Restorative Time is a stress management and self-care tool from Oura, helping you visualize when your body and mind have been able to relax over the course of each day.
Restorative Time is only available on the Oura Ring Generation 3, for both iOS and Android.
What is Restorative Time?
How Restorative Time Works
How to Use Restorative Time
Get the Most Out of It
Things to Keep in Mind
What is Restorative Time?
Restorative Time detects when you’ve been in a relaxed state throughout each day and reflect these periods back to you. Thanks to your Readiness data and insights, Oura already notifies you when your body may be under additional stress. By staying attentive to your Restorative Time, you can now visualize if you’ve been able to align with what your body’s telling you.
How Restorative Time Works
Restorative Time is not solely determined by moments throughout the day when your body is still, though this is one factor we take into account. Although our bodies may appear to be at rest during periods of limited motion, our stress system (aka fight-or-flight) can still remain actively engaged, which prevents us from actually entering a healing state.
Body temperature is the key factor Oura uses to determine when your body and mind are likely to be at ease. Because Oura reads your body temperature once every minute, we can determine which nighttime averages connect to your best nights of sleep. As you relax, more blood is pushed out from your heart to your fingers and toes. Elevations in body temperature read from your finger reveal there’s more warm blood circulating there.
Restorative moments are identified anytime Oura detects limited motion in combination with daytime body temperature readings that reach your ideal nighttime average. All body signals picked up while you’re asleep are maximally indicative of rest and recovery, making nighttime averages an ideal comparative factor. This is when your systems go into repair and replenish mode.
How to Use Restorative Time
Go to your Home tab > Tap anywhere on the 24-hour heart rate graph to view it in detail.
Tap anywhere on Restorative Time to see when, how often, and how much you’ve experienced moments of relaxation throughout your day. Your Restorative Time is highlighted in green on your main graph and timeline.
The timeline shown in the dropdown extends from the moment you woke up to midnight. Each singular green dot represents five minutes of Restorative Time. Larger segments of green grouped together represent continuous and extended periods of Restorative Time that stretch beyond five minutes. The green dots and segments on your timeline coordinate with the vertical green bars in your main heart rate graph.
This timeline view helps you understand when you’ve gathered the majority of your restorative minutes throughout the day—compared to when rest and recovery haven’t been actively in focus. Pay attention to where your clusters of Restorative Time tend to occur and how spread out they are over your waking hours. This can help you consider when you’re giving your body and mind the space to unwind, then think back to which activities and events may be linked to these occurrences.
Ideally, you may want your Restorative Time to be broken up throughout the day, as opposed to clustered together in one single segment. By allowing for intermittent periods of restoration over the course of your day, you can naturally bring more balance between rest and activity into your life.
Get the Most Out of Restorative Time
Restorative Time is an incredibly powerful stress-management tool coming from a preventative perspective. By periodically checking in with your heart rate graph, you can ensure you’re either on track to achieve a quality amount of Restorative Time dispersed throughout the day—or rather, need to put it more into focus to reach your ideal balance. You can also use Restorative Time as a reflection point at the end of each day to see if you collected enough well-distributed minutes during your waking hours.
Everyone has their own sense of normal when it comes to determining an optimal window of time for rest and recovery and it can vary dramatically depending on your lifestyle, obligations, occupation, etc. Over time, you’ll be able to determine what’s ideal for you to obtain on a regular basis so you can feel your strongest from a holistic point of view.
Things to Keep in Mind
- It will take approximately 30 days for Oura to calibrate to your 24-hour heart rate averages and overnight temperature deviation to start receiving fully accurate measurements. You’ll still see your Restorative Time during this calibration period.
- Any completed meditation and breathwork sessions from Explore will be incorporated into your total Restorative Time.
- Unconfirmed and confirmed naps are not considered Restorative Time, nor incorporated into your total.
- If you previously used an Oura Ring Gen2, you may recall seeing Restful periods reflected beneath your daily Activities in Home. Restful periods are not available on the Oura Ring Gen3 and are not the same as Restorative Time. Restorative Time takes a more holistic and refined approach to analyzing your daily sum of rest and recovery, though the general approach to tracking Restful periods is still taken into consideration.
- Restorative Time is not the same as Recovery time or Recovery index, both of which are contributors to your Activity and Readiness Scores.
- Turning on Rest Mode has no effect on the amount of Restorative Time reflected back to you.
