Rest and Oxygenation: Why we all need to stop and breathe

Sometimes I do too much for too long.  Constantly taking on more and more tasks, I pretend to be a Type A overachiever who has her life together and can do it all.  But on the inside, I’m gasping for breath, wondering when I will find relief from the hustle.

Have you ever felt like you were drowning?

Deep breaths are essential.  Without them, even the brain cannot function well.  Put simply, it runs out of oxygen.  Allow me to illustrate:

In Dr. Julia Evans’ class on neurobiology, volunteers participated in a series of demonstrations to highlight the importance of rest.  Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), Dr. Evans measured how much oxygen was in the volunteer’s brain during the following:

            1.  Regular breathing at rest (not thinking about anything in particular)

            2.  Holding their breath

            3.  A simple cognitive or language task for a few minutes

            4.  A more complex cognitive or language task for a few minutes

Regular breathing was poetic:  oxygen levels gently undulated like a calm day at sea.  Holding their breath, on the other hand, was a storm:  sudden dips in oxygen levels left the brain gasping.

The simple cognitive task looked a lot like regular breathing.  Thinking about something easy wasn’t making many ripples. 

At first, the more complex task looked the same:  gentle fluctuations in oxygen, nothing major, just like breathing.  After a few minutes, though, the brain’s oxygen levels began a wild dance, dipping and spiking.  On the outside, nothing had changed.  Most volunteers reported that they did not even notice a difference.

The brain definitely noticed.  It was using oxygen more quickly than the heart could supply it.

Imagine living without air. 

We can’t do it.  Our bodies are designed to rest.  Even after billions of years of practice, life on Earth needs to stop and breathe.  And not just every once in a while—we must rest frequently, daily, even within the hour.  Even a brief moment of rest can restore the oxygen to the brain.

After taking a moment to breathe (without thinking about the task), the volunteer’s oxygenation levels returned to normal. 

What does this mean for Speech Therapy?  As I work with my patients, I aim to “exercise” their brains.  Even athletes know that rest is important.  Yes, strength is gained from a challenge, but at some point we just hurt ourselves.  We must rest.  So during therapy, I frequently pause and allow my patients to re-oxygenate their brains.  Think how tired injured and differently-developing brains must be!  They have to work so much harder to complete each task, even if it doesn’t show on the outside.  

What does this mean for my life?  I have to build in times of quiet, times of mindfulness, times of prayer—however brief—to re-oxygenate my own brain.  It’s difficult, especially when my schedule is full to bursting.  And I definitely don’t always succeed.  But after a while, I can feel my brain gasping, and I know it’s been too long since I’ve taken a rest.

The brain is sacred.  Without it, there is no breathing.  We must honor our brains’ need for rest.  We must stop and breathe.

It takes work and discipline to regularly rest.  This is counter-cultural.  The world tells us that the purpose of rest is to allow us to work harder.  But rest is a natural state.  It is good to rest, to enjoy each other, to enjoy God.  Rest for the sake of rest is good.  With the psalmist, we sing:  “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove!  I would fly away and be at rest.”