True rest is rest that’s deeper and more restorative than the junk rest we tend to skate by on. You might also know it as deep rest. It’s about consciously choosing to relax and recharge, rather than just vegging out and scrolling social media (and assuming that because you’re lying down and not doing anything physical, this ‘counts’ as rest. It doesn’t).

“Relaxation is critical to healthy ageing, as well as to good mental health,” Dr Elissa Epel, a professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, and the author of The Seven-Day Stress Prescription, tells Stylist. “Often, we are not fully relaxed when we are doing nothing; we are holding onto stress.

“Deep rest is when you get to unplug and recover from the stress of the day. But further, it is when you spend time in a deeply relaxed and receptive state, so you’re giving your body a chance for restorative activity. At the cellular level, that means ‘housekeeping’ activities that keep a cell healthy. Our cells need downtime to clean up junk and repair broken parts.

“True rest is essential for being able to tackle high-stress situations in the future. True rest is needed to prevent burnout. Without true rest, we will deplete our batteries and be running on empty.”

Many of us think we’re resting simply by not working or exercising, but in fact, we aren’t hitting that true rest zone. True rest isn’t just the absence of stress or activity – it’s more than that.

“True rest is not lying in bed scrolling your phone,” Epel explains. “True rest is not a working vacation. When we are engaged in non-stressful activities, neutral activities, that doesn’t mean we are relaxed. We tend to go through our day in this state, a yellow mind state, which is a busy mind state, unless we are purposefully doing things to relax.”

Are you getting true rest? Here’s how to tell the difference and make your rest more restorative