Many aspects of modern life seem to intrinsically operate on a 'more more more' and 'go go go' basis. So why is slowing down so important for mental health? And what does yoga do to help?
Too fast, too busy
Ever felt frazzled, fried, stressed, wrung out, at your wits' end or just realised that your baseline is consistently hovering around anxiety?
These are common experiences, even day to day states of being for many of us. In a society of constant connection and an 'always on' culture, many of us feel the expectation to 'have it all' and to 'do it all' as well.
I love the internet. I grew up just pre world-wide-web; I remember surfing the net proper for the first time in the mid nineties and being absolutely mindblown by the fact that there were other geeky people like me out there making websites about things I was interested in. Fast forward thirty years the internet connects us all in ways most of us never imagined back then. And it never stops, never goes to sleep (even though I use the sleep and do not disturb profiles on my iPhone... I have still added contacts who can bypass them).
In other ways things have 'moved forwards' since the nineties (or whenever you want to compare with, I guess). When we have families, according to the office for National Statistics, in the UK it's now more likely for both parents to be working (kind of like having two full time jobs really!). Many people study, take up a career, and then study on the side of full time work or create a 'side hustle' for additional income or skills development. We also want to have hobbies, to stay fit and healthy, to have time to cook nutritious meals, to spend time on other things that we care about. As we get older there are often unpaid caring roles for family, parents or grandchildren which may be both fulfilling and time consuming.
This all seems like a lot, even without the constant comparing and potential opportunities/interests/demands thrown up by the internet and social media. There is always more to do, always more to see, more to learn, more to earn, to develop, to be. Definitely a bit frazzling.
There may come a point when you realise that trying to have it all and do it all is doing you no good at all. Having a neverending stream of demands and activities may mean you feel little satisfaction when you achieve things. This leads to a feeling of 'not enoughness'; you can't afford to feel satisfied because you must always jump on to the next thing.
Life, in the moment, now, can seem like it's passing you by whilst you always have to act and plan and do figure out how you're going to manage to fit all this stuff in.
So why slow down?
First of all, it's worth me saying that none of this stuff is inherently bad. I'm not preaching about us all going back to live on the land and pick fruit with babies on our hips whist the men go off to shoot something for tea. Although hands up, sometimes I do tremendously enjoy being in a place with no phone signal, and times when I simply don't have to deal with other people.
It's incredible that we have so much choice, so many possibilities, so many connections, and we should celebrate that. But it can end up feeling very overwhelming, which is where slowing down could be genuinely life changing.
Modern life is stimulating. That's another way to describe being in this 'always on' position where we feel like there's things always coming at us or having to respond to things constantly. We feel stressed. We can also get into a position where we're so used to being stimulated that when we're not, we feel lacking, and go out to find more stimulation. Ever spotted that one in yourself?
Our nervous systems, the organic electrical systems in our bodies which collect, store, transfer and sift through information to allow us to navigate the world, have two basic states (much like binary): Sympathetic (action, stimulation) and Parasympathetic (rest, no stimulation). So with constant stimulation, or stress, we're leaning too much into the sympathetic nervous system, the 'always on' state, which is a drain on our resources and our mental health. We require a balance of both in order to feel genuinely good.
The trope goes that when we lived in hunter gatherer groups (really not that long ago in evolutionary terms), the peak of stress would be coming across a predator in the wild. Nowadays, a similar kind of reaction might be created by being trolled on social media. I think this is a wild oversimplification, but you get the idea. We have unwittingly invented new and tortuous ways to stress our ancient operating systems.
So more than ever, we need the balance of deliberately taking ourselves out of the 'rat race' in order to not feel overwhelmed by it all. As counter intuitive as it may seem, doing less will likely help us to do more (in the long run) by returning our bodies and minds to a state of homeostasis in which they can operate effectively.
How does yoga help us slow down?
Yoga often gives us a space to slow down, away from the demands of life off the yoga mat. We can put down the never ending to-do list and put the overwhelm to one side for an hour or so and just see what's going to happen in our practice.
The most basic element of any yoga practice is the breath. For folks who can't do a physical practice, they can still do a breath practice, even if that simply means watching and sensing the breath. When we inhale, we activate the sympathetic (taking in oxygen, creating energy) and when we exhale we activate the parasympathetic (coming to rest, expelling waste). If you've ever experienced a panic attack, you'll know that it involves mostly breathing with sharp inhales and not a lot of exhale. Yoga breathing can help us to do the opposite. We can either come to a balance (equal inhale and exhale) or deliberately elongate our exhales to slow down and move into a more rested state. As our exhales get longer, our hearts beat slower too and we generally start to feel more safe and comfortable in ourselves.
As we come into a more rested (parasympathetic) state, we are no longer constantly vigilant for threats or worries. This gives us the opportunity to reflect about what's going on inside us, at a physical, mental and energetic level. Noticing how we feel, rather than simply existing as that feeling.
We can sometimes also use this information to contextualise, shift or even downgrade things that have been keeping us in the 'always on' position outside our yoga practice.
Certain yoga practices can also help us to find stillness. Generally these are the more yin (slow, soft and supported) approaches to yoga rather than the fiery active ones - but different things work for different people. Slowly moving through postures, finding a supported meditation pose or seeing if we can allow ourselves to be a little heavier and less resistant to gravity in Savasana are all ways to slow down and come towards stillness in mind and body.
In this way, yoga helps us to slow down and provides the opportunity for us to do less instead of more. This is a big reason that I'm so passionate about describing yoga practice as an exploration rather than something to be achieved. As soon as you bring the 'more more more' attitude into it, you begin to lose the restorative, restful benefits of the practice.
Slow down to speed up
I used to think it was a great idea to try to do things at a million miles an hour. When you're younger you never seem to have enough time or knowledge to do everything and I, for one, was very impatient.
Yoga practice, amongst other experiences, has certainly taught me to appreciate the power of patience. I would never have been able to enjoy some of the practices I now do regularly if I'd been impatient: I would have given up before they became possible or enjoyable.
In the same way, the slow practices of yoga (watching the breath, holding postures, being in stillness) actually give us the chance to do more. We're not simply living in a constant state of go - anxiety, stress- but able to step out and see a different picture, maybe even be a different version of ourselves. They can give us the space we need to notice and look after our mental health in an 'always on' society, which means that we can actually do the things we want to do rather than getting stuck in a cycle of attempting to do everything.
Experience the power of slowing down with yoga by booking your next yoga class with me!
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