← For Good
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- [00:00]
A
Our bodies were not built to burn out. They're not meant to burn out. I'll sleep when I did, like, think about how violent that really is when you really, like, break that down. You sleep when you dead, but sleep is a part of your life right now.
- [00:12]
B
I went through an extreme period last year of just burnout, and the only thing my body was signaling me to do was to sleep.
- [00:20]
A
People are really killing themselves. It's a deep public health issue around diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and also mental health.
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C
A reason why we probably feel like we can't sleep because we're constantly trying to prove ourselves. We're constantly trying to outwork everybody else.
- [00:34]
A
The main tenet of the work is that rest is a form of resistance because it disrupts and pushes back against capitalism and white supremacy. I don't think anything innovative is going to come from an exhausted mind. I think the revolution is going to be led by well rested people.
- [01:04]
C
What's good, everybody?
- [01:05]
B
It's your guy, JoJo Simmons, and it's Vanessa Simmons.
- [01:08]
C
And this is the For Good podcast where we focus on the good, never the bad. And we're measured by what we do, not what we have.
- [01:15]
B
And today's guest is someone who's challenging the way we think about productivity, burnout, and even something as simple as a rest.
- [01:23]
C
We're joined by Tricia Hersey, the founder of the NAP Ministry, a movement that encourages people to slow down and see rest as a powerful form of healing and resistance.
- [01:31]
B
She's also the author of Rest Is Resistance, a manifesto where she challenges the grind culture and reminds us that our value isn't defined by how much we
- [01:40]
C
produce in a world that's always telling us to do more and move faster. This conversation is about learning to pause, reset, and take care of ourselves.
- [01:49]
B
Yes. I love it. So let's get into it.
- [01:51]
C
Let's get into it. First of all, Trisha, thank you for coming on the for a good podcast.
- [01:55]
B
Wow.
- [01:55]
A
Thank you for having me. What an honor. I'm so excited to speak with both of you. I'm just really, like, honored at the invitation. I'm excited.
- [02:03]
C
Thank you. Well, we're honored to have you here. I watched a few of your interviews and some keynote speaks and stuff that you. You were a part of and very, very great stuff you were talking about. So I'm happy to have you on this platform to kind of lend that knowledge here. You know what I mean? So super excited. Vanessa, what's up? Let's do it. You ready to get into it?
- [02:23]
B
I'm so ready to get into this conversation. It is definitely one that we all need. Definitely me, for sure. All experienced burnout. So you've built an entire movement around the idea that rest is resistance. What inspired you to start the NAP ministry? And why do you believe rest is such an important part of healing?
- [02:43]
A
When I got the invitation for the podcast, I was like, okay, I love the vibe of, like, what if this idea of taking care of ourselves could save the world? I thought that was such a, like, fascinating inquiry to think about, because that's kind of how I began to think about rest when I first thought of this idea. Like, I really came to this idea because I was an exhausted, super exhausted, curious mother, student, wife, community servant, organizer. I was in graduate school at the time, studying theology and seminary. And so I was really in a space of where I was deeply exhausted. At the same time, I was also an artist and an organizer. So I was understood the ways in which, you know, spirit can really change us. And I do believe rest to be a spiritual practice. And so I was exhausted and I just, literally just began to start trying to, like, go a little bit slower. I named the idea of resting saving my life, like the first line of my book. My first book is, rest saved my life. And I was creating this and thinking of this only to save my own life. What would it look like if I slowed down and didn't stay up to three in the morning to do my papers for school? What would it look like if I just took a nap on campus or if I just decided to do less? What was the experiment and what it could do for my body? Because I just was at a point of deep burnout. I want to talk a little bit about burnout later, about what I actually think it is, but I think it all came together in this cocktail. I was in school studying cultural trauma and spirituality. I was exhausted myself. I was an organizer, and so I began to just lay down. And I was also studying cultural trauma at the time. So I was researching what it would feel like for our ancestors when they were in Jim Crow terrorism, what their bodies, what they held somatically in their bodies. What would it feel like to, like, navigate a space where you weren't really seen as human? And so through that research, through my own exhaustion, I just began to experiment. I had no idea it would ever be all of this. I thought I would just feel better. You know, I hope that I would feel better. I hope that I would begin to make connections in my work, that I would feel better physically, mentally, and Event very, very quickly. It happened soon as I started, like, taking naps, not staying up late, just experimenting with, like, a deep little daydreaming moment on the couch. I started to not ever stay over midnight at school. I would stay sometimes at 2, 3 in the morning, studying in this really intense program. You know, academia really is, like, the center of, like, grind culture. It teaches us, like, to really grind ourselves into a pulp for the benefit of something outside of us. And so my experimentation was just that. I wanted to see what would happen. And really, within a week, I began to see things change in my life. I began to get better grades, make better connections in my research. I became more calm. You know, my headaches stopped. You know, I felt better physically in so many ways. And so it deeply was just curiosity. It was curiosity, experimentation, and trying to save my own life by doing something that is simple as a nap.
- [05:53]
B
That sounds like the best experiment I've ever heard of, honestly. And I love that the results came so fast. Yes. Yeah. I absolutely love that rest is truly sacred. So I love that you have made this your ministry and are spreading this good word. Like, that touched me. Yeah.
