By Emily Winter, MPH, SEP, E-RYT
Photo: Getty Images + Unsplash
Last night you crawled into bed at 10:30, bone-tired, but couldn’t fall asleep. The day had ended, but some inner part of you couldn’t slow down.
We live in a culture that demands high-paced movement. We work 40-plus hours a week, keep up with the errands, emails, and appointments, maybe raise kids, try to be good partners and friends. Weekends become another to-do list, and even our time “off” turns into something to accomplish: self-care, healthcare, exercise, vacation…
When we finally find the space to slow down, we often can’t. The body fidgets or tenses, the mind spins. We lie in bed exhausted but unable to sleep. Most of us know this feeling of “tired but wired.”
So how do we find real rest, after running on hyperdrive all week, or all year?
The nervous system learns through repetition. When we power through fatigue, override our bodily needs, or stay alert for long stretches, the body adapts to being “on.” Closing the laptop or crawling into bed doesn’t automatically downshift our nervous system.
Imagine shaking a snow globe, then setting it down. The globe itself stops moving, but inside, the snow keeps swirling. It takes time for each fleck to settle to the bottom. Our bodies work the same way. When we’re in go-mode, there’s movement happening beneath the surface: stress hormones circulate, heart and breathing rates elevate, muscles tense, awareness jumps from one task to the next. When the demands stop, our physiology doesn’t necessarily stop with them.
The snow is still swirling, and we can’t slow it down through more effort. This is where relaxation gets frustrating or even activates us more. I’m trying to sleep, but I can’t stop thinking. I’m trying to meditate, but my body feels uncomfortable. I’m trying to relax, but I just…can’t.
Notice the word trying. Trying takes effort, and when we “try” to relax, we’ve turned rest into one more task to accomplish. A simpler, easier way is to create the conditions that make it possible for the nervous system to settle on its own.
Real rest includes restoration. This happens when muscles release their bracing, breathing eases, and the body gets a chance to recover from action and effort. A healthy nervous system isn’t calm all the time; it moves in rhythm, its energy rising and falling. When we are regulated, we mobilize when something needs us, settle once the demand passes, and mobilize again when life rises to meet us.
If you struggle with finding that rhythm and making the transition into rest, here are four somatic (body-based) practices to experiment with.
1. Look around before you close your eyes.
Let your eyes soften and take in the room. Notice where your gaze wants to go. Find something pleasant, or just neutral: a patch of sunlight, a tree outside the window, or the color of a blanket. Spend a few moments actually seeing it.
This is called orienting. Instead of asking your body to relax on command, you’re giving your brain current information about where you are: I’m here. It’s safe. This is what’s around me right now.
Then let your gaze soften further and notice what you can see at the edges of your visual field, without turning your head. Focal vision tends to accompany a narrowed, activated state; peripheral vision tends to accompany a broader, calmer one.
2. Move before you try to be still.
Sometimes the way into stillness is through movement. Before lying down to rest, sleep, or meditate, give your body a minute to move however it wants. Sway, stretch, wiggle your fingers and toes. Shake out your arms and legs. Slowly walk around the room, feeling your feet touch the floor.
Going straight from “on” to lying still can be its own kind of struggle, because the body doesn’t simply downshift on command. Think of the shakiness in your body after a near-miss in traffic, or the urge to pace the room after a tense phone call. Kids do this instinctively, running or jumping around after a long car ride instead of sitting still. Movement gives a revved-up body somewhere to direct its energy before asking it to settle. A minute of movement can make the stillness that follows feel less like a fight.
3. Give your weight to what’s holding you.
Lie down or sit somewhere supported, and notice where the chair, bed, or floor meets your body. Feel the weight of your head, your back, your hips, your legs. Then experiment with giving five percent more of that weight to the surface underneath you. You don’t have to make your muscles relax. See if they start to soften once they realize they don’t have to hold so much, that there is physical support beneath you. Can you let your muscles do less of the work, and the chair or bed do more? Yield to gravity, little by little.
4. Lengthen your exhales.
Breathe in normally, then let your exhale run two or three seconds longer than your inhale. Repeat a few times without forcing it, and finish with a big, audible sigh. A longer exhale is one of the most direct ways to nudge your body from a sympathetic, activated state toward a parasympathetic, settled one.
None of this rushes the snow to the bottom of the globe, and it isn’t meant to. These practices just stop us from shaking it back up. Give the nervous system accurate information, give an activated body somewhere to put its energy, and let gravity do the rest.
This is the same territory I cover in my forthcoming book, Somatic Healing. When our bodies ask for rest, we can learn to work with the nervous system, instead of against it.
Emily Winter, MPH, SEP, E-RYT, is a somatic practitioner, educator, and author of Somatic Healing: Soothe Your Nervous System with Body-First Therapy. Drawing on more than a decade of experience in public health, Somatic Experiencing®, trauma-informed yoga, and expressive arts, she helps make the science of nervous system regulation accessible and practical for everyday life. She works with clients and practitioners worldwide and shares accessible somatic tools through workshops and her YouTube channel, Somatic Skills with Emily.
