As the calendar turns, the familiar wave of New Year’s health advice arrives. It often centers on doing more of what’s already known to be beneficial: increased exercise, more home-cooked meals, and more mindful hobbies. This approach frequently leads to individuals abandoning their wellness goals before January even concludes. The fundamental challenge lies in the demanding nature of “doing more” — a concept that few can sustain given limited time and energy.
Fortunately, scientists have identified a more accessible strategy that promises to extend healthspan, requiring less effort, not more. This approach focuses on achieving a state of physiological inactivity, a practice many overlook during their waking hours. This state is known as deep rest, a condition where the body and brain achieve a synchronized signal of complete well-being, free from worry.
Deep rest represents the inverse of stress. It’s a restorative period where the body can pause its fight-or-flight responses to engage in essential maintenance and repair. While discovering one’s personal “off switch” might require experimentation, the growing body of evidence suggests significant advantages. These include healthier aging, a reduced risk of various diseases, and increased energy reserves, freeing individuals from the constant burden of managing ambient panic.
Understanding Deep Rest: A Physiological State Beyond Relaxation
Alexandra Crosswell, a psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco, and her colleagues introduced the concept of deep rest in early 2024. She acknowledges that the term may sound familiar, potentially due to Andrew Huberman, a Stanford neuroscientist and wellness influencer, who extensively promotes “non-sleep deep rest” on his platforms. However, Crosswell clarifies a crucial distinction. “The difference between how we define deep rest and how Huberman describes non-sleep deep rest is that his is a relaxation practice and ours is a psycho-physiological state,” Crosswell explained.
She elaborated, “Deep rest is beyond relaxation – it’s a coordinated shift of the whole nervous, endocrine and immune system into an overall state of safety signalling.” This highlights deep rest as a comprehensive physiological shift rather than merely a relaxation technique.
The Pervasive Impact of Stress on Modern Health
The detrimental effects of stress on human health are a long-standing concern, exacerbated since the Industrial Revolution. While societal pressures like economic hardship, work-life balance, and accelerated living paces remain, contemporary life adds a layer of constant unease. This is fueled by 24/7 access to global crisis information, much of which feels beyond individual control, leading to significant psychological toll.
A 2022 survey of over 3,000 U.S. adults revealed that more than a quarter reported stress interfering with their daily functioning. Chronic stress is demonstrably linked to increased rates of depression, anxiety, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, infectious diseases, and certain cancers. It is also a significant contributor to widespread fatigue, accelerated aging, and a higher risk of all-cause mortality from middle age onward. Despite widespread acknowledgment of stress’s negative health impacts, pinpointing its exact mechanisms has proven challenging, complicating efforts to address the problem effectively.
The core issue is that stress, regardless of its source, physical or psychological, depletes the body’s resources significantly. Experimental data shows that a brief period of psychological stress can increase energy expenditure by up to 67 percent above resting metabolic rates. Approximately one-third of this energy is consumed by increased heart rate, with the remainder allocated to producing stress hormones and managing inflammation. Circulating stress hormones then trigger downstream effects on cellular metabolism.
In laboratory settings, human cells chronically exposed to stress hormones exhibit accelerated energy consumption, faster aging, and premature cell death. This demanding process diverts energy away from less urgent bodily functions such as digestion, reproduction, maintenance, and repair. The stress response is an example of allostasis, defined as “stability through change.” This differs from homeostasis, the more commonly understood process of regaining balance after disruptions.
Allostasis: The Brain’s Predictive Regulatory System
Allostasis involves proactive adjustments made by the brain based on predictions of future events, such as identifying potential threats and preparing the body for action through hormonal cascades like the fight-or-flight response. As Lisa Feldman Barrett, a neuroscientist at Northeastern University, explains, “Your brain is predictively regulating your body.” She adds, “Your body is [then] sending signals back to your brain about the sensory conditions of the body and the sensory consequences of allostasis.”
Recent research, including work by Feldman Barrett, posits that allostasis is not merely a secondary function of the brain but its primary objective. In this view, cognitive processes, emotions, and actions all serve allostasis, driving the brain to maintain energy balance and ensure survival. This perspective reframes the approach to tackling stress epidemics. Karen Quigley, also at Northeastern University, and Feldman Barrett proposed this idea in a 2025 paper in the journal Neuron.