- [06:11]
A
Thank you so much. I think the question around, why do I think rest is resistance? You know, the main tenet of the work is that rest is a form of resistance because it disrupts and pushes back against capitalism and white supremacy. So this work is really justice work. It's political work. It is not whitewashed wellness, fluffy energy. It's really political refusal to say to a culture that looks at us, specifically us black folks who look at us and see the lineage of our history and say that we aren't human and we aren't enough unless we fulfill all of these things, unless we create, unless we do. And so when you begin to tie your worth, your divine worth as a human into how much you can get done, that's when we're headed towards crisis mode. Because I believe as a spiritual person that our divine worth is given to us at our birth, when we were born and brought into the world and chosen to be here, that was, we are enough right now. We never do another thing. We just are enough because we are alive. And I think, you know, both of you being parents, I know you probably would have never thought, okay, I'm gonna have a child. And I just want them to just immediately just ignore their bodies, get on the ground, Work, work, work hard, Never stop. Like, I didn't have a child for that reason. I want my son to be able to be of service to himself, to his family, for him to see himself as whole outside of anything, on the outside of him, like inside of him, knowing that he is divine, you know, and he's a gift.
- [07:39]
B
So, yeah, I love that.
- [07:41]
C
Now, a lot of people grow up believing that being busy means you're successful. Why do you think society places so much value on constant productivity? You know, you always hear like, I sleep when I die and stuff like that. Why do you think we put so much value on constant productivity?
- [07:59]
A
You know, the systems benefit when we are like that. The systems benefit when we push our bodies and work two, three, four jobs. Like we are producing for empire's gain, for the gain of a culture that cap a capitalist culture that looks at profit over people. Everything is about the next dollar, really, the next penny. When you look at capitalism, like, they try to squeeze every single thing out. So when it becomes. When you think about capitalism being created on plantations, you know, this work has an historic examination. It looks at what were they trying to do when they were experimenting on black bodies. How far could they automate them? Could a person work 20 hours? Could they work while they were pregnant? Could they have a baby? Could they pick 500 pounds of cotton? Like, so our bodies being commodified in those early stages of capitalism's creation really is the same kind of engine that's driving this capitalist, like, deep, like, mindset around our bodies and labor and who we are and what we need to do to be able to feel whole. And so the system benefits when we're exhausted. They benefit when we are overworking. They benefit when we're not sleeping until we're dead. They benefit when all. When we are pushing our bodies to the brink of deep violence. It's really violent to, like, ignore your body needing to sleep. You know, sleep deprivation is also a public health issue. Like, everyone approaches sleep deprivation. It's killing us physically. So this work looks at the physical. It looks at the spiritual, looks at the political. It looks at all these different legs that have come together to make us see ourselves as not deserving of rest. Think about the idea of, like, I'll sleep when I dead. Like, think about how violent that really
- [09:40]
B
is when you really, like, breaking it is.
- [09:43]
A
What are you talking about? Yes, like, that is the most violent thing to say about your own body. You need to. You'll sleep when you dead. But sleep is a part of your life right now. Without it, you won't be able to, like, thrive in this world. And people are really killing themselves. It's a deep public health issue around diabetes. High blood pressure, heart disease, and also mental health. You know, with you guys being mental health advocates, like, the mental health of what happens when we aren't resting is really quite stark.
- [10:14]
C
That's a great answer. You don't. Yeah, I really love it. Like, you won't sleep when you, you know, when you die, you mess around and die if you don't get some sleep. You know what I mean?
- [10:25]
A
That's exactly what is going to happen. Yeah, like, it's literal. And I think about burnout being so normalized as like just part of parts of being alive, you know, just part of being a worker, part of working in corporate America or being an entrepreneur, like part of that. They trained us to believe this lie, the socialization that just part of that is to be burnt out. But when you look really at what burnout is, it's deep trauma showing up in our bodies from like a lifetime of worker exploitation, of not listening, of being disconnected and being numbed out. And so what you're seeing now is a society of people who feel so numbed out, they feel so disconnected from their bodies, they have to disembody themselves because the systems demand that. They demand that you get on robot mode, that you get on that grind, that you numb out. I gotta get up, work, go. You know, like, it becomes this, like, pace of life that looks numbing, it looks zombie like, you know. Yeah, yeah.
- [11:24]
B
So many people feel guilty if they, like, slow down or take a break. Where do you think this idea of guilt comes in with? Why do people equate guilt with rest?
- [11:39]
A
You know what? You know, I been thinking about this for a long time. You know, I've been doing this work since about 2013. So I've had a lot of time to kind of talk with thousands and thousands, millions of people really about this idea. And I really think that we have to take it really far back into like our own programming. And I think I really was able to see this live and in person once I had a child. Because it's like, oh, you see from an infancy to now how they grow up to be like, where are you learning this stuff at? You know, it's like these ideas, this socialization, being a part of this culture socializes you to believe that resting is lazy. You know, that you gotta do more, push yourself. I was taught by my own parents, you know, beautiful people, but think about their culture and how they grew up in their generation. I was taught from a very young age. As a young girl, you're going to have to work harder than Your classmates. I mean, I was told this At 8, 9 years old, you're going to have to stay up later and do those papers because the system is going to look at you as a black person, as a black woman, and think you're not doing enough. Like, so I was told your white classmates, whatever they're doing, do 10 times more. And so where does that place you to be able to push yourself? How much more can you give in a culture that's looking at you? And this idea of laziness is like, deep inside of our social. So it's basic, definitely socialization from birth. I watched it from my child being born, being put into the elementary schools. I used to volunteer at his school when he was in third grade, like in the classroom. And I would watch them tell young children, like, it's not time to go to the bathroom, hold your pee. And that seems so normal. But that's literally like disconnecting and disembodying someone to ignore your body's cues to go to the restroom. Like, that begins this idea of your body doesn't know anything. You don't have to listen, Listen to the systems, don't listen to what your body is naturally telling you to do. And so I just watched that happen. I watched slowly, this idea of you got to stay up late to do homework, you know, you got to go hard or you're not doing enough. And so this socialization, everything in culture supports that from religion, our churches, our schools, our own parents, like our bosses, our teachers, they support, support the idea that you got to do more, that if you stop, you're going to the whole bottom of your life is going to fall out, that you have to push your body past the brink of knowing when it's time to stop. And so these toxic messages are part of capitalism and white supremacy's call. Like, it's really socialization.
