Vacation: Good for Your Health, Good for Your Soul?

Last week I snuck away from work for a few days, taking only one of my three sons with me, and spent a few heavenly days on the eastern tip of Long Island with my brother. Walking by myself on the beach, with a misty spray blowing off the surf, I asked myself: Why do beautiful moments like these feel so satisfying and so necessary in some way?

I needed a few moments like that because my work, as well as my family responsibilities, had begun to feel like constant chores, draining but never restoring me. I was reminded of what a friend once told me: “To breathe out, you must first breathe in.” Returning now to my hyper, child-filled life, I do feel better, fresher, more able to give freely of myself.

Vacations are good for your cardiovascular health
This experience made me wonder: How much vacation do we need to sustain ourselves? After all, my family and I had taken a week’s vacation in early July—somehow, I guess, this one week was not enough.

For answers, I called up John De Graaf, the documentary filmmaker and author who heads Take Back Your Time, a group that advocates for more vacation and leisure time for Americans.

“Certainly we need a week, although some experts suggest that two weeks is what is needed to really recuperate,” says De Graaf, author of Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic. “The important thing is to have some block of time [for vacation], and not just take a day here and a day there. When people do that, they usually end up just running errands and not getting a chance to unwind.”

De Graaf pointed me toward some well-known studies showing how regular vacations can help keep us healthy. Perhaps the most-quoted study was published back in 1992, based on data from the longitudinal Framingham Heart Study, which showed that not taking vacations was a significant risk factor for heart disease among women.

Of course, taking a vacation isn’t always an option.

Almost one in four American private-sector workers receives no paid vacations or paid holidays, and low-wage workers get less time off than their higher-earning counterparts, according to a 2007 study, “No-Vacation Nation,” from the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Economic and Policy Research.

The Take Back Your Time campaign is promoting a legislative initiative that would guarantee three weeks off after a year’s employment, in addition to other measures.

Even the Pope needs a vacation
Yes, vacation is probably good for your health. But is vacation a spiritual issue too? (I was surprised to learn that De Graaf is frequently invited to speak to religious congregations.)

For an explanation, I called Laura Everett, the associate director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches, an ecumenical body for Protestant and Orthodox churches that has its own Take Back Your Time initiative.

“Support for people having a holy and healthy balance between work and rest comes straight out of the scripture,” Everett tells me, referring to the commandment in the biblical book of Exodus to keep the Sabbath as a day of rest.

“Of course we don’t read about Jesus packing up the kids and going to the shore, but we do see him taking time away from his work,” Everett says, pointing to a passage in the Gospel of Mark when Jesus goes with his disciples to take a break in “a quiet place.”

The issue of what Everett calls “giving people permission” to take more breaks cuts across denominational and political lines, she says.

Although liberal Christians express interests in workers’ rights, conservative Christians are drawn to the scriptural idea of Sabbath-keeping, says Everett, whose council has also worked with Mormon, Muslim, and Jewish leaders on the issue.

So next time I plan our summer vacation, I’ll be sure to plan two weeks instead of one. After all, even the Pope gets two weeks.

(PHOTO: ISTOCKPHOTO)