The Season of SLOW is Here.
The season of yin….
It’s officially fall. The season for slowing down.
Except many of us don’t actually slow down. Often we speed up or at the least, keep the same pace all year.
Although modern culture demands a lifestyle opposed to it, the truth is that we humans are inseparable from nature. We aren’t meant to maintain the same pace year round.
Before artificial light, humans lived by the the cycles of natural light. Sleeping for longer periods during the fall and winter.
Before artificial chemicals, seeds were sown and harvested by the moon.
Before artificial hormones, women’s cycles synched with the new and full moons.
Before the modern workweek and the never ending social schedules we all have (because FOMO), we worked harder during certain periods and rested more during others.
Now? We are up before the sun most of the year. We expect 40+ hours of work per week from minds and bodies that are getting by on too little sleep. We eat foods that are processed and prepackaged or have been grown in depleted soil before being shipped thousands of miles and stored in dark warehouses. We maintain stressful schedules, often doing jobs that don’t matter to us.
But our bodies? They remember. They remember what season it is. They remember our interconnectedness.
Whether we acknowledge it or not, our physical bodies notice the changes around us. Don’t believe me? Ask an ER nurse or a school teacher about the full moon.
Maybe in these last few weeks as the season has begun to shift and the days have shortened, you’ve started to feel more tired. Maybe you’ve begun to crave nourishing warm foods, like soups and potatoes and pumpkin. Maybe you’ve felt the urge to stay in. This is biological. It’s an INVITATION to LISTEN to our bodies and respond lovingly. To honor what we want instead of pushing through long hours, overfilled schedules, intense workouts (or no movement), and too little sleep.
Two things students (and I) tend to complain about are: fatigue and sluggishness. Both of these things can be caused by an out of whack nervous system.
The nervous system sort of begins to misfire when we repeatedly push through our bodies’ signals to slow down. We go from the comfort of rest and digest to the fury of fight or flight when we ignore our bodies’ requests and refuse to slow down. And because the nervous system is like the command center of our bodies whose job is to keep us alive at all costs, it starts to decide which of the body’s systems are non-essential to life, and it begins to slow down or even shut down those systems.
Your digestion may slow. Your stress response may change. You may feel anxious and physically tense. You may catch little colds all the time because your immune response has slowed. You may notice more gray hairs and wrinkles more rapidly as the body’s repair and renewal systems slow.
Our bodies don’t need MORE stress when this starts to happens, but mainstream “wellness” will have you believing you just aren’t hustling hard enough. Lack of sleep, too little food, and intense workouts will intensify these symptoms because the body perceives those things as more stress. Yet, these exact methods are portrayed as solutions.
What we need is rest. What we need is nourishment. What we need is to SLOW THE HECK DOWN.
And yet- We have kids to get to school, paychecks to earn, events to attend, and commitments to uphold. So- maybe we can’t go to bed at 5 every night, or hibernate in candlelight til April, but there ARE some ways we can honor our bodies’ craving to slow down.
Some practices that may be helpful are:
Turn off blue lights after dinner. Hang out by the fireplace, light some candles, read a book or take a bath by candlelight (no screens, no overhead lights)
Sleep at least 7 hours. More is obviously better, but if you can turn in for the night by 10:30, you can still be up at 5:30 to start your day.
EAT. Ha. No but really. Eat 3 meals a day filled with nourishing vegetables, protein, fat and fiber. Steamed, warm foods are nourishing and easily digestible this time of year.
Take one yin yoga class per week and one yang yoga class per week, and go for a walk the other days. This will balance your energy, keep your lymphatic system healthy, boost immunity, and help you sleep.
Drink something warm a couple times a day. Warm lemon water first thing in the morning and a green tea in the late morning are great for balancing ph and boosting immunity and energy.
Wear a scarf. Weird but it’s cozy and may help you feel held and comforted, and in Ayervedic philosophy: cool air on the nape of the neck is associated with illness!