According to a recent article by The Post, there’s a new wellness initiative aimed at combating burnout: lie-down clubs, aka meetups dedicated entirely to lying silently in the grass among other attendees.
Now this is a wellness trend I can get behind.
What Is a Lie Down Club?
According to The Post, a lie-down club is a group meetup that involves meditations, sound baths, breathing exercises, and other guilt-free relaxation techniques—like lying in the grass with your eyes closed.
Maaliyah Symoné, a Brooklyn-based Reiki practitioner and sound bath facilitator, created one such “rest club” called Club Rest Stop. She told The Post that her intentions with the club were “to create a safe, free space where people can come and see other people resting,” especially for busy, burned-out city dwellers.
“A lot of the time, rest comes with shame or guilt. But at Club Rest Stop, that’s the number one rule—you have to lie down. Everyone is doing it, so you don’t feel like the odd one out,” she explained to the outlet. “It’s really important for your mental health to actually restore yourself after working hard, so you can show up as your best self and conserve your energy when you need it.”
A Doctor’s Take on Lie Down Clubs
Lie down clubs might seem like the ideal social gathering in today’s highly burned-out world, but there’s nuance to this conversation.
“These workshops are genuinely good ideas. Creating spaces where the expectation is simply to rest, breathe, calm the nervous system, and remind people what relaxation actually feels like,” says Dr. Tom Ingegno, a Doctor of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine and founder of Charm City Integrative Health in Baltimore. “If the attendees have been running on adrenaline for months, that experience can be surprisingly powerful.”
However, are these rest clubs the ultimate solution to burnout, or just band-aids for a much more complex issue?
“We can’t self-care our way out of a society that values production for its own sake,” Ingegno points out. “The grind culture, the cost of just about everything, and the feeling that taking a break will mean you are slipping, all need to go for anyone to ever truly recover from burnout. If people are working multiple jobs, answering emails at midnight, scrolling until 2 a.m., and treating exhaustion like a badge of honor, an hour lying on a yoga mat will do little to truly restore.”
He notes that, while these rest clubs are certainly needed and beneficial, there’s deeper work that must be done to actually benefit from them.
“People need to experience what a regulated nervous system feels like before they’re motivated to make changes. This may be a glimpse into what they could feel like with lifestyle changes,” he says. “If ‘lie down clubs’ remind people that rest isn’t laziness and recovery isn’t optional, perhaps it can lead to bigger society shifts.”
Of course, the existence of these clubs in the first place calls out the detrimental society we currently live in.
“Sadly, individuals who try to make these shifts rarely can do so in the way they need to be done to get someone out of burnout,” says Ingegno. “Try telling a boss or a teacher that you failed to do a task because you had to prioritize rest and recovery.”
However, the initiative is certainly a step in the right direction—and perhaps a reminder to be a bit easier on yourself. Sometimes, the most productive thing you can do is rest.
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