Hersey, Tricia. Rest Is Resistance - A Manifesto. Little, Brown Spark. New York. 2022.

Grind culture has created a bunch of exhausted, disconnected, and traumatized people moving through life, unable to tap into their true power. We need rest to connect back to ourselves and dream.

Author notices that people must decolonize our ideas about rest and productivity; which are currently deep in chewing up people with machine pace.

Interview on CBC Tapestry - The Nap Bishop

Noted follow-up reading

• Sylviane A. Diouf. Slavery's Exiles: The Story of the American Maroons
• Womanist Theological Ethics: A Reader
• bell hooks. All About Love: New Visions
• Monica A. Coleman. Making a Way Out of No Way: A Womanist Theology
• Octavia Butler. Parable of the Sower

Contents

• Preface
• Introduction
  • Tenet 1: Rest is a form of resistance because it disrupts and pushes back against capitalism and white supremacy
  • Tenet 2: Our bodies are a site of liberation
  • Tenet 3: Naps provide a portal to imagine, invent, and heal
  • Tenet 4: Our DreamSpace has been stolen and we want it back. We will reclaim it via rest
• Part One: REST!
  • A call to action for rest now!
  • Why we are not resting
  • How to rest
    • Who is resting for
    • Some places to begin
    • Resting can look like
• Part Two: DREAM!
  • A daydreaming moment I experienced while grieving
  • Techniques to create space to dream
• Part Three: RESIST!
  • Why we resist
  • When you don't see a lot of life (rest), death (grinding) becomes the alternative
  • How to prepare your spirit and body for a nap
  • Ideas to dream into
  • What Rest Is Resistance is not
• Part Four: IMAGINE!
  • Imagination as a liberation tool
    • Journaling questions to shift your mindset
  • Things I confirmed on my thirty-day Sabbath
  • DreamSpace -- How I tapped in while napping
  • How to Imagine
    • Meditations for rest
  • Conclusion
• Acknowledgements
• The Nap Ministry Library
• Notes
• Index

Tools

Prepare for a nap -- Starting points to jump-start your curiosity

1. We cannot wait for the perfect space or opportunity to rest. Rest now.
2. We must believe we are worthy of rest.
3. Wherever our bodies are, we can embody rest.
4. Productivity should not look like exhaustion.
5. Deprogramming our minds and hearts from our toxic brainwashing around naps and rest will increase our ability to craft a rest practice.
6. Grind culture is violence. Resist participating in it. This must be flexible so please also resist the desire to become rigid.

Meditations for rest - Tricia Hersey

1. I deserve rest now
2. I am worthy of rest
3. I am not lazy. How could I be lazy?
4. Capitalism wants my body to be a machine. I am not a machine.
5. I am a magical and divine human being.
6. I have the right to resist grind culture.
7. I don't have to earn rest.
8. Do less, watch how I thrive.
9. Ease is my birthright.
10. I will rest.

Journaling questions

Author includes 10 journaling questions to use as a guide to develop your discernment.