- [14:09]
C
I think one thing that stuck out to me, you said, that was really important for me, was the narrative of laziness, being attached to us as a culture. And that's a reason why we probably feel like we can't sleep because we're constantly trying to prove ourselves. We're constantly trying to outwork everybody else, but we're trying to show our value. And it does equate to us sometimes believing that we shouldn't be resting because we have to keep our foot on their necks, as they say. Right. You know, so not in a literal sense, but in a figurative sense. So, you know, I know earlier you said you want to talk a little Bit more about burnout. And you often talk about burnout as something deeply connected to larger systems in society. Can you explain how overwork and exhaustion shows up in our culture?
- [14:52]
A
Yeah, I mean, you see it so much. Like, I really think, you know, this move, this idea of this restless resist in nap ministry move. When I first started it, people thought it was like satire. They were like, this is a joke, right? You know, you're a funny girl. You kind of do your satire, funny stuff. Like, sounds like you just want to
- [15:08]
C
talk about sleep, right?
- [15:09]
A
Like, you're just being fun girl. I'm like, no, I'm so serious. You know, I was right out of graduate school. And they were like, what are you gonna do with your degree? What are you up to? You know, I trained as a chaplain to work in hospitals with chaplaincy and spiritual direction. And so I couldn't find a job. You know, I was going and looking for work and I was also exhausted. So this idea of the nap ministry really came as me being like, I'm so exhausted. I know that there's one other person who feels like this. I just was like, let me just get one other person who can vibe with me and feel and we can be in community together. And so I just started hosting these small rest events all over Atlanta. Like, people could come and lay down during their lunch break with yoga mats, blankets, clothes. Like, we've done thousands of them all over the world. And so the first sometimes I would do when one person would come out, be so happy. I would be like, spraying lavender oil on them, playing a little soundtrack, sitting there holding, and then they will wake up. We would talk about rest and then we would have these large events and they just kept building. And what I learned from that is that, you know, people had never taken naps in 10, 12 years. You know, like, when was the last time I even took a nap? They didn't also didn't see daydreaming as a part of rest, didn't see the idea of slowing down. They just could not imagine the idea of what it would look to slow down. And so this community that we've built is because it is an outlier movement. Everyone in the culture around you is on grind mode. Like, you really are going to be seen as a little bit of person outside of it. You know, the person who takes naps. The person who's like, I gotta take a nap before I go out. You know, the one who's like, always trying to get to that sleep moment or slow down. It really is outsider. It's an outlier movement in a way. And so when I talk about burnout, I hope that people will begin to see that it is not normal. I think that's the main thing. I really hope that my work can be an awareness tool. If people can just a little bit drop into, like, okay, I kind of get what you're saying. That kind of makes sense. How does that go together? But I trust that our bodies know best. And I trust that if we give space to listen to our bodies, that our bodies will let us know that it's not normal to feel exhausted like this, that it's not normal to feel burnt out at our age. You know, if you're talking about Vanessa, maybe you've had burnout before. You know, being a mom, a parent, like, it's just seen as everybody's like this. It's just what it is, right? And so how do we begin to open up the idea of, like, this is not normal. It's violent for us to be thinking our bodies can burn out. Our bodies were not built to burn out. They're not meant to burn out.
- [17:44]
B
Yeah, I went through an extreme period last year of just burnout. Things were out of my control. I was going through a lot of challenging times, and the only thing my body was signaling me to do was to sleep middle of the day, drop my daughter off. It would be even, you know, 12 o' clock in the afternoon, and I would feel guilty, but I was like, yeah, my body is saying just sleep for an hour. And then I would wake up and things would just seem a little bit more clear, you know, not as dramatic as it was before I fell asleep. So, yeah, I've definitely experienced that. I've definitely taken the time last year to just rest. And it does make such a difference.
- [18:23]
A
It makes such a difference when you know what's happening, when you're in that zone, you know, when you are rested. I believe that resting is a deep portal that we can go into that allows for us time to invent, for us to heal, for us to imagine, for us to make sense of things that we can't make sense of in our awake world. That's why they say sleep on it, you know, go sleep on things a little bit, make things different.
- [18:46]
C
I find it funny, you know, I never, you know, I think it just a light bulb just went off my head and it clicked to me. Now that we're talking about it, you, Vanessa, are talking about it. When I would go through problems back in the day or I'd be in the tabloids for stuff that I was like embarrassed about or shameful of or it was like a lie about me. My first thing I would do is go to sleep. I used to think it was me escaping, but it was really me trying to make sense of everything and I'd feel different. I felt like I thought about it. I wake up, be like, it's not that bad in that time of over exhaustion mentally, you know what I mean? I would just be like, I'm going to sleep, I'm going to sleep. I'm cutting off, done. I sleep. And my friends used to always be like, yo, he's in a room sleeping four hours, he sleep. Everybody used to be like, yo, go check on him be see if he's okay.
