Student Blog: Learning the Importance of Rest

The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do as a performer is nothing. Musical theater can be very hard on a performer’s physical and mental health. It is important to find a healthy balance between working and prioritizing your health. This balance has always been difficult for me to find. I recently had a teacher who stressed the importance of listening to your body. They would always say that your body will give you signals that it needs attention. It will start out with small signals like a muscle cramp or sore throat, but if you ignore the small signals, the signs will only get bigger. Then you will end up with a serious injury or illness. This teacher got me thinking about my own personal journey with learning to listen to my body and pacing myself as a performer. It has taken lots of trial and error to discover how to best manage the toll performing can have on my health. 

There have been times that I have been somehow involved in up to three different shows at once while still trying to attend classes and do my school work. Unsurprisingly, I would end up getting very sick after the shows end. Whether it be getting a bad cold, the flu, or an ear infection, my body was begging for a break. Once I recognized this pattern, I knew I had to make a change. I obviously didn’t enjoy getting sick, but overall I knew it was a sign that I needed to do a better job taking care of and listening to my body. 

I am lucky enough to have a school that offers an asynchronous cyber school option. Going into my junior year of high school, I opted for this cyber school option so I could continue to have a rigorous theater schedule while still having time to prioritize my health. One of my biggest obstacles in previous years was missing school when I would get sick. And as I mentioned before, becoming sick started to become a routine event. I began to have to decide whether I wanted to give my body the rest it needed or stay caught up in school. Even though I had many fantastic teachers who were very helpful and accommodating, I hated being behind when I missed school. This is what ultimately led to my decision to switch to cyber school. 

Cyber school allowed me to have more flexibility during the school year, such as allowing me to sleep if I got home late from rehearsals, but it certainly didn’t fix all of my issues. As I began to be presented with more opportunities, it meant that I couldn’t say yes to every single one. If it were up to just me, I would be saying yes to every opportunity that came my way. However, I have great parents, teachers, and mentors that keep me in line and ensure that I consider all of the factors before jumping onto another project. And truthfully, it has taken me saying yes to too many things and me saying “I am never doing that again” to learn my lesson!

To sum up this whole blog in one phrase: Rest Is Productive. Like many other performers, I experience a lot of guilt when I take the time to prioritize my health. There is this myth that taking breaks or saying no is equivalent to giving up or being lazy. If anything, it is the complete opposite. Being knowledgeable enough to listen to what your body needs makes you a stronger performer and will end up serving you more in the long run than overworking yourself ever will. With that said, it is always easier to say this to someone else instead of yourself. Whenever I find myself feeling guilty for taking more time for sleep or taking a day off from working out, I try to think of what I would say to a friend. Would I reprimand them for serving their body? Absolutely not! So I shouldn’t be reprimanding myself either. 

Listening to your body takes practice and patience like most other things in this world. It is important that we continue to support our fellow performers and collectively fight the notion that rest is unproductive. I plan to continue to hold myself to the standard that I prioritize my physical and mental health, and I hope that every other performer can, too​​​​​​.