TIME TO REST

It has been said that the amount of sleep required by the average person is just five minutes more! Too many of us are chronically sleep-deprived. Late to bed and early to rise. And it costs us dearly.

Dr. Dean Ornish wrote a bestselling book called STRESS, DIET AND YOUR HEART. It was a good book. In it he talks about how to manage stress, how diet promotes a health life and why proper stress management and good diet affects ones heart.

He should have been on top of the world. He had just turned forty. He was fit and healthy. STRESS, DIET AND YOUR HEART soared to the top of The New York Times bestseller list. So what was the problem?

Where was the joy and fulfillment he so desperately wanted?

He was working more than 80 hours a week, what with speaking, promoting his book and working, and he was exhausted. A wake-up call came in a conversation with a flight attendant. Ornish had just barely made it in time for his flight and he collapsed into his seat.

A flight attendant noticed his frazzled state. She remarked, "You look harried."

"I feel harried," he admitted.

The attendant tried to encourage him. She said, "I just read a book that might help! She said she highly recommended it. It was a book called STRESS, DIET AND YOUR HEART. She told him that it had some wonderful stress-management techniques that he might try.

At that point Dr. Ornish decided to make the changes he so desperately needed.

(From "Why Being Happy Keeps You Healthy," by Dean Ornish, M.D., "Family Circle," April 1, 1998)

We need lots of rest. These bodies are beautiful creations. They run practically on peanuts and, when well cared for, they can serve us splendidly for many years. But when neglected they run down like an unwound clock.

Sir John Lubbock once said this about relaxation: "Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time."

Is it time to rest?

by Steve Goodiera