- [19:32]
A
Right?
- [19:33]
C
They always knew JoJo's going to sleep if he's going through anything. Yes, I prioritize my sleep from young. You know, I go to sleep early. Even now I'm in the bed at 9 o'. Clock.
- [19:44]
A
I love it. Yeah, I wake up pretty early.
- [19:47]
C
I wake up like 6:30 because I like to go to the gym. But because I go to sleep at 9, I'm getting so many hours in that my body wakes up at 6:30 anyway and I feel refreshed. So I've always prioritized my sleep, but I never knew why.
- [20:00]
B
But when you think about the way even we raise our kids when they're younger, they throw a tantrum and it seems send them to sleep and they're going to wake up like nothing happened before they went to sleep. We got to parent ourselves like that.
- [20:13]
A
We have to parent our. I feel like when you see what's happening in our culture, everybody's so mean and you know, online and just so agitated and so all about community. They don't want community. Like I really feel like people are just exhausted, they're sleep deprived, like they take a nap, they will see things in a different way. It becomes a portal for another entrance in. Also during my nap time, I was also connecting a lot with my ancestors. Like I was seeing my grandmother and I was thinking this idea of rest also being a form of reparations for black people, a form of if our families, our ancestors. My grandmother was a sharecropper, they couldn't sleep, they couldn't rest, they were just going, going, going. So in the work is also this refusal, it's a political refusal for me to say I'm gonna regain some of the dream space that was stolen from them. What could they have figured out quicker if they were rested what could we figure out if we have a rested mind? I don't think anything innovative or justice field is gonna come from an exhausted mind. I think the revolution's gonna be led by, well, rested people, People who have their heads on straight, they swivel, they take on because their brain is at full capacity. So when you don't rest, so much is happening in the brain. Neuroscience tells us that we're not even participating in the full, like, creative ideas that are available to us. And so when I say the systems benefit when we aren't rested, that's what I mean. They benefit when we are exhausted and burnt out and sleep deprived. Because you're easier to manipulate. You have less patience. You can't figure out things. You can't make connections between this and that and be like, okay, now wait a minute, you know, you get your peeped a little bit better, you can see things. And I feel like as I've rested and been on this journey of deep, intentional rest for the last 10 years, I'm unstoppable when it comes to, like, my mind, like when it comes to my ideas, when I'm offline, when I'm in an innovative, creative space of letting my mind do the powerful thing that it wants to do, that there's spiritual information being downloaded to me. I believe so many things about our healing in this dimension, about our freedom, freedom as black people, about our liberation is waiting for us in a dream. I feel like our answers just want to tell us a secret. If I could just tell y' all one thing. But I can't share with you because you're overworking. You're always busy, you're never stopping. You don't never stop to pray. You never stop for a download. You're not getting any information from outside of yourself. And you're just in this deep loop of thinking you can control everything. And so when I say this is a spiritual practice, it taps us into so much information that we're missing out on that because of our urgency, because of our rushing, you know.
- [23:00]
B
Yeah, this is some deep, powerful stuff, man. Thank you for this information and having this conversation with us. So for our listeners who are feeling constantly overwhelmed, you know, with all of the things of life, life, family, career, what are some small ways that people can prioritize rest who want to make a change?
- [23:21]
A
Yeah, I love the idea of it being. I want it to be very small. You know, my work isn't like no cookie cutter ten step program. You do these and you're done. It really is looking At a lifelong practice and commitment and love. Like as much as what you talk about in your work around mental health, like in healing. Like this isn't a one trick thing. This is a lifetime practice. It's a practice in deep love for ourselves, for each other, for our community. And I think by going slow we honor the path of that. We don't even, we don't need to rush our healing. We don't need to be urgent about that. I give thanks for that. And so I would say one thing you could really do is to look at your calendar as like sacred text. Like you be in that calendar and you're not putting things in there back to back. You're looking at what's really important, what you can really say yes to. I see some people's calendars, some of my friends, and it's like 1 to 2 is a meeting and then from 2:05 to 3:05, like there's like literally five minutes in between and then there's a. Like they back to back to back.
- [24:23]
C
I'm guilty some days, I'm not guilty
- [24:25]
A
some days it's like that. You have to move like that. But if you can keep in your mind that the more that I give space for a little bit of slowness and time, even in the morning, I say longer showers, baths at night, drinking tea in the morning before you even get on your phone. Like the phone also, we won't get to any type of rest revolution if we're not doing any type of detoxing on our phone. We have to talk about our addiction to social media, Internet. It's an addiction and that's really what it is.
- [24:55]
C
I want to transition right into that. Since you brought up social media because was my next question. We can't ignore the times we are in. Obviously we are living in a time where social media controls the world, in my opinion, and so does the screen time. So social media can make it feel like everyone is always working, hustling, achieving, you know, we're always comparing. How do you recommend people protect their mental health in that environment? Speaking about social media.
- [25:19]
A
Yeah, you know, I'll offer that they do some type of intentional detox. Like I do a detox, I do a month off every December. I also don't get on before a certain time in the morning. If I don't get on till 10, you know, I'll get on, but I don't have to get on as soon as I wake up, you know, while you're on it. I think it's really Nice. I like to post and go. I just like if you're putting something up because it's part of your work, your entrepreneurship, your calling, your justice work, put it up and just go. You don't need to stay on and hear everything that's happened. Post and go. Have very specific ideas around the time your screen time. Get it down to really low levels because we have to use it. You're right. It is part of the whole makeup of our culture. But I'm really strict about it. I'm not on it at night. I leave my phone in another room. I was reading a study that even when your phone is off, if it's next to you, the radiation have a pull to it. Like it's some. It's like a neurological thing. Yeah. Put it in another room. I'll put it in my office outside of my bedroom. And really look at slowness. I think prayer is a form of rest. I think, yes. I think eye gazing with someone you love is a form of rest. I think walking meditation. I think daydreaming. I host huge collective daydreaming activations. We have a thousand people, 700 people, but we sit and we daydream about the world we wanna see. And we do that together and collective. And so to me, the idea of daydreaming is really.