“If you start from the biology and try to understand this important and critical role for a brain managing its energy budget, then you start to think about concepts like stress slightly differently,” Quigley stated. Viewing chronic or toxic stress as a malfunction of allostasis helps explain its profound impact on health. Allostatic states, including stress, are intrinsically temporary. Short bursts are essential for crisis management, enabling survival through action or quick thinking. However, in modern scenarios where threats are rarely life-ending, prolonged stress represents metabolic overkill.
Given that daily life involves numerous stressors—a U.S. adult survey reported an average of three or more stressful events daily—there is often insufficient time for recovery before the next challenge arises. This continuous state of activation leads to tension, fatigue, and increased susceptibility to illness, as the body prioritizes perceived immediate threats over crucial long-term maintenance and repair.
Discovering Your Internal ‘Off Switch’: The Promise of Deep Rest Practices
Paradoxically, constant low-level activation may diminish the body’s efficiency in mounting responses to acute stress, leaving the fight-or-flight system depleted when truly needed. The temporal nature of allostatic states, however, offers hope: identifying the right physiological switch could allow for a recalibration of signals, shifting the body from a state of biological urgency to one of equilibrium. “It may be that you can create a ‘system reset’ partly by enhancing signals that current resources are sufficient,” suggests Quigley.
This is precisely where the concept of deep rest gains traction. Crosswell and her colleagues investigated why contemplative practices like prayer, chanting, meditation, yoga, and qigong yield positive effects on physical and mental health. These practices have been observed to reduce self-reported stress and improve physiological markers such as blood pressure and inflammation.
By assembling a multidisciplinary research team, the goal was to pinpoint the core mechanism behind these beneficial effects. Their conclusion: contemplative practices disrupt the physiology of the stress response. “These practices put the organism in a state of lower energy demand,” explained Martin Picard, a mitochondrial psychobiologist at Columbia University who collaborated with Crosswell. When the brain registers this reduced demand, it reallocates resources. Picard noted, “Instead of wasting your energy making cortisol and speeding up your heart rate, you have this energy pool that’s available for restoration.”
Studies support that contemplative practices effectively reduce energy consumption. Research from the 1970s indicated that during transcendental meditation, metabolic rate decreased by 40 percent compared to resting quietly without meditation. Similarly, studies on regular yoga practitioners show up to 15 percent lower energy consumption at rest, along with reduced resting heart rate, blood pressure, and levels of circulating stress hormones.
The Neurobiological Pathways to Deep Rest
Crosswell and her team speculate that a common thread in these interventions, whether by design or coincidence, is slow, deep breathing. Specifically, breathing at or around 6 breaths per minute activates stretch-sensitive sensors in the chest, which, in turn, stimulate parasympathetic activity via the vagus nerve. The parasympathetic nervous system governs the “rest-and-digest” response, the direct opposite of the “fight-or-flight” system. Elevated parasympathetic activity leads to lower heart rate, blood pressure, and other arousal indicators, allowing the body to prioritize essential internal housekeeping functions previously put on hold.
This shift towards parasympathetic dominance, combined with the mindful focus inherent in these practices, may signal to the brain that immediate threats are absent, prompting it to stand down. Crosswell stated, “With prayer and mindfulness and other deep rest practices, you’re moving your mind away from worrying about the future into this present moment.” When the present moment is perceived as safe, it provides the brain with a positive reinforcement signal, fostering what Crosswell terms a “present moment sufficiency mindset”—the belief that one possesses adequate energy for current needs.
A 2025 study involving a mindfulness intervention supports the measurable impact of deep rest. Participants who completed 10 sessions of an hour-long practice incorporating mindful breathing and stretching exhibited improved metabolic health markers and reduced indicators of disease risk. A control group undergoing general relaxation training showed no comparable changes.
However, a singular approach may not suit everyone; some individuals might find meditation to be a stressor. Alternative options include paced breathing exercises, particularly targeting the optimal 6 breaths per minute, or simply spending time with a trusted loved one who evokes feelings of safety. As social beings, our brains are inherently wired to consider the level of support available for navigating life’s challenges. This capacity for social connection may underpin why supportive relationships are linked to better health and longevity, according to Quigley. “Humans are really critical allostatic supports for one another,” she noted. “Social support is an important allostatic regulator.”
