I Challenge You to a NAP!

EN-GARDE! ⚔️ 💤 🛌 😴

Most challenges will push you into a hustle-and-grind kind of space. NOT THIS ONE! This is a challenge to rest. 

I’m calling it a nap challenge, but truly, I don’t give the slightest fuck whether or not you actually fall asleep. I’m simply challenging you to step away from the hustle and grind, get your body into a comfortable position, shut out the visual stimulation, either turn off auditory stimulation or transition to something meditative and relaxing, and truly rest. 

Take a nap — or at least provide your body and mind with the opportunity for a nap — for at least 15 minutes a day for 30 days. 

Why 15 minutes? Because it’ll probably take about 5 minutes for you to get into a space of relaxation. And 10 minutes is enough to offer a bit of recovery from the daily stresses we all endure. Also because 15 minutes is a small enough chunk of time that most of us can fit that in somewhere. Your nap does not have to be 3 hours long to count. (Though I’m not discouraging that! If you’ve got the time available to you and you need to rest, TAKE IT!)

This 30-Day Nap Challenge begins Tuesday, January 2. I’ll be documenting my naps daily in my Instagram stories, so I’d love for you to follow along with me there and let me know how your progress is going. 

And, for those of you who are into it, I made you a workbook to document your own experience! 

Access our free 30-Day Nap Challenge guide at www.KeliLynJewel.com/rest 

In the workbook, you’ll have a full page for each day. That doesn’t mean you need to use the entire page each day, but the space is available to you should you need or want it.

This challenge is ultimately about space — how much space you allow yourself to take up in your own life FOR yourself. And we’re focusing on rest because that’s the thing I have found in my decades of work (first as a massage therapist, then in the direct sales industry, and now as a coach) that tends to fall away first. We fill that space with other things and burn ourselves out.

This is not to say that systems of oppression don’t contribute to burnout and it’s all about personal responsibility. Of course they do. And of course it isn’t. However, when we devalue rest in our lives, we amplify the systemic issues within our individual selves. And one of the most revolutionary acts we can take is to reclaim our own rest. 

We’re reclaiming autonomy over our time, our bodies, and our well-being while disrupting the cycle of exploitation. It is an act of defiance against oppression to take a fucking nap. 

If you’d like to join me in napping for 30 days, your downloadable guide will walk you through a few prep questions for your own clarity, helping you solidify why you’ve accepted the challenge, what you hope to take away from it, and creating a plan to ensure you’re supported in the challenge — deciding where and when you’ll rest, acknowledging what may stand in the way, and creating a support system to deal with those blocks while still honoring your commitment to your rest. 

Each day, you’ll then have space to note where and when you’re napping, whether or not you fell asleep, how you feel before and after, and anything else you notice. 

Then at the end of the 30 days, you’ll have an opportunity to reflect on the experience, noting how many days you actually rested and for what length of time, how many of those days you fell asleep, how you feel after the entirety of the challenge, and considering whether or not intentionally setting aside time to rest during the day is something you’d like to incorporate into your daily life. 

I’d love to hear about your experiences during this 30-Day Nap Challenge. Make sure you’re following me on Instagram @Keli.Lyn.Jewel and let me know how it goes for you!

For more resources on rest as revolution and decoupling from the exploitative nature of our current sociological structures, I recommend the following books:

Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey

Laziness Does Not Exist by Devon Price, PhD

Wintering by Katherine May  

These books have been part of the integrated book club inside Project Reclamation. So if you’re into that kind of thing, check out our equitable self-coaching community at www.KeliLynJewel.com/project-reclamation.