- [26:53]
C
I love daydreaming.
- [26:54]
A
You love it. A lot of people don't daydream because when they were little, they were like, told, stop daydreaming.
- [27:03]
C
Shower. I like to daydream, you know, because I believe my daydreams are visions from God. So that's why I believe I love them. Because I feel like he's sending me messages of. Of what my life could be if I continue to go on the path that he wants me to go on. So that's why I enjoy daydreaming. I don't enjoy daydreaming because I'm like. I enjoy being in the days and I'm, like, not aware what's going on around me. I enjoy daydreaming because I'm. I. I get visions of. Of. Of a world I want to see as myself and people around me. So that's why I lean into daydreaming. I actually, sometimes my wife would be like, you're stuck. I'm like, I'm not stuck. I'm seeing it all. I'm seeing you in the new house and the new car and this and that.
- [27:44]
A
You get it? Yeah. You get that? I love it.
- [27:48]
B
It's a form of meditation.
- [27:49]
A
It's a form of meditation. We need to do it more because we keep talking about the new world we want to see. We see the world we're up against right now and how chaotic it is. But how do we think we're going to be able to imagine and, and set up that new world if we're coming from it, from not from an exhausted, fast paced, non daydreaming, non rested mind. We need these moments to be able to imagine this new world that we want to craft for ourselves, for our families and our community.
- [28:18]
C
So I love that answer.
- [28:19]
B
Yeah.
- [28:20]
C
And I'm going to try to start putting my, I've been thinking, I'm going to start putting my phone in the bathroom. I've heard that too. And it's hard for me because like you said, we're entrepreneurs. We, we do kind of need the social media because there's, there's deals on, on always going on, there's comments coming in, there's opportunities. But another thing I, I will say is I know Vanessa wants to get into a question, but I did grasp the post and go, I used to post and be like, okay, what the comments would like. Now I post and go, come back, oh, 300 comments. Oh, I feel blessed, you know?
- [28:51]
A
Right.
- [28:52]
C
I love everything you're saying.
- [28:53]
B
So I know we touched on this a little bit, but you described rest as a form of liberation. So what do you mean by that? And how can rest actually empower us?
- [29:03]
A
You know, that's the heart of the work. You know, when I first started the work, I was thinking, you know, I'm an organizer and I'm a social justice activist. My entire life was raised by one. And so my mindset is always centered on what does it look like for us to really be free, free in our bodies, free in our world. Like, what is deep liberation to me? And to me, liberation, it looks like extended freedom. It looks like this space of deep freedom. We can just be. To me, I talk about the idea of black people just being. What does leisure look like? What does it mean to just be, to not always be thinking about the next thing, the next dollar, the next money, because the systems have us running that way. Capitalism is real. Like being outside of money is real. Poverty, homelessness, all these created things this culture has created that are up against us are real. I'm not in some delusion of thinking that, you know, you don't have to work because I come from a lineage of poverty, a linear of exhaustion. And so I understand the idea of me being able to say no to the Systems is liberation for me to say, okay, I know you see me as only here to work and benefit your empire and produce so that you can have more. But I don't belong to you, I don't belong to this. I belong to God. I belong to my community. I belong to me. And so to me, resting is a deep resistance to. In a culture that wants you going 24 hours a day, seven days a week, everyone, not just black people, but the culture runs on the idea of us going, going super productive produce, do. And so to a culture that sees 24 hours a day, seven days a week as standard, to say no to that, to intentionally say, nope, you can't have me, nope, these are my five minutes. This is my life, this is my body. You don't own my setting boundaries. Yes, it is deep resistance to say to a culture in a world like this. It's just definitely a way for us to take back our bodies, take back, reclaim our time as our own, reclaim our dreams as our own, of our inventions as our own. And so to push back against a system that really wants to see you like that is deep resistance to me. And so to me, that's liberation. It's liberating to say, I'm gonna. I know you want me working three other side hustles. I know you want me making more so you can take more. But I'm gonna say, in this moment, my body is mine. I want to connect with it, I want to heal it. I want it to feel cared for. I want my family to feel cared for. I want to teach my child, you know, what it looks like to feel cared for and what they can see for their bodies. And so I believe that so much work is available to us and so much liberation develop us in the dream space in a rested, slowed down, meditative, connected state that, that is when we're at our strongest. That's when we're at our. Our deepest and most powerful is when we're in a state of deep healing. This is an invitation truly to heal, you know, to look at ourselves and to see why we're people, please, why we can never stop and say no, why we have no boundaries, you know, like why we feel like we aren't good enough unless we are working like this looks at self worth. It begins to uncover the self hate and the self worth that we have been trained to think about ourselves. It's deep love. So I feel like that is what liberation is like. Liberation is deep love for ourselves and it looks at what isn't oppressive you know, to be in oppressive state is to be overworked, is to be exhausted, is to be burnt out. That is not deep love or deep healing is available to us there.
- [32:41]
C
So it is liberating to choose you, you know, liberating failing to choose you. Now, on this podcast, one of the main, one of the big subjects we talk about is personal growth and becoming better versions of ourselves. How does rest actually help people grow rather than hold them back?
- [32:58]
A
I really think rest helps people really see themselves, see who they truly are. Not what the system said you should be doing, not what your family, not what the religion, but it really takes you back to your natural state, who you truly are, your humanness. Anything that can bring our humanness up more to the surface and take away our machine level pace of wanting us to be a machine. Capitalism wants us to be a machine. It will be perfect. That's why they're building the machines now, because we're saying no. That's why the AI robots, you think they're coming. Like they would prefer that. And so when you look at yourself as more human, when you go back to your natural state of who you truly are. When I began resting and sleeping and so on, I began to really see myself, who I was, who I really truly am, and not what others wanted from me. Who I was as a black woman, who I was as an organizer, as a mom, as a community servant, you know, who I was as a child of God. Like, I really began to see myself. I slowed down enough to see what I really was capable of and what was already inside of me. And I began to see. I didn't need any more. I didn't need to get the to do list that I have here. I got to do. I didn't have the list of all the things that I had to do to be perfect, the amount of money I needed to be in a bank. I knew that I was just healed and whole and divine simply because I was alive.
- [34:24]
C
Great answer.
- [34:24]
B
That is good. And so how can communities and families create healthier cultures around rest instead of glorifying burnout?
- [34:32]
A
That's a good question. You know, my work, when I think about rest, they always rest. Rest is a thing, but it really is paired deep with community care. Like, this won't work. This won't happen. We won't be able to have sustained, organic, intentional rest without the community really leaning into this. We need radical community care for us to see each other, to see ourselves outside of productivity, to really stop being like the system, to stop being extractive of each other, to stop using each other, to stop being transactional, to really begin to be vulnerable and intimate and connected with each other. Because we won't make it alone. We will not make. I know the system wants you to think isolationism is cool. Individualism, I don't need nobody. I'll do it on my own. Like, all of that is for the birds. Like that. None of that is true. It's not true at all. We need each other more than we can ever know. We owe each other everything. You know, we do. We're in community. We're with each other. We won't make it out of this. And so I think that when people begin to see the idea of sharing in this and creating deep systems of care, you know, as entrepreneurs, as people even in your family, like, I've set up systems of care so my son knows he's not staying up late to do homework. You know, you're not finna start that. Like, no, you can go and lay down. Like, the real, true healing of his calling, of who he wants to be in the world is going to be available to him in a rested, connected, healed body. It's not going to come from trauma and violence and burnout and from these things. It's going to come from a person who's really in tune with who he is. And so I think the more that we can slow down and tap in and we really will see ourselves for who we are, and we'll be deeper into deep community care. And so the work is always in the collective. Like, I started resting alone on the couch, but immediately when I was like, okay, this is doing something for me, I immediately started hosting these free events. I didn't have any money. I had, like $25. I was like, I'm gonna host an event. And my friends gave me free space. I've never rented a space. I've had events in Amsterdam, Australia, all over the world. And so it's always been like, the community being like, use my space, use my building, whatever you wanna do to host these events and to get people in the collective together to talk about this. And so this work really exists because the community stepped up and saw it as a deep political refuse for us to be in this together.
- [37:01]
C
Now, there may be somebody watching right now that could be experiencing burnout, but they don't realize it yet. What are some of the signs for someone to recognize that they may be experiencing burnout?
- [37:14]
A
Mm, that's a good question. I really think one of the main things is deep, deep lack of patience. You know, when your nerves are. Your nervous system is so dysregulated, you can't even, like, even just sitting still for one second is too much. You know, where this deep nervous system dysregulation, where you're feeling like. A lot of people come to me in burnout stage, and they're like, everything you're saying sounds so good, Trish. I want to do it, but I just can't laugh. I can't stop. They literally will tell me, I don't know how to just stop and take 15 minutes to chill. I gotta be always doing something. My brother told me that once when he was during COVID he works at a tire factory in Tennessee, and they closed the whole factory down because Covid. And so for like a month, they were still paying them, but they didn't have to go to work. And I'm like, like, what you got going on? He was like, I'm at home chilling, getting my check. I'm like, that's love. Like, you're good. He was like, no, but I. I feel like I should be doing something, even psychologically. He just could not even rest in the moment of feeling like, you're still getting paid. So it is a deep brainwashing. I have been naming it as a brainwashing from the beginning of my work. People thought I was being over the top and it was a little too dramatic. No. But we have been brainwashed to believe these lies around our body, around labor, around what it means to be whole and well, around work. And so I think that when people begin to really slow down, even if it's just in a second, take 10 minutes, you know, begin to just dream about the idea. What would it feel like to be rested even if you can't rest, begin to daydream. What would it feel like when I am rested? You know, how could I imagine that? What would it smell like? What would the music sound like when I'm actually in a rested state? And so this deep imagination is where I really want people to tap into them. So burnout looks like probably what most you see, mostly everyone in the culture, like most of the culture, two thirds of the culture, is chronically sleep deprived. The CDC put out this about two years ago. Chronically sleep restricted and sleep deprived, Sleeping less than six hours a day, having full rem, like, never napping. It's like going. And so that's what it looks like biologically. It looks like deep dysregulation, inflammation in the body. It looks like migraines. It Looks like sick all the time. Your immune system is shot, and it looks like a mental state that really, you can't see your way forward. And so mental health and sleep really are parallels with each other. The less you sleep, the more your mental health can be affected. You know, they, like, go together. A lot of times when people are going through mental health crisises, they'll ask, what's your sleep like? And they're not sleeping at all. And so it becomes important to look at the ways in which it's affecting our mental health and our physical health.
