call rest. It doesn’t always feel like rest though. It feels like waiting.

Like something is about to start again, even though it hasn’t been announced. The stillness is a form of suspense. I’m not done, just in between.

Maybe that is what rest has become. Something that exists in relation to what comes next. A way of organizing time so we can continue without feeling like we’ve skipped anything important. Even the language we use to describe rest is like that: recharge, reset, recover. It all points forward, it all points to motion.

Byung-Chul Han’s The Burnout Society references a shift in the collective psyche in which we have moved away from external pressure and toward a kind of compulsive internal performance of achievement, where an individual becomes both the one who demands and the one who complies. There is no clear boundary between effort and recovery because both of them serve the same system of achievement. Rest does not exist outside of productivity. It exists as a function within it. That might be why so much of what we call rest in the present day fails to feel truly restorative.

Memory researchers use the term consolidation to describe the process by which experience becomes more stable in the mind over time. Research suggests that even brief periods of quiet, waking rest after learning can improve recall, precisely because nothing new is crowding in too quickly (Wamsley, 2022). In other words: complete stillness and emptiness of stimuli is inherently beneficial for us. It allows the brain to stop rearranging and start actually retaining.

Over spring break, I tried to relax in ways that were supposed to work. Lying in the sun, long walks, sitting with a novel and nothing else to do. It all looked right. If someone had taken a picture of me, it would have been labeled as rest on the spot. But it didn’t feel like that. I felt like I was in the same mode of productivity, just without anything specific to apply it to. Like I was waiting to feel relaxed instead of actually being it. Even the effort to “slow down” had a kind of structure to it.

I didn’t really know what stopping felt like without turning it into something else.

So I started looking into the idea of rest. What had it meant to rest, before it became something to schedule or optimize? I started to run into the idea of the Sabbath, again and again.

One thing to know about Sabbath is that you don’t decide when it happens.

You stop because it is time to stop.

Not because you’re tired enough, or you’ve finished what you’re doing. Not because you earned it. It doesn’t really matter what the situation is at all. Whatever you were in the middle of, be it work, or any concentrated thought, just ends. Resting, according to Sabbath, does not result from how you felt, or how well you managed your time. It happens regardless.

Abraham Joshua Heschel describes the Sabbath as a “sanctuary of time,” which should break the linear experience of productivity and consumption most of us experience in the everyday. That feels different from anything I had been doing during this week of supposed “rest.” None of what I was calling rest actually interrupted anything.

And so I think back to Savasana.

Lying at the end of a yoga class, I seldom feel like everything stops. I feel more like I am waiting to get up. To resume life, abide by the next instructions. But a good corpse pose is not supposed to feel like that. True rest is not supposed to feel like that. Rest is about removing everything that keeps you in motion. It quiets the impulse to adjust and the need to process what may come next. It doesn’t ask for improvement or optimization. Just consolidation. For the body to catch up to what just happened. For the mind to follow.

The same thing seems to happen during the Sabbath. Rest is a forced interruption.

The Sabbath forbids 39 categories of tasks. These tasks are not all “work” in the obvious sense. They are acts of making, adjusting, carrying, completing. They suspend all ability to intervene in the world in all the ways we are used to. And without that, something else becomes unavoidable:

The mind finds the present.

Neuroscience explores this state through research on what is called the Default Mode Network. This is the cognitive system which activates when there is no external task to focus on. The mind has the chance to turn inward, into a continuous, self-referential state. The Default Mode Network is a pivotal player in social cognition, memory, and emotional processing.

This is what Savasana triggers once you stop trying to get it right.

Lying there, the body settles. Nothing tangibly improves or resolves. There is no outward expression of your achievement of rest.

The Western culture presently treats rest as something to add into the day. A yoga class was taken. A walk scheduled. A cup of tea brewed and enjoyed. It becomes another activity, another small project to get right.

But ancient rituals argue that actual relaxation has less to do with adding things and more to do with stripping back the things that keep you from sitting still.

Not doing rest better. Just committing entirely to a moment of doing nothing, so the body and mind have space to settle.

References:

Azarias, Almeida, de Melo, Rici, Maria. The Journey of the Default Mode Network: Development, Function, and Impact on Mental Health. National Library of Medicine (2025). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12025022/

Han, Byung-Chul. The Burnout Society (2010)

Heschel, Abraham Joshua. The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man (1951)

“Savasana Definition & Meaning.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Savasana

Wamsley, E.J. Offline memory consolidation during waking rest. Nat Rev Psychol 1, 441–453 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-022-00072-w

*This experience requires attention. Moments of anticipation, stimulus, and response will unfold and will be available for recognition and engagement in real time (Bishop et al. 2004).

