This blog is for those movers that just participated in a 5Rhythms workshop, especially in the Flowing Rhythm. With the workshop finding a home in your bodies, I'd like to offer some ways in which you can continue your exploration in the flowing state of being. Below you´ll find some tips relating to inside and our outside world. I hope it will help you on your journey!
Rest and Digest or Fight and flight
With the high pace of our modern lives our bodies are often in a state of rush. This rush is supported by the sympathetic nervous system, part of the autonomic nervous system that is also called the fight and flight mode. This mode helps the body to get ready for action or defend ourselves. It makes our heart beats faster and our muscles tense. When the fight and flight mode is active, energy is diverted from healing. Healing and repair are regulