Slow down to speed up

Have you been in that situation where you feel like you’re doing all the right things: eating healthy, exercising, not toooo much coffee and alcohol (but ok, a little…), but still you feel crap? You can sense that something is off, but you can’t figure out what. Well, I learned last week during my Yin Yoga Teacher Training that looking into Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and how the different elements and seasons impact us, may give you the answer you were looking for!

You may have heard about TCM before, but you probably don’t know exactly what it is, as did I! So I’ll start by giving you a quick overview of what TCM is. I’ll try to keep it short to not lose you before the next paragraph 😉 but man, there is SO much to say about it!

So, here we go. TCM is based on this ancient, Chinese idea that our life force energy, called Chi, needs to be able to flow through the body freely and without blockages. How well your Chi flows, is a measure of your health and vitality. We all have Chi, and even objects and other things have Chi. Everything has got energy, and it’s what connects us all together. Chi moves along the meridian lines in the body. These meridians are energy channels or pathways through which Chi can flow. When Chi is blocked, pain or disease can occur, both physically and emotionally or mentally. So we all need good quality Chi that can flow!

The seasons of your life

Now the interesting thing here is that we go through seasons – in our day, in our week, a year, a lifetime. And with those seasons come different needs for our body and mind for this Chi to keep flowing freely. And that is exactly where we often go wrong and where a lot of our contemporary ‘issues’ come from.

But before we dive into that, let me tell you a little bit about these seasons and how this relates to the 5 elements in TCM. TCM speaks of 5 elements; EARTH, METAL, WATER, WOOD and FIRE.

• Earth is related to grounding, nourishment, digestion (of the foods we eat and literally digesting all the experiences we go through in life), and it’s the season of the late summer when things are starting to slow down. When in balance, we may experience compassion, calmness, confidence and self-love. When off balance, there may be worry, overeating, sweet cravings, sleep and fertility issues

• Metal is our autumn, which is all about letting go, courage, hope and our ability to make decisions. When off balance, we may find ourselves with grief, hopeless, uninspired and with breathing problems (think your usual cold in autumn!)

• Water is the winter element, and considered our most important element since we are made up of 70% water! This element is necessary for birth, growth and reproduction and we should find stillness in our water, so we can connect with our deepest selves and our emotions. If our water element is out of balance, we feel fear and anxiety. When we are balanced, we are courageous, calm, determined and we get things done

• Wood is our spring, when we make new plans, when we are most creative and set new goals. We are flexible, light, organized and focused. But, when our Wood element is off balance, we may experience anger, irritability or impatience. This is the time for detoxification and movement

• Fire is, obviously, our summer season, which is full of joy, love and happiness when we are balanced. If we are out of balance, we may experience depression, hate, disconnection from ourselves and others. Fire is active, energetic, passionate, outgoing, social and powerful

Each and every one of us will have some of each element in them, and when we move through different phases in our lives one may be more prominent than another. Just like we move through seasons in a year, we move through these elements as well. That’s how it’s supposed to be, creating balance throughout our lives. We move through these elements as a cyclical movement, experiencing each element and letting each element nourish us and set us up for the next phase. There are times to be creative and dream (wood, spring), there are time to rest and digest (earth, late summer) and there are times to just get stuff done (water, winter).

Relaxing? What’s that?

When one of the elements is out of balance or we ‘skip’ a phase, that’s when we may start to experience disease or physical and / or mental issues. This imbalance arises because this society has put us into a place where it is really hard to keep this balance. Think about it, which element do you feel is most off balance in yourself at the moment? Chances are high that you are excessive in fire, and too low in earth or water. It makes sense, how often do we slow down? Do we actually rest and relax? What does that even mean, relaxing? For most people, rest and relax means going to a yoga class (vinyasa is still pretty much fire, people!), watching Netflix for hours (no blue light after 8PM, ahum…), even reading a book, or going for dinner with friends. Chilling these days means spending an hour on your phone scrolling through Instagram. All these activities may be great, but…they are not really resting! Ask yourself, when was the last time you just sat down and did nothing? Literally nothing. You just look around, gaze outside your window, notice your breath and how you feel that day, and just BE. Well, I couldn’t really answer that question for myself because it had been too long ago to even remember.

