When I first started lying down for 15 minutes, my son asked me why it had to be 15.
I didn’t have a special reason.
I didn’t want to sleep, and 15 minutes simply felt like a reasonable amount of time—not too long, not too short.
So at first, I set a timer for exactly 15 minutes and lay there.
I also paid attention to my body on purpose.
I noticed the stiffness in my legs. I heard my stomach gurgling. Sometimes the sounds inside my body seemed surprisingly clear.
It was interesting because I normally didn’t listen that closely.
But over time, the 15 minutes became less exact.
If I wanted to stay down a little longer, I did.
If I only needed a quick stretch before a long drive on the highway, I lay down, stretched my body out, and got up again.
There were also times when my husband was looking for something while I was lying down.
“Where is it?”
“It’s over there. I’ll get it.”
And I would get up before I was ready.
Those times felt different.
My body sometimes felt stiff and heavy, almost as if it hadn’t finished resting yet.
Later, I started putting a cold sheet mask on my face before lying down.
The cool sensation across my forehead and cheeks made the whole thing feel different.
It wasn’t really about skincare.
The coldness seemed to move my attention away from thinking and toward sensation.
After lying quietly for around ten minutes, I sometimes noticed thoughts beginning to come up.
Something I had noticed earlier would suddenly make sense.
A scene from the day would connect to another scene.
Sometimes I would think, Oh, that could be something to write about.
I wasn’t trying to think. The thoughts just came.
But when too many of them kept coming, even good ones, I wanted a break. I turned my head toward the window and watched the clouds drift across the sky. After a while, my head felt lighter again.
One Sunday
We ate an early brunch, and I did a little cleaning up afterward.
Then I put a cold sheet mask on my face, set the 15-minute timer on my phone, and lay down.
I closed my eyes.
After a while, I heard my daughter come into the room.
She was barefoot. I recognized her light footsteps.
She came near me, looked at the timer on my phone, and quietly left.
Later, I heard slippers.
My son.
He came over and walked away without saying anything.
I didn’t even have to open my eyes to know who was there.
I told my daughter about it later, and she laughed.
My stomach was making the same little gurgling sounds, but they seemed farther away this time. When I first started lying down like this, those sounds had felt much closer and clearer.
I noticed them without paying much attention.
Then, at around eight minutes, I felt something else.
My left wrist felt looser.
I touched my left elbow. That felt looser too.
When I compared my wrists, though, the right one still felt lighter.
And suddenly I thought about exercise.
I hadn’t exercised for more than a week. That was unusual for me.
I hadn’t decided, My wrist and elbow need rest, so I should stop exercising.
I had simply not felt like going.
At first, I thought I just wanted to move a little more gently for a while.
The day before, my husband asked if I wanted to play a par-three course.
I said maybe we could go later, when the weather was cooler.
I didn’t think much about it then.
But after more than a week off, my wrist and elbow did feel different.
I don’t know if that had anything to do with it.
Maybe the discomfort had been there in the background all along. I just hadn’t noticed it.
I got up at eight minutes.
The timer still had seven minutes left.
I didn’t feel any need to finish them.
