Women encouraged to take part in the ‘Rest Revolution’ in Cork

LIFE is busy, and getting busier, but that doesn’t mean we should keep going and ignoring our bodies’ signs that we’re nearing crisis point, according to advocate and educator for women’s health, Dr Fiona Barry.

“Women are at a stage where we have a career and we have a home life but we haven’t cracked the balance between them. Our career has just been added to the list of everything else we do: child rearing commitments, running a household, looking after ageing parents.

“This isn’t just a physical burden on women, it’s a significant mental load,” she explains.

But most women don’t think about the mental side of it all, says Dr Barry.

“The best analogy I can come up with for a woman’s brain is that ticker tape you see scrolling across the bottom of a screen of a news channel, it never stops,” she says.

“Even when women are sitting still, ostensibly watching Netflix, there are so many thoughts running through their head. This means that their brains aren’t resting.”

According to Dr Barry, our bodies are constantly giving us information, and telling us when they’re at crisis point. But a lot of us are too busy to listen to the signs.

“If your sleep is being interrupted or you’re finding it difficult to get to sleep, or your menstrual cycle changes suddenly, or your digestive system starts acting up with constipation or diarrhoea, or both, chances are something isn’t right,” she says.

But most of us will wait for our body to fall apart before we do something, and then, when we get sick, we get annoyed at our body. We treat it like the enemy, and keep going even when our body is saying it needs to rest.

“We’ve become human doings instead of human beings and that’s not conducive to rest. When we laud productivity and being busy, we start to see resting as being lazy,” says Dr Barry.

With this mindset, it’s no surprise that burnout is on the rise. Indeed, in a 2023 University of Limerick survey, 67% of women said they’re feeling more stressed since the Covid-19 pandemic, and 49% said they’re finding it difficult to balance their work and home life.

Dr Barry believes the increase in working from home during the pandemic has blurred the lines between work and home.

“We’re forgetting to take breaks or thinking we shouldn’t take a break, and if we do take a break from work, many women are using that time to do other jobs around the house,” she says.

“Women are just not switching off, we’re not showing ourselves the same care and nurturing that we give to our children and our partners.”

As the safety announcement on every flight says: in the event of a change in air cabin pressure, you need to put on your own mask first before attending to your kids. This is sound advice, says Dr Barry.

“There’s an old Chinese proverb that says ‘you can’t pour from an empty vessel’. We owe it to ourselves to slow things down and focus on what matters.”

On April 28, Dr Barry, together with Newstalk’s Clare McKenna, is hosting The Rest Revolution. This one-day event will feature a series of interactive talks on the importance of taking time to rest, and a panel discussion where people are invited to ask questions.

We’ll also be showing attendees what our body feels like when it’s in a state of stress and what it feels like when it’s in a restful state.

Incorporating rest into our day can feel like something else we need to add to the list, but Dr Barry believes that, with a bit of practise, it can become second nature.

“Just taking small nuggets of time to fully rest every day will make a difference,” she says.

“We’ll be showing people how to incorporate moments of rest into their day - helping them to come out of doing mode, and into rest mode. The more they do that, the more they’ll want to do it, and suddenly they’ve created more space for themselves.”

The event will finish with a yoga session run by Louise George, followed by a sound bath by Fiona McDonagh.

“We’re encouraging attendees to tell their families that they’re ‘off grid’ for the evening after the event too, so that they can hold on to the feeling of rest and zen they’ve achieved.

The Rest Revolution will take place in the Ballymaloe Grainstore in East Cork between 2.30pm and 6.30pm on Sunday, April 28, it is a ticketed event, bookings can be made on www.eventbrite.ie