- [40:06]
B
So what role does creativity, imagination, and quiet time play in the healing process?
- [40:12]
A
You know, as a person who's a creative. And, you know, when I think about creative people, they really need a lot of time to just sit and do nothing. You know, there needs boredom, needs to be real. You know what I mean? You need to be okay with being bored and not being missing out. Like, this idea of fear of missing out. I'm like, someone said it's called Jomo, the joy of missing out, where it's like, I'm happy to be missing out. Like, yes, let me miss out on some things. So it's like the joy of missing out. I just think that when it comes to slowing down and taking a beat, I'm always just like, there's so much available to us because we've been trained that slowing down and not doing nothing is a waste of time. But we don't see it as a generative space. It is a generative space. Things are happening when you're resting and slowing down. Like, you're in tune with your body. You're, like, letting your organs take a break. You're like, participate in the spiritual practice. You are listening to what your body really wants. And so for me, when I think about silence and listening and slowing down, I just think that those are places where people miss, that they really could be tapping into in this state of deep going all the time. I'm not asking you to always take a full nap. I'm not asking you to always sleep eight hours a day. Like, Jojo is going to bed at night and then waking up. Maybe you can't do that. You know, maybe your life is calling for something else. But I could ask you that you listen for 10 minutes, like my grandmother would do, and just sit with her eyes closed and rest her eyes for 10 minutes in between going to two jobs. Like, you can begin to see your calendar and your space and your time as something that's really holy. Like, I want to Reframe slowing down and listening and silence and rest as something that's deeply holy, that really is a connection to who you truly are. And you have it already. Your body is here. And it's like the other 10 of the Nat ministry is. Our bodies are a deep site of liberation. So no matter where your body is, how much it weighs, what it looks like, it is the site of where deep liberation can happen. And so you don't need to run off and go on a retreat to Bali for two weeks and spend money. Passport. Like your body itself is a form of deep sight of deep liberation. I look to my ancestors. I look to, like, the maroons of North America were jumping off slave ships. And I looked to Harriet Tubman and Henry Box Brown and all of the escape artists who attempted to, like, escape something that was happening in the culture that was going against their divinity, that was degrading them. And so what did they do? What are these small little attempts? And so I believe, like, trying is, like, really holy and like the deepest form of deep care. Just try. Try to slow down. You know what I mean? Try to, like, not get on your phone for 10 minutes. Try to, like, before you go to bed at night, pray and close your eyes and just have some silence and peace, you know? Try to not yell at your kids in the morning when you're trying to rush them, you know, to school. You know, like, you know, like, my mother would not let us scream or holler in the morning when she was like, you gotta get up earlier and I don't have to rush you out to bed. We're gonna have silent time. Like, you can create these little moments where your children learn, where you and your community understands that this is not going against our benefit. This is, like, gonna tap into where we need to really be. People think resting and slowing down is gonna slow us down from, like, reaching our goals. But for me, it's actually elevated my goals. Like, I could have never imagined a whole worldwide, global movement around rest from an exhausted state. I could have never imagined or dreamt this up. And so to me, imagination and like bell hooks says, the deepest form of. Of justice work for people who are oppressed to just imagine, to just be in imaginative. But you can't tap into imagination from an exhausted mind and body. It just won't allow for it.
- [44:04]
C
I love that. That was really great. Yeah, that was a gem right there. You can't. Can't do it with an exhausted mind and exhausted body. And I feel like you've said a lot of Great things, this whole conversation and to, to kind of wrap it up and bring it all together, right? If there's one thing you wish people would change about the way they think, think about rest and productivity, what would it be from you?
- [44:24]
A
I would tell them to stop even worrying about productivity because everything that you've been taught about productivity has been taught to you by capitalist white supremacist system. So what do you even know about productivity? I would think you to begin to like release that and to begin to create and imagine your own idea what productivity looks for you. You know, productivity is not gonna look like the same for every single person. You know, not every single person is the same body, the same mind, the same background, the same amount of money, the same energy. We need to begin to forget about what we've been taught by systems that don't care about us. Those two systems don't see us as human. They don't care about our well being, they just want us to do more. If you're sick, keep going to work, they don't care. And so to begin to grieve that is real, to think that you live in a system that really doesn't care about your benefit, like there are people within it who do. But the way the system was built, it can't care for a person's life. They just want you working, just get on the clock, you sit, go to work, it doesn't matter. And so I think if people can begin to like, begin to slow down from just accepting what they've been taught around labor, rest, productivity, just say, you know, I don't really even know what that means. You know, I'm going, but I'm going to find out. I'm going to imagine what it could look like. And so I want people to begin to tap into their imagination and to slow down and to not see their entire lives as being born to just be trying to be busy and work. You know, like there. I had a 16 year old interview me, she had a podcast and she said, what could you tell me as a 15, 16 year old about building a brand? I said, I would tell you don't build a brand. I would tell you go ride your bike. You know, like I would tell you to go and sit by a porch. Like I would say to stop being so caught up in the ways of capitalism and money and entrepreneurship. You gotta be entrepreneur at 10, at 5, at 6, now you're an entrepreneur, you got an LLC. It's like we need to slow down on the idea of that. Like we can begin to like, see ourselves as more than just a vessel for working and making money.
