Relaxing

Calming down, down regulating, taking your mind off things.

I was thinking about this last week, as a counter point to warming up to sessions. I ran through the various things that I do, to offer me a sense of calm / peace and allow my mind space to recuperate. Having this mental space is so important to help everything recover. I also realised that many of the things listed below let me drop into flow – or absolute presence in whatever I am doing at that point in time. I can have a tendency to over-focus/obsess over running & coaching, which is both unhelpful and exhausting. So being able to turn to the following as tools to let my mind space to unwind, grow, absorb are critical. We all need outlets to help us breathe (so to speak) and switch off. For some people this is running itself – one of the things I love about running is it allows me to put whatever else is uppermost in my mind to one side and just leave it there for however long my run is. Whilst this doesn’t solve any challenges, the space itself can offer a new perspective. However running alone doesn’t have the power to do that for me and there are many occasions when I want to still my mind. In no particular order these are things that let me find peace / calm / presence due to how absorbing I find them:

Gardening. I absolutely love gardening, particularly growing food. I learnt some time ago I have to set myself an alarm for 30 mins, otherwise I totally lose track of time and end up hurting myself (usually my lower back). This is one of the very few things I do that I can pretty much drop into flow immediately, losing all sense of time and just being there with whatever it is I’m doing. Nothing ever grows the same, some years things improve, others fall back. The whole process fills me with awe and curiosity. How is it that you take food waste and old garden waste; leave it in a heap and within 3-6 months it turns into this rich compost, teeming with tiny life that then acts as a powerful growing medium? Watching wildlife interact with the plants that are growing, watching the seasons change, the garden die back and re appear all inspire and amaze me. As a counterweight to anything else going on gardening is a safe space for me that always leaves me mentally refreshed and satisfied. Seeing something change from seed to fully formed plant to eat will never grow old for me.

Cooking – similar to gardening, especially if preparing food that I have grown, I find the process of prep to serving to eating incredibly immersive. It is a very sensory experience that stimulates the body in a way nothing else can, alongside nourishing from a mental and physical perspective. Again I can spend hours looking preparing something, a sourdough loaf being a good example, with looking after the starter through to baking this can take up to 6 days, only using 3 ingredients, flour, water, salt. That simplicity and process blows my mind. It also made me very aware of just how much else is put into commercial mainstream bread. Like gardening cooking is equally rewarding & unforgiving, which means it is such a rich learning experience.

Sewing – something I do far less than I like, but when I do demands my full attention and presence. Poking yourself with a needle is painful and enough motivation to pay attention to hand stitching. It shares the same reward that gardening/cooking gives. You get the beginning to end of a creative cycle that can leave you with something fully formed from basic elements. alternatively you can make a complete mess of whatever you’re working on and end up back at square one. This sense of jeopardy makes the process more engaging. The ongoing learning, adjusting, demanding full attention leads to that presence and mental fullness in the task.

These 4 things are things to fall back on, rely on and things I look to with great regularity (sewing the only one not as much as I’d like). They serve me incredibly well and I can imagine that others (carpentry being one) would have the same impact. What it does show me is just how key it is to have hobby’s or interests that are free from financial work pressure, but are purely there to let your mind breathe and calm.