We have changed our understanding of what ‘rest’ means and ‘relaxing’. But the truth is, our bodies (and minds!) desperately need real rest, the way it was once supposed to be. For me, this was a huge eye opener. And I realized, living abroad as an expat on a tropical island, with hot summer weather, too many fun things to do, lots of transit travelers, and where homes are not made to spend much time indoors, the only thing I do is go out of the house, be social, extrovert, active and so on. I rarely stay at home, and if I do I don’t really enjoy it because my space doesn’t have a nice chill area with a sofa for example, and seriously, FOMO is a real thing here. I fell into the trap of constantly being on the move, busy, outside, and active. Whereas what I really need is ‘winter’ and grounding - and no, I don’t mean winter as in snow and ice skating 😉 I still prefer nice, warm weather. But what I mean is staying at home, resting, sleeping, reflecting, going inwards, being alone, reading, cooking...you name it. My story is obviously my Bali life, so many of you may have a different experience. But I guess most of you will recognize that the largest part of our lives happens outside or in an active ‘stress’ mode. Because that’s what this society has done to us.

So what’s the issue?

Stress is the number 1 killer in the Western world! It fuels some of the biggest health issues of our day, including diabetes, depression, osteoporosis, heart attacks, strokes, autoimmune diseases, and I can go on and on. What happens when we are in this constant ‘on’ mode, active, energetic, full of fire is that we automatically turn on our sympathetic nervous system (SNS), which is the ‘fight-or-flight’ response of the body and our ‘stress-mode’. It’s our yang. Back in the old days, the only times we needed to have our SNS activated, was when we were being hunted by a sable tooth tiger or when we were at war. But except for me playing with tiger cubs during my volunteering months in South Africa, I don’t think I’ve ever been chased by a tiger. When this SNS is activated, with it a whole lot of hormones are being released, fat is retained (you need it to run away from that sable tooth tiger, right?!) and our heart rate goes up. All of this stops a ton of other physiological processes in the body, like our digestion (who needs to digest if you’re running for your life?) and immune system. But today, our bodies react the exact same way to the stress we experience in our everyday lives. Most of our stress these days is actually caused by our view on life, not by actual life threatening situations. How stupid is that?! I am stressed because “I may run out of money”, because “I may not deliver that powerpoint presentation in time” or because “these people may not like me”.

WHAT

THE

FUCK

Seriously… we need to slow down people and start enjoying the beauty of life again! Appreciating the fact that we are not hunted by tigers anymore and most of us are not at war (although war still happens, but you’re the lucky one if you read this). Because when we do that, our parasympathetic nervous system is turned on (PNS), which is our yin, our ‘rest-and-digest’ response. Our heart rate drops, blood pressure drops, we can think clearly and digest our food and life experiences.

So how do we do that? By taking time regularly to just sit and be. To sit and focus on our breath, slowing that breath down and using it to find space in our body and in our mind. By calming our thoughts, through meditation for example. By allowing ourselves to be in our ‘winter’ (water), to ground ourselves and to reflect on life in order to digest our life experiences (earth). And also by honoring the season that we are in at a particular point in life, and nourishing that season with the right ingredients, through food, lifestyle and sleep. We all know that feeling when your body is craving hot soups and curries in winter, and fresh and light salads in summer. That’s your body just giving you signs! Start to listen to those signs. Go to Yin yoga, meditate, walk in nature. Hibernate! Like bears do. It’s so simple, nature gives us all the right examples, but still we don’t listen and think we know better.

Stress and rest in exercise

And even if you go to the gym, or take a yang vinyasa yoga class, make sure you rest afterwards. Some stress is actually needed for our bodies to stay strong and healthy, but make sure you include both components of stress (e.g. vinyasa flow) and rest (savasana). If you love crossfit, go a few times a week, but go to yin yoga on the days off. Balance it out. Just on a side note here, so many of us think that losing weight only happens when you go to the gym more and more and more. But as I mentioned before, we store fat when we are constantly in our SNS mode, so you may actually gain weight as a result of too much yang style exercise. We need to slow down to speed up. To speed up our metabolism, digestion, creativity, productivity and so on. You start to get it? Good.

Allow your Chi to flow

When we take care of ourselves in this way, Chi can flow easily through the body and we can be our best selves and make the most out of life. So that was my biggest lesson from my Yin teacher training last week (pretty big one, hey?!). So starting this week, I have been taking it slower throughout my days. I give myself time for a sweet morning routine with some breathwork, meditation, a cup of tea and some writing. I don’t force myself to work if I don’t feel like I’m going to be productive or have no inspiration (for example, I waited 4 days to write this blog because I just couldn’t find the inspo) and I spend much more time at home. And it feels GREAT! I get more stuff done in less amount of hours, I sleep better and I feel more aligned with myself. Slow down to speed, that’s it!

This framework of TCM has given me a new way to look at life and the things I’m going through. And I think it’s bloody interesting! So I’m very excited to bring these elements into my coaching practice, send me a DM if you’d like your first FREE 30-minute intro session with me soon.

Much love, Myrthe