1. Stop before the water.

Find yourself at the water’s edge and remain there. The body begins to register what is about to happen. The water has not touched you, but notice as your physiology identifies it as a stressor. the body and brain prepare to brace (Grupe, D. W., & Nitschke, J. B., 2013).

What is occurring here is not the cold itself, but the mere prediction of it. (Barrett, L. F., & Simmons, W. K., 2015).

To be mindful in this moment is to not be passive. To observe these shifts without immediately acting to resolve them. Notice the impulse to convert anticipation into sensation by rushing into the cold or to step back and avoid it entirely. Both are attempts to eliminate this moment of uncertainty. (Carleton, R. Nicholas, 2016)

Remain within that interval.

This impulse reflects a pattern in stress response where we seek to resolve the stress rather than experience. Here, that pattern can be visible, and it can be interrupted (Foa, E. B., & Kozak, M. J., 1986)

2. Allow the initial contact, observe the response.

The moment the water touches your skin is the moment the prediction actualizes into stimulus. The body shifts rapidly from anticipation to reaction. This transition is abrupt and involuntary as the cold triggers an immediate psychological response: a sharp inhalation, a sudden contraction of the body.

This is where the opportunity for intervention begins. Rather than resisting the reaction, direct attention to the breath by lengthening the exhale. The inhale will follow.

This shift is small but consequential. Slowing breath introduces a competing signal to the nervous system that is associated with safety instead of threat (Porges, 2025).

The stimulus has not changed. The water is still cold. What you are changing is the response.

3. remain here, allow the body to adapt.

What was first registered as a threat is reinterpreted as tolerable. The breath may return to its original state, the body releases some of the contraction. Attention widens again, no longer fixed solely on the point of contact (Rankin et. al., 2008). This change of perception is subtle, but it can accumulate. Through continued exposure to similar conditions, the nervous system updates its responses (Craske et. al. 2014).

The water did not become warm, but the body learned that it was manageable. Discomfort was not eliminated but the body was in contact with it for long enough to reorganize its response. This is when you let the ocean teach you.

4. How to Enter Other Things

What occurs here is not specific to the ocean. The sequence of anticipation, stimulus, response, and adaptation structure many forms of experience.

What this process demonstrates is that response can be shaped through attention. The initial reaction is not optional but what follows it is. With sufficient awareness and sustained contact, the body recalibrates.

This has implications beyond physical stress stimulus. Horizontal learning transfer is the process of a response learned in one context becoming available in others. In uncomfortable conversations, or unfamiliar settings, the body defaults to resistance. In each case, there is a moment before engagement where an individual can decide whether their response is to escalate to stress or reorganize. To move through these experiences requires attention to anticipation and tolerance for initial discomfort. It requires the willingness to acknowledge stress as it occurs to effectively alter our relationship to it.

Works Cited:

Castellani J.W., Young A.J.. Human physiological responses to cold exposure: Acute responses and acclimatization to prolonged exposure.https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26924539/

Bishop, S. R., Lau, M., Shapiro, S., Carlson, L., Anderson, N. D., Carmody, J., Segal, Z. V., Abbey, S., Speca, M., Velting, D., & Devins, G. (2004) . Mindfulness: A proposed operational definition. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice https://doi.org/10.1093/clipsy.bph077

Grupe, D. W., & Nitschke, J. B.(2013). Uncertainty and anticipation in anxiety: An integrated neurobiological and psychological perspective. Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

Barrett, L. F., & Simmons, W. K. (2015). Interoceptive predictions in the brain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience

Carleton, R. Nicholas (2016), Into the unknown: A review and synthesis of contemporary models involving uncertainty. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, Volume 39, Pages 30-43.

Foa, E. B., & Kozak, M. J. (1986). Emotional processing of fear: Exposure to corrective information. Psychological Bulletin, 99(1), 20–35. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.99.1.20

Porges, Stephen W., (2025) Polyvagal Theory: Current Status, Clinical Applications, and Future Directions. National Library of Medicine, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12302812/

Rankin CH, Abrams T, Barry RJ, Bhatnagar S, Clayton DF, Colombo J, Coppola G, Geyer MA, Glanzman DL, Marsland S, McSweeney FK, Wilson DA, Wu CF, Thompson RF. (2008) Habituation revisited: an updated and revised description of the behavioral characteristics of habituation. National Library of Medicine, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2754195/

Craske M.G., Treanor M., Conway C.C., Zbozinek T, Vervliet B. (2014). Maximizing exposure therapy: an inhibitory learning approach. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4114726/

