In a Presbyterian church in Atlanta, people are asleep. You can even hear them snoring, and the self-proclaimed Nap Bishop is happy about that. It’s her mission to send us all to sleep.
In a fast-paced, anxiety-ridden world which leaves most of us sleep deprived, Tricia Hersey, 53, theologian and founder of The Nap Ministry, began inviting people to nap collectively while she offered soporific sermons about the benefits of sleep.
“Grind culture has normalised pushing our bodies to the brink of destruction,” she explains. “We proudly proclaim showing up to work or an event despite an injury, sickness, or mental break. We are praised and rewarded for ignoring our body’s need for rest, care, and repair.”
The solution, backed up by study after study, is to sleep and nap more. Sleep, as all doctors tell us, is essential for good health. But Hersey takes it one step further. She believes rest is a form of liberation and sees it as a revolutionary way to push back on our obsession with productivity.
Her evangelical crusade has got her half a million followers on Instagram, articles in the New York Times and a book called: Rest is Resistance: Free Yourself from Grind Culture and Reclaim Your Life.
Ten years ago, she was a young mother, studying theology at Emory University, working several jobs to pay for it all, and exhausted.
“I was exhausted physically, mentally, spiritually, and I just didn’t see any other way except to take a radical leap and say: ‘I don’t care, let the chips fall where they may,’” she says. “If I fail out of school, that’s fine, if I don’t finish that grade — because I’m going to bed.”
And so she slept and she felt much better. Seriously much better. She began incorporating more naps into her daily life, and she watched her grades improve, her health improve, her mind getting clearer.
Now she is evangelical about getting the rest of us to sleep more, even if it’s at the expense of time we might think we should be doing other things.
To order a copy of her book, go to: www.thenapministry.com or https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316365211
https://www.instagram.com/thenapministry/
- Photo credits to Johnathon Kelso
