Relaxed Contentment - Our Natural State
As many of you know, I’ve recently been traveling out west, living mostly outdoors, tent camping and hiking. There’s something about living unseparated from the natural world that leads to an unraveling of the stressors of daily life and frees up space for deeper contemplation and inner awareness. Being immersed in the natural world reminds us that we are part of a holistic existence.
We are entering the 19th month of the pandemic. Nineteen months of living in a world that seems topsy-turvy. Nineteen months of our lives being upended. Nineteen months of struggling to find firm ground beneath our feet. Nineteen months! If you ask me how the last 19 months have been I’d say “stressful, but nothing I can’t handle”. And on a day to day basis, I’ve been handling this pandemic with relative ease. I’ve used my yoga and meditation training to help ground me, to take the edge off. I’ve reminded myself again and again of my teacher Michael Johnson’s mantra, “it’s like this now”, and for the most part I’ve accepted that truth. I’ve done what I have needed to do to keep moving forward - keeping my business open, my family safe and healthy, my mental health intact, and supporting my community the best that I can.
What I didn’t realize until sometime in the middle of this recent trip was that I’d only just been processing and resolving a portion of the stress and anxiety of this pandemic. When I was able to step away from my daily responsibilities, get still, and really REALLY feel, I realized that I’ve been carrying the pandemic around inside of me for nineteen months!
This story goes back to March 14, 2020. I was in Boulder, Colorado for a Sanskrit and philosophy training that I had been so excited to attend with Amy Ippoliti and Manorama. It was the first day of the training, I was in a beautiful city, with a supportive group of yogis from all over the world, learning from teachers I admire, and visiting with old friends that live in town. That night, President Trump announced travel bans to the US, my kids (who were still at home) were notified that their schools were closing and all instruction would be on line, and the safety of domestic travel was unclear — not to mention President Trump’s demeanor during that address to the nation was quite concerning. I am generally not an anxious person, but I can feel my anxiety building, and my breath stuck in my chest just writing about that day.
My husband and I quickly started making plans to return home to our children as soon as possible, we rearranged our flights, I dropped out of the training, we spent one more night in Boulder and got up the next morning and boarded a flight back home. That next week was a whirlwind, figuring out e-learning for the kids, getting word that our exchange student was being ordered to return home, figuring out how to completely change our business model and switch to 100% virtual yoga, and ultimately being confined to our house for several weeks. Through those first several weeks I turned to restorative yoga and meditation to balance my nervous system, but the layers of stress that have continued now for 19 months were more than my system could fully process.
The Basics of Your Nervous System
Let’s look for a minute at a very elementary overview of the nervous system. You’ve got your Central Nervous System (i.e. your brain and spinal cord), and your Peripheral Nervous System made up of the nerves that carry information to and from your central nervous system. Your peripheral nervous system is further divided in to the Somatic Nervous System which is associated with the voluntary control of the body (i.e signals that help you move your body in the way you choose), and the Autonomic Nervous System which influences the body’s internal organs and systems, and is largely, but not entirely, involuntary (out of your control).
Taking a closer look at the autonomic nervous system, there are two branches. The Sympathetic Nervous System helps the body prepare to expend energy and respond to threats (often called “fight or flight”), and the Parasympathetic Nervous System helps us conserve our resources, maintain normal bodily function, and return to or reside in our natural resting state (sometimes called “rest and digest”). These two systems are largely involuntary, and especially the sympathetic response can be triggered almost instantaneously.
The sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system need to be able to work together to maintain equilibrium, like the gas pedal and the brakes in your car. We need the sympathetic nervous system to wake up in the morning, to get motivated and to engage with our external environment, and we need the parasympathetic nervous system to help us disengage from the external environment, process internal sensory information, and return to homeostasis. What this means is that “stressful situations” aren’t inherently bad or harmful (in fact they are necessary for our survival), but we need the time, the space, and the conditions for the parasympathetic nervous system to do its job.
We need to be able to encounter stressors in our lives, process those stressors, and return to relaxed contentment. But the problem many of us face is that our capacity to take on new stress and process it is greatly reduced as a result of modern life and Western culture. Modern life and Western culture encourage and often demand full time engagement with the external environment — obsessively checking email, social media, the news, engaged with or thinking about our jobs all of the time, keeping up with the Jones’, being “productive”, filling every moment of every day, and staying busy. All of these things keep the sympathetic nervous system “turned on”, so to speak, and the parasympathetic nervous system can not keep up. But the good news is, despite the autonomic nervous system being largely involuntary, we can exercise some conscious control over the autonomic nervous system, specifically the parasympathetic arm!
When the nervous system is dysregulated - when we layer stressor upon stressor - the normal stress response can become blocked and the unresolved stress builds up and manifests as hyper-arousal (anxiety, hypervigilance, over production of cortisol, heart disease, hypertension, etc.) or freezing (depression, withdrawal, low metabolism, etc.). The more unresolved stress we have stored in our bodies, the less capacity we have for new stressors to be processed.
So there you have it, nineteen months of layering unusual amounts of stress on top of the ordinary daily stressors of life, and our system becomes overwhelmed, our capacity becomes diminished, and we are living with chronic stress and its effects.
Returning To Relaxed Contentment
Sometimes these effects are obvious, like chronic headaches, changes in blood pressure, or changes in mood or mental state. But sometimes they aren’t so obvious, like mild digestive issues, or barely perceptible changes in muscle tone/tension. Often times, whether obvious or not, we just chalk these effects up to something else, like aging, genetics, etc., ignore them and keep on keeping on - which is exactly what I was doing. As the effects of chronic stress were slowly building they were barely perceptible to me, and often brushed off as “well, I just didn’t sleep well last night”, or “I probably just ate something I shouldn’t have”, and sometimes as “I’m stressed and overwhelmed, but it’s normal, aren’t we all?” Other times I just ignored the stress completely because to acknowledge it would mean I was weak.
My recent trip gave me to space to step back and see the big picture, then to actually feel the effects of the stress letting go, to actually feel my body relax, the brain fog clear, the mental tension subside. I came home from this trip feeling brand new, with a renewed commitment to being more present to and mindful of the daily barrage of stressors, and to taking time every day to intentionally restore balance and reside in a state of relaxed contentment. Here are some of the things I intend to do to maintain a regulated nervous system:
Take an extended break from FaceBook.
Continue my daily yoga/meditation practice even on the days that I feel too pressed for time.
Stay connected with my husband. (A strong support system goes a long way in helping us process stress).
Intentionally rest EVERY DAY.
Stay embodied - not suppress or ignore my internal feeling state.
So, how are you holding up after these 19 months? Have you taken time to closely observe what lingering effects of stress are present in your life? Can you implement strategies to help restore your nervous system to balance? Not sure how to get started? Try this one simple exercise:
Find a comfortable place to sit or lie down. Take a deep breath in, expanding your lungs as much as you can, and sipping in air until you are completely full. Hold the breath in for just a second and then release the breath in a slow, relaxed way. Continue breathing in this way for about 60 seconds, and then return your breathing to its natural, organic state and closely observe your internal feeling tone. This strategy will help to trigger your parasympathetic nervous system.
Take good care!
Carrie