Standing under bright sunlight on Mission Beach, San Diego at 10:12 AM I saw the ocean in layers of blue that expanded across my entire field of vision. I stared into the distance at turquoise, cerulean, indigo, and baby blue that almost matched my faded Levi’s. I felt calm, steady breaths, the sentiment that life was entirely worth living. This is not the only time I’ve experienced this: Throughout my life, have been staggered by the balancing effect that a few minutes spent looking out a window, into a blue sky, across a blue horizon, or even into the speckled navy of a night sky can have on my physiology and mental state. Blue is the color most widely associated with the sea, as well as the sky. It is the color of distance, of atmospheric vastness. It is the color of worlds beyond our reach, worlds we nonetheless find so pleasing to look at.

Color is one of the primary sensory factors involved in the process the human physiology uses to make meaning. It is one of the first ways humans categorize the world in infancy, and is a powerful tool of symbolism within cultures and history. Among all colors, blue holds a particularly complex place in human perception and culture. Looking into history, it is surprisingly unclear exactly when humans first started treating blue as a distinct color. Many early societies leave little trace of blue in their art, artifacts, or even language. Some historians note that explicit references to the color remain absent from many ancient texts, including the early versions of the Bible and even Homer’s Odyssey where the sea is famously described not as blue but as “wine-dark.”

When humans did begin to represent blue deliberately it required extraordinary effort. True blue pigments are rare in the earth (where most pigment is harvested), though blue can be found in the middle-eastern rock Lapis Lazuli, which is a key ingredient in the popular Renaissance pigment ultramarine (beyond the sea). Ultramarine was so coveted during the Renaissance that it was more valuable than gold, and was thus reserved for the most important or sacred figures in paintings, perhaps most notably the robes of the Virgin Mary. The same color painters once revered as precious and kept reserved for depictions of the sacred exists freely around us in the present day.

While cultures have long attached rich symbolic meaning to the color blue, modern research suggests that our attraction to it may also have physiological bases.

Philosopher Denis Dutton is credited for the term “aesthetic Darwinism” which proposes that human aesthetic preferences may have evolved alongside survival instincts. According to aesthetic Darwinism, humans evolved to feel drawn to landscape aesthetics that supported survival of a human population. Blue environments signal evolutionarily advantageous conditions. Clear blue skies indicate stable weather and long-range visibility, while bodies of water provide resources for survival. As a result, the human brain may interpret these environments as relatively safe, which could encourage relaxation and exploratory mindsets.

Research on environmental psychology supports this idea. Exposure to natural environments, particularly those including water (sometimes referred to as “blue spaces”) are associated with reduced stress and improved physical activity (Georgiou, M., et al). Psychologist Stephen Kaplan’s Attention Restoration Theory offers another explanation for this experience. The Attention Restoration Theory suggests that natural environments restore mental attention because they engage the mind and capture attention without exhausting an individual’s cognitive energy. Kaplan references a state of mind called “soft fascination,” which is associated with natural environments (hard-fascination would be watching an auto-race, while soft-fascination emerges from activities like walking in nature). Soft-fascination is conducive to the processes of cognitive restoration and stress reduction (Kaplan, 1995).

In addition, studies of light exposure show that blue wavelengths emitted by daylight influence circadian rhythms and cognitive alertness (Lockley et al., 2006; Cajochen et al., 2011). Taken together, these findings suggest that the calming effect many people experience when looking at oceans or skies may not be purely symbolic or cultural and may be connected to deeper biological processes of perception and evolution.

Before the mind begins to register a view from a cliff or an expansive horizon as beautiful, the body begins responding. My shoulders drop, my jaw unclenches, the tension between my eyebrows seems to dissipate while my eyes scan the distance. Looking back at history and evolution, it’s no wonder I find myself standing still in front of the ocean, or views of the sky: this environment may be embedded in my physiology to be perceived as safe and full of restorative potential.

If blue environments help regulate the nervous system, what does that mean for daily life?

It is incredibly easy to encounter the sky (even through cloud covers and atmospheric variances, the sun naturally emits blue light). Even an attentive glance upward may initiate regulatory responses to an individual’s physiology. Blue environments are one of the most accessible natural regulators available to us, and offer valuable variance from the hard-fascination inducing, close-range stimulus modern humans are so familiar with which are known to cause stress. One simple way to experience this effect is to intentionally spend a few moments looking at the broadest sky, or open horizon available. After a minute or two one may notice their bodily tensions softening and their mind relaxing. Perhaps this is the body remembering something ancient, of standing under an open sky and scanning the distance.