- [46:36]
B
I love that. I love that a lot because I spent as a young entrepreneur growing up, I spent a lot of my time tying my worth to what I was doing and, you know, productivity. So that really opens up a whole, you know, world for me to know, like, it's okay to rest. And, you know, I just think that that's so important for people to hear. Like, like said earlier, people are in grind mode. People are always trying to do more, more and more, when really we need to be putting more into ourselves, filling our cup up more.
- [47:07]
C
Yes.
- [47:08]
B
With the rest and imagination. And I love all of this daydreaming.
- [47:13]
A
Yeah.
- [47:13]
B
Freedom, dreaming, self care. Like, I think now what I'm learning is the highest, one of the highest forms of self care is to just be able to rest.
- [47:21]
A
It's deep, deep, deep care. It's like radical life giving care, you know, that's when it becomes the political and the justice lens comes through. Because for us, for people who look like us to be like we're deeply caring about ourselves and loving each other and ourselves, I don't think there's any deeper form of politics than that. You know, like, love is a practice of freedom. To be in deep, deep connection with loving ourselves and seeing ourselves as whole beings is like what it's all about, you know, that's what spirit work is. And so I think that the more that we can lose the others and bring that into place and to begin to integrate it and to see it as worthy, to see it as something that is worthy of, we're worthy of rest. We deserve rest. We don't have to earn this. This is like our birthright from being born. We don't have to earn rest. Our resting is already given to us. This is human rights work. And so when I globally go all over the world doing this work, I always thought to myself, is this gonna land in other countries? You know, I know I come out of a place of black American culture, My parents being southern, you know, sharecrop, the lineage of slavery. I was like, is this going to land? And I'm like, yes, it's actually landing all over the world. Because everyone is seeing that the systems don't see them as whole and they're wanting to reclaim their wholeness and their humanness and the love of who they are as being alive. And so it's been landing everywhere. The book has been translated in Italian, in Portuguese and wow, you know, it's getting French, Spanish, you know Korean. And so it's like, wow, these, it's really landing in a place because people are tired of being exhausted, not seeing themselves as lovable and not seeing themselves as okay, not seeing themselves as enough right now. Like to say to someone, thank you for living, for being enough, for like being here. To me, that's what we really need in this world because we're told the opposite. You're not enough. You don't. You're too big, you're not the right color, you're poor. Like, you're taught so much things that are not true. And so my work really hopes to uplift the divine in all of us and the love and the care in all of us is who we are, not having to burn ourselves out.
- [49:43]
C
Amazing. Amazing. Trisha Hersey man, this was great. If you're a subscriber for Good or good people, part of our community, make sure you drop some comments in the comment section. Let us know what you thought about this conversation. Make sure you hit that subscribe button in that like button. Let us know if you like the conversation. We definitely loved it. Trisha Hersey, this has been a great conversation, but before we let you go, we got to give you something special as we always give all our guests. It is in your four good flowers. They're not physical flowers. They are words of encouragement. So we want to, first of all, thank you for coming on the For Good podcast and having this such an important conversation and reminding people that their productivity does not define their value. And to remind people that it's okay to take a break, it's okay to take a breather, it's okay to take a nap, it's okay to go to sleep like me at 9 o' clock if that's what you need to do. It's okay to take a refresher, to take a break from it all and to realize that it is a liberating feeling to choose you and to choose rest. Because truly you can't move at 100% if you aren't fully charged. So thank you so much for bringing this conversation to the forefront and continuing to have those conversations and to continue to throw these events where you allow people to daydream, you allow people to nap, you allow people to sleep. These are big things that the world underappreciates and undervalues.
- [50:58]
A
So thank you.
- [50:59]
C
And I will let my co host, my big sis, add some flowers to that.
- [51:03]
B
Yes, of course. We want to give you all the flowers. This conversation was amazing and definitely very necessary. I love your idea of the NAP Ministry. I feel like it is something that everyone can benefit from. I learned so many things from you today that I will be implementing in our lives, in my life. And I'm sure our viewers and listeners will also. And we just want to thank you. Thank you for your work. Thank you for your research. Thank you for the time you put into this, because this is stuff that truly matters and we appreciate it.
- [51:31]
A
Thank you, guys. I'm so honored. As soon as I was like, I have to talk to these two people. I'm very honored to speak with you guys. It's like such a gift to be able to spread this message and to tap in with others who are interested. I just want people to just be interested in curious. I think curiosity will save us. So, yeah, thank you for that curiosity and for the connection.
- [51:54]
C
I love that. Thank you. And before we get out of here, can you please tell our viewers, our listeners, our subscribers where they can find you? And if you have anything coming up, please use the platform for that right now.
- [52:03]
A
Yeah, definitely. You know, I'm on Instagram, the Nap Ministry, and so on. Every single platform is the NAP ministry. Also my website, trishahersey.com and yeah, I'm working on a new set of deck of cards right now. They're about community. And I also am just doing a lot of writing and research. I'm traveling a lot as well. So I'm going to be at Howard University in a couple weeks doing events. I work a lot at university, so I'm excited to come to D.C. and come to the campus.
- [52:34]
C
I love that. Well, I'll be on the lookout for that. I know Vanessa will be. I know our subscribers will be on the lookout for that. And. And once again, this was a great conversation on the 4 Good podcast where we focus on the good, never the bad. And we're measured by what we do, not what we have. It's your guy, Jojo Simmons.
- [52:52]
B
I'm Vanessa Simmons.
- [52:53]
C
And our wonderful guest, Trisha Hersey. Thank you so much. We will see you guys next time on the For Good podcast. Peace. Bye.