This talk will explore ecological concepts of resilience for microbial communities. Communities of microorganisms, called microbiomes, can contain tens of thousands of taxa that interact with each other and with their environment. Disturbances are large changes to the environment and can be classified as “press” or “pulse,” depending on their duration. Many environmental disturbances are expected to intensify or increase in frequency due to the climate crisis. Thus, understanding how environmental microbiomes respond to disturbances and the consequences of those responses for their functions remains an essential scientific objective. With this understanding, a microbiome is expected to be managed, engineered, or directed to achieve stable microbial functions for their hosts and ecosystems. Microbiome Rescue is the directed, community-level recovery of microbial populations and functions lost to disturbance, thereby supporting microbiome resilience. There are four types of rescue: demographic, functional, adaptive, and evolutionary. For each of these rescue types, multiple mechanisms could be conducive to promoting a “rescue.” Still, their success depends on the sensitivities of the microbes to the disturbance, which in turn depends on the disturbance characteristics. This talk will share case studies from our research on soil and plant-associated microbiomes that show how one mechanism, the dynamics of activity switching, either initiation into dormancy or resuscitation from dormancy, can affect microbiome resilience.