
Hurry. Run. Faster. More. Now. Slow down. Take time. Relish. What happens when you read these words? Really check in as you read them. Feel these words in your body. What do you notice? As I wrote them, I could feel my heart begin to race and my chest tighten and breath become more shallow and fast with the first grouping. With the second grouping of words, I could exhale, relax the tension in my chest and around my heart. Aaaaah. Very few of us remain unaware of the pace of life in this time. We know we need to slow down and savor each moment and maybe last year during lockdown you felt what that was like for the first time as an adult. But most of us are back up and running, running everywhere, doing all the things to make up for “lost time”, making sure our kids don’t miss out on anything…. Honestly, it’s exhausting. And truthfully, it’s not healthy when we’re unable to balance it with rest. And while maybe we felt like last year was a break, did you truly rest? I know, for myself, there was a lot more worry. My activity might have been limited, but my worry brain was on full force. And so, as we begin to enter another season of fast paced living as kids go back to school and activities and maybe you’re back in the office, take a minute to notice how you’re feeling. Have the daily headaches started up again? The knot in your stomach? The low back pain? The insomnia? I don’t have a solution to ‘how to participate in life without getting overwhelmed and stressed out’ except to recommend that we schedule in time for rest, just like we schedule each child’s activities and our work days. Stress, in and of itself, isn’t bad. We actually require stress to grow, change and adapt. It’s when we don’t take or have the time to integrate experiences and physiological responses during rest that we run into illness, burn out, exhaustion and emotional overwhelm. And the point of this post was really to offer you a new paradigm of health and healing. One where you’re not rushed in and out of a treatment room, just another name on a mile long list of people to see by a practitioner who went into healthcare with an open heart and a desire to help people, but has become just another cog in the wheel of the for profit insurance industry and is as stressed out and burnt out as the people they’re trying to help. Phew. Did you know that in order to rest, your nervous system must be able to come out of fight or flight mode or come out of freeze into a parasympathetic rest and digest mode? And that a large part of attaining rest and digest mode is by the process of automatic mirroring of the state of the nervous system of other mammals** we are surrounded by? What do you think might happen if our beautiful hearted health care provider is stressed out or their time is run by productivity standards? It’s really, really hard to get into a rest and digest state where the treatment they provide, which in theory should work, is actually helpful. And worse, we may leave our appointments feeling more stressed than when we arrived if our practitioner is having a rough day. My goal, then, is to offer you a beautiful calm space where time stops at the doorway, you are welcome and wanted and treatment length is up to 9x longer than other practitioners you may be seeing and there is no rush. My priority is to work on myself first, practicing nervous system regulation techniques on a regular basis so when you enter the healing environment of my studio, you encounter a calm safe presence. My goal is your healing. ** Ever wonder why we feel so good around our cats and dogs? Most animals are well grounded and centered and we can co-regulate with our pets as well as, if not better depending on our circumstances, with humans.
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