Question: A recent study found that you will get up to a 20% reduction in anxiety and depression if you do this. What is it?
Answer: Sit in a rocking chair!
There’s something about sitting in a rocking chair feeling held by the chair and the slow steady rocking movement that helps bring our stress levels down and improve our mood. These sensations tend to activate our parasympathetic nervous system to engage our rest and digest state. Maybe our bodies remember a time when our bodies rocked and rested in the womb?
Rest is a God-given need we have been intentionally created with. Rest also helps shape us into the kind of people that God created us to be: unhurried, non-anxious, careless-in-the-care-of-God kind of people. That’s the subject of today’s message. As we continue our series on Spiritual Formation, we’ll learn about how the spiritual discipline of rest forms and shapes us and practice it a bit together. Pastor Jill brings a sermon called “How to Rest in an Exhausted World.”