If there is one thing I’ve learned, and completely adhered to, after more than a decade living in France, it’s that holidays are sacred.

Time off to travel, wonder, change routine, and rest is an essential part of living well.

But even in a culture where holidays are sacred, we often don’t plan them to be as restorative as they could be.

You book the trip, close the laptop, let the days go slow, and still come back in September feeling like the holiday happened to someone else.

Here is what I have come to believe: vacationing and resting are not the same thing. You can do one without the other, entirely.

Dr. Saundra Dalton Smith, a physician who spent years studying burnout, found that exhaustion is rarely one dimensional. There are seven distinct types of rest, and most of us are only resourcing one or two of them, usually without realising it.

Physical rest. Sleep, stillness, a slower pace. This is the one holiday is built for, and the one we all reach for first. It matters, but it is only the entry point.

Mental rest. Quieting the internal noise, the looping thoughts, the mental tabs left open. A beach chair does not close them. Only deliberate stillness does.

Sensory rest. Relief from screens, notifications, noise, and light. Many of us trade one wall of stimulation (the office) for another (a phone that never stops, even on holiday).

Creative rest. Space for wonder, beauty, and inspiration to return, rather than being endlessly extracted from you. Often the first casualty of overwork, and the last thing we think to restore.

Emotional rest. Somewhere to be honest without performing. Not everyone gets this on holiday either, particularly if it’s spent managing family dynamics or keeping up appearances.

Social rest. The right company, not simply more company. Some social contact restores us; some quietly drains us. Rest requires knowing the difference.

Spiritual rest. A sense of belonging, purpose, or connection to something larger than the daily grind. Often the most neglected, and often the one whose absence we feel most, without being able to name it.

The reason so many of us return from holiday still tired is simple: we defaulted to physical rest and called it done, while the actual depletion sat untouched.

I want to explore this properly, in person, with the people who are based here in Paris.

On 23 July, I am hosting Capsule N°1: L’Art de la Régénération, a community picnic and workshop in the Jardin des Tuileries.

It is also the first gathering of Longevity Cities Paris, a social, science, and access driven community I am building to make longevity an art de vivre in this city.

We will walk through the seven dimensions together, each of us identifying where our own depletion actually lives, and each leaving with a version of summer designed around it rather than defaulted into.

If you are in Paris, I would love to have you there.

Reserve your spot here: https://luma.com/yky2cexz

If you are not in Paris, or can’t join us this time think about how you would like to use the 7 dimensions of rest to design a restorative holiday?

How can you include new dimensions that perhaps you had not thought about before?

À bientôt,

Azul