“Hi. How have you been?“. “Busy”, is an often heard response. I caught myself saying it recently and felt a slight twinge of something as I said it. Justification? Pride? Our society has become addicted to ‘busy’, our worth is measured by activity or output, doing has become more valued than being. An excellent article in the New York Times in 2012 called it ‘The Busy Trap‘. We are in a rush to…where? I’ve found that being busy is not necessarily related to how much I have to do in a day. Stopping can be scary. What’s left when I stop? I’m on a quest to find and restore my lost ‘off button’. I’ve learned good health depends on it.
In our modern world we’re all exposed to an increasing amount of environmental toxins that accumulate in our bodies if not released and this toxic load underpins many chronic health conditions. Constant busyness creates stress that gets in the way of that release as many essential and restorative bodily functions are put on hold. When we don’t deeply relax and switch off regularly in healthy ways, it means in essence we wear ourselves out.
My highest health priority is to detoxify my body after being exposed to chemicals at work, and supporting my liver, kidneys and cells through nutritional, herbal and other natural methods is only part of the picture. At an early age my fight and flight response was triggered and whilst any threat is long gone my system does not naturally switch ‘off’ and this is exacerbated by living in a society that values constant doing.
I’m feeling grateful for the choice I have made to work at half pace from home right now and the time this is giving me to reconnect with myself and delve inside, to loosen up the edges and identify ways of being in the world that are toxic and unhelpful… even damaging. I’m noticing the tension that I create for myself, even when there aren’t a lot of demands on my time.
For example, a health practitioner recently recommended that I spend some time relaxing after my morning walk. Relax? Normally I get back home and get straight into hastily preparing and eating breakfast, then immediately launch into whatever I’m doing that day, often rushing out the door. Rest and relax? Gosh that feels challenging. 
I’m gradually retraining myself.
On some mornings I’ve allowed myself to lay down and deeply relax after my walk and I feel much more energised, relaxed and focussed afterwards. More present. I’ll confess that the insistent list of things that I believe need my immediate attention beckon me on other mornings. It’s a work in progress.
Tuesdays and Thursdays have been my days ‘off’, unstructured days with all possibilities, yet my mind gets busy, wanting to work out what to ‘do’ in that day to get the most value from that precious time. A few weeks ago I even had a day off ‘to do list’. Oh No! A list of things to DO on my day off. Then I felt the pressure to decide what to do first! A relaxing day suddenly became unrelaxed. How can I retrain myself when my habits are so ingrained? Time to call in a specialist. Enter Kylie Martin.
I’ve started going to Kylie’s deep rest therapy classes. She says she ‘is a specialist in stress related illness and body-mind conditions’ and has healed herself using these methods. H
er two hour classes are about deep release and relaxation, switching off the nervous system, to help release old patterns of holding that we may have carried for a lifetime. I found myself in the first class thinking impatiently, ‘well there’s not much going on, we’re just laying here, and I am paying for this and how many people are in the room? That means….!’. Of course stopping was the point, physically and mentally and I eventually got there.
Kylie’s given me homework, including inviting me to gift myself every day with a modified Shavasana relaxation. Shavasana relaxation is the integrative period of stillness at the end of a yoga class. I’m noticing the accumulated effects weaving into my everyday life and a sense of stillness beginning to infiltrate my body. Let me talk you through the process in case you’d like to try it. I’ve been doing it at the end of the day before I cook dinner.
Grab a towel, an eye pillow and some blankets and put some nice relaxing music on. Because it’s winter and a bit chilly and it’s part of the process to have weight on top of you, I lay on my bed under my doona with my feet wrapped in a blanket and pushed up against the bed head (or wall). Having your feet against a wall helps your nervous system to feel safe to relax. You could also lay on a mat on the floor. Having your knees slightly bent over a cushion is optional and I
prefer it that way. Having weight on top of you in the form of blankets also helps your nervous system relax, so lay some folded blankets over you.
Put the towel around your neck like you are carrying it to the shower and then lift the ends up and cross them over your forehead and wrap the ends behind your head. You are wrapping your head up so it feels nice and cosy and held. Extremely relaxing for the nervous system. Put an eye pillow on your eyes and lay with your hands, palm upwards, by your side. Now relax. It feels like you’re cocooned. Focus on noticing and letting go of any holding, notice your breathing and scan through your body, releasing tension, bit by bit by bit. It feels delicious. I do it for 15 to 40 minutes.
A popular quote doing the rounds is ‘stop the glorification of busy’. Let’s replace it with the power of stopping and the miracle of being. I am beginning to re-program myself to cure my busy habit and develop new nourishing habits. I am learning how to deeply relax and literally switch off to build a healthy and resilient body and to connect to what’s important rathe
r than what I might have thought was urgent. Many years ago I wrote a poem about this topic unsurprisingly called Stop!. The last stanza says:
I stand within the stillness of stopping
Peace and joy permeate the space
I feel excitement, joy, the urge to create
Everything is possible…when I stop.
Kylie told me that she gives herself a period of deep rest every day and she is able to achieve a lot without depleting herself. She is now productive, energised and relaxed rather than busy and exhausted. Sounds good to me. So how have you been?
Tags: busy, healing, health, nervous system, relaxation, toxins, wellness
Listening To The Whispers 
August 22, 2014 at 10:24 am |
Megan – beautiful…. thankyou for sharing…
I have a few questions that Paul will ask me if I encourage him to follow your lead to help with his migraines:
– how do you stop yourself from falling asleep for the rest of the evening/night? If you do and wake at 3am hungry??
– and isn’t our nightly sleep the same?
August 22, 2014 at 3:40 pm |
Hi Robyn, Thank you for reading my post! To answer your questions. Shivasana relaxation is said to offer a deeper quality of rest than sleep. It has many health benefits, including for all stress related diseases, fatigue, high blood pressure, heart complaints, anxiety and insomnia. The key is to stay aware and conscious, to remain the observer. It is like doing a meditation, where you focus on consciously connecting to and relaxing your breath and relaxing every inch of your body, releasing all holding and letting go of thoughts as they arise. If you are worried about going to sleep perhaps setting a gentle alarm for 30 minutes or so might be good. I find if I lay there long enough staying aware, with a quiet mind, that a shift happens after a while and I feel energy come back into my body, a feeling of enlivening, even if I had been feeling exhausted. When I feel that shift, from tired to relaxed and enlivened I get up. We are tapping into the source of our energy and relaxing allows it to flow again. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar says that “Meditation gives you rest, deeper than the deepest sleep,”. Kylie has reported that she is seeing many of her regular clients having substantial health improvements. Let me know how it goes!