Rest revolution: Why women need to reclaim the right to recharge 

Suzanne Harrington looks at how work deadlines, digital overload, domestic responsibilities, disrupted sleep rhythms, and poor diet often leave women running on stress hormones and on the brink of burnout

Rest is different from sleep. Rest can be active —like yoga, or running — as well as passive, like reading or listening to music or staring blankly out the window. The key part of rest is allowing ourselves to do something relaxing, something that helps our bodies reset. Picture: iStock 

Like snowploughs, we push through. Like dated comedies, we carry on. Like marathon runners, we keep going. We, women, seem to have trained ourselves to think that rest is for wimps. And that being busy makes us better humans.

This relentlessness climaxes at Christmas, when we take it upon ourselves to please everyone, convinced that if we don’t, our families will fall apart and our children will need therapy. (Spoiler: They won’t).