Leveraging Social Connection and Sensory Input for Stress Reduction
To enhance social support or simulate its effects when direct connection isn’t feasible, activating skin-based sensory nerves becomes a powerful strategy. These nerves, known as C-tactile afferent fibers, are theorized to have evolved to strengthen social bonds. They respond most robustly to slow, gentle stroking at near-body temperature. Research on “affective touch” demonstrates that it is not only pleasurable and calming across all ages but also reduces heart rate and other markers of parasympathetic activity, even during stressful experiences.
Interestingly, experiments suggest that a soft-bristled brush can stimulate these nerves almost as effectively as human touch. Researchers at Cornell University are even developing a wearable device that has shown early promise as a stress-reduction tool.
Crosswell emphasizes that there is no single path to deep rest. While some find meditation stressful, others may react negatively to affective touch. The critical factor is identifying practices that induce feelings of internal warmth, safety, and calmness. Sleep remains the ultimate form of deep rest, allowing the body to clear metabolic waste from the brain and undertake essential repairs. For those experiencing sleep deprivation, incorporating deep rest practices into waking hours could potentially mitigate the deficit.
The optimal duration for deep rest varies among individuals. “I wish I could say how many minutes is enough,” Crosswell admitted. Nevertheless, with mounting evidence supporting the health benefits of deep rest, the prevailing recommendation is to identify activities that foster a sense of safety and engage in them for as long as possible, investing in long-term well-being.
Practical Applications: Breathing Techniques and Wearable Technology
In an era dominated by smartphones and watches, constant notifications can seem like the antithesis of a calm lifestyle. However, these devices can be surprisingly useful for individuals seeking to achieve deep rest.
Heart rate variability (HRV) is a standard feature on most smartwatches, serving as a key indicator of stress regulation. HRV measures the subtle variations in time between successive heartbeats, reflecting overall physiological stress and the body’s efficiency in resource management. While specific metrics and healthy ranges vary by age, higher HRV is generally associated with better health. For instance, an HRV below 25 milliseconds (ms) has been linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and depression.
A well-established method for improving HRV is resonance breathing biofeedback. This technique involves slow breathing at approximately 6 breaths per minute, which synchronizes two key heart-rate regulating reflexes, thereby amplifying their effects. The cumulative result is a significant boost to the parasympathetic (rest and digest) nervous system. Some research suggests that regular practice of HRV biofeedback can enhance the body’s ability to recover from stress.
While HRV biofeedback typically yields optimal results when blood pressure and heart rate are monitored in a laboratory setting, various apps offer guided breathing exercises based on real-time HRV data. One individual’s four-week self-experiment involved tracking average daily HRV with an Apple Watch, followed by 20 minutes of daily resonance breathing biofeedback for two weeks, with a break in between. The results demonstrated a clear increase in average daily HRV, moving from a baseline of just under healthy levels to the healthy range during the biofeedback weeks. This positive effect appeared to extend into the week off, indicating a potential sustained benefit.
While encouraging, the time commitment for such practices can be considerable. This led to an exploration of alternative, more accessible methods. The Nurosym vagus nerve stimulator, according to its developers, has shown potential in significantly increasing HRV and improving other stress markers. This device is worn via a clip on the cartilage at the front of the ear, where a branch of the vagus nerve is close to the surface. Initial use of the device for up to 20 minutes per session produced mixed results, with some sessions showing no change, a slight decrease, or a modest increase in HRV.
Julian Koenig, a psychobiologist and member of an international consensus group on transcranial vagus nerve stimulation research, highlighted that such variability in results is consistent with findings across various studies on the topic. He noted that the study cited by the device’s company, while showing an increase in HRV, is somewhat of an outlier within the broader field. Koenig mentioned that preliminary results from the consensus group’s ongoing “live” meta-analysis have indicated “no effects on heart rate or HRV” during short-term stimulation. He concluded that while further research is needed to determine the long-term health benefits of such devices, “if the goal is to increase HRV, deep breathing is one of the best and cheapest options.”