Why the stillness can be maddening
Wind back the clock circa yoga years.
I was running on all four cylinders and trying to control the uncontrollables. The expectations were high and the stakes seemed even higher. From running an organization serving thousands to inspiring next generation leaders. From strategizing and fundraising to the nitty gritty of maintaining the internal operations and managing a growing team. I would sit for hours in traffic racing to the next meeting only to race home to get dinner on the table in hopes it would not be another night of takeout again. Fitness became optional and meditation sounded like wasted energy. Self care seemed like a luxury and wellness like a myth built on a foundation of false hope.
That’s stress for you. When your mind is in overdrive, your body will have a difficult time relaxing even when you’re tired, drained, exhausted. AND, if you’ve experienced traumatic episodes and/or environments, your nervous system is likely dysregulated and has a heightened capacity for dealing with unhealthy stress.
When you are stressed, your brain will send out stress hormones (adrenaline + cortisol) as a coping mechanism to support you in dealing with your current experience. The same stress hormones that enact your “fight or flight” response that are meant to protect you in a dangerous, life-threatening situation can become unhealthy to you when your stress response keeps firing over long periods of time (eventually leading to what we know as burnout).
You can become: easily irritated, anxious + worried, depressed + feeling a loss of purpose, prone to mind-numbing tension headaches, and restless in sleep. Since stress hormones are sent to areas most active to respond in emergency situations (muscles, heart, and other vital organs), stress is often an underlying source of many serious physical ailments and diseases.
Despite my mind’s stubborn insistence to “power through” by plunking away at my keyboard or hammering away at a big project, I have found time and time again that taking this course of action does not always yield more productivity.
The reality is that there is productivity in movement and in rest.
You see, high achieving go-getters have a heightened capacity for being able to harness, generate, and drive forward momentum. In Western society, we’re conditioned culturally, socially, professionally to keep doing and producing. (Eventually, I’ll have to write another article on this industrial complex.) It’s this achievement + performance-based culture that encourages us to subject ourselves to a need to “go and do” time and time again– so much so that work easily turns into an idol.
Eastern culture references that peace can be achieved through balancing yin and yang energies. Originating from Chinese philosophy, yin and yang is a negative-positive concept that opposing forces are complementary and interconnected aka you cannot have one without the other. Yin is the feminine energy that centers the ability to “be and breathe,” whereas yang is the masculine energy that centers the ability to “go and do.” If you’re high achieving and/or operating in high stress situations + environments, yang energy may be the norm and it may mean that yin energy will take some dedicated time, care, and attention to normalize into your experience.
When energies are imbalanced (an oversaturation in the energies), you get stress and burnout.
I created this chart to map this out for you:
You can infuse an influx of space and stillness into your lifestyle to balance the two energies. At first, the stillness can be maddening. I cannot tell you how many times sitting in stillness and meditation was uncomfortable. Frustrating. Upsetting even. It was confronting because emotions would arise that caused discomfort and it was irritating because my mind kept saying, “Every minute I’m sitting here, I could be sending an email, cooking a meal, finishing a project, [insert blank thing to get done here].” In yoga teacher training, yin and restorative classes were my least favorite because we would hold long, slow, and deep holds for anywhere from two to ten minutes. Our teacher would offer encouragement that the yoga practice is not about how many complex poses we could perform, rather the integrity by which we could hold the poses through durations of time.
In that way, stillness is a discipline and as with anything, it’s a process. After all, isn’t this a mirror of our life’s experience? In moments of stress + hardship, integrity is typically the most challenging to maintain and the first thing to go. How can you sit through the fire long enough to see the blessing of it all? Alternatively, how can you maintain your values + character in moments of trial and tribulation? It’s those little, big moments that make all the difference.
For me, that process of stillness began by tiring out my body to the same level that my mind was exhausted through jabbing and hooking away at the bag with boxing gloves. We’d end every class with breathwork and a few yoga poses and the bliss that arose in that state is indescribable.
When you move your body, you can tap into the sensations that may be long shut off in the emotional body to cultivate more feelings of lightness and ease. It’s these feelings that allow for expansion, creativity, and clarity. Aerobic exercises like yoga increase blood circulation to the brain so that you can shift and enhance your mood from negativity to become more positively influenced. This is because when you move and get that blood flowing, your body will release endorphins to promote more calm and wellbeing.
The mind’s first tendency is to rationalize what is on your plate with what you physically CAN do. Yoga + faith teach us that being present with every moment and living fully is about absorbing the weight of the experience with your heart and soul as well. AKA, just because you can, doesn’t mean you have to. For example, if you know you can take that meeting and that project, it doesn’t mean you have to if your heart is to be at home with your family and your gut is telling you to exercise your no.
Fully integrating mind, body and spirit with integrity is embodiment. It’s releasing the inner buildup of what you are experiencing to be true to the moment — releasing what you’ve imprisoned in your heart and silenced with your mind. When you free yourself from these constraints, that sense of freedom invites the spaciousness of aligned living. And in turn, you are able to think, play, and create with ease. Ultimately, living, learning, and loving more deeply.
In many ways, this is the epitome of grace in surrender. The acknowledgement that there is so much more we can do reconciled with the notion that in being we are becoming more too.
Kim Yamasaki is a Christian wellness coach who supports her clients in cultivating space + stillness in the mind, body, and Spirit through collaborative processes of co-creation. She provides services that create space _ stillness for deeper connection: spiritual wellness coaching for burnout, home organizing, and yoga. Her methods are affirming, grounding, and nurturing – all interlaced with playful creativity. She is a native Angeleno with Japanese and Chinese roots.
This article was originally published for the “selah space” newsletter, reclaiming abundance’s care package for go-getters. “Selah space” offers content to support readers looking to break the cycle of burnout by living, loving, and learning deeply to be their most calm, confident, and complete selves. In the Bible, selah means “to pause or to reflect.” It appears most heavily in the Book of Psalms and Habakkuk as musical notations at the end of verses to draw attention back to what was previously expressed.
References:
Nepo, M., & Curtis, J. L. (2020). Questions Put to the Sick II. In The Book of Awakening (20th Anniversary Edition, p. 209). Red Wheel.
Pietrangelo, A. (2020, March 29). The Effects of Stress on Your Body. Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/health/stress/effects-on-body