How Radical Rest Can Change Your Life

Radical Rest Practice and Cognitive Shuffling

Taking care of the quality of our rest in the face of the daunting world is essential to quality of life and any movement work. For many, rest is deemed a non-option in the face of capitalism when the natural need for rest is problematized or considered shameful. Given how reasonably anxiety-inducing the systems we navigate are, it is easy to see why many people struggle with accessing quality of sleep or viewing it as their human right.

When anxiety interferes with falling asleep it can look like repetitive distressing ruminations of perceived and actual thoughts, beliefs, and problems about ourselves or the world around us. At times these ruminations can replay over and over moments of what ifs, shoulds, or self criticism, which keeps the nervous in a state of alertness and vigilance.

The reality for many folks experiencing anxiety, anxious thoughts can keep our brain from its natural process of transitioning to sleepfulness. One way of enhancing your quality of sleep and protecting your right to rest is the practice of cognitive shuffling developed by Dr. Luc Beaudoin.

Cognitive shuffling is a simple exercise of distracting mental activities that focus on neutral thought content to intentionally disrupt anxiety-inducing thoughts. When anxiety-inducing thoughts are disrupted, the shuffling of random imaginings of emotionally neutral objects or scenarios promote a quicker transition into sleep.  

“Based on the somnolent information-processing theory, it suggests that falling asleep is a gradual process rather than an instantaneous switch. This theory posits that as we begin to fall asleep, our brain’s concern with maintaining mental coherence diminishes, making it easier to distract the mind and promote sleep onset.” -Bay Area CBT Center

What does Cognitive Shuffling look like? 

In short, cognitive shuffling looks like focusing on explicitly neutral, random, and diverse imagery, situations, and words that simulates the natural progression of reduced coherence that occurs when someone starts to fall asleep. 

One method is called Word-Based Shuffling.

Randomly choose a word and construct nonsensical sequences of unassociated neutral words based on a word that starts with each letter of the word. An example could be, you might choose the word “sky” and create a list of words starting with each letter, such as:

-sunscreen

-kale

-yo-yo

And repeat with the last word in the sequence, again choosing neutral, random, and diverse words.

In a world that oversaturates us with distress, trust that there will be opportunity in our collective and individual wakefulness to meet the concerns of the day. Give yourself permission to rest and reclaim sleep when you can. 

If you would like to learn more about cognitive shuffling and other skills to help you cope with anxiety and rest in our ever changing world, please get in touch to schedule a free consultation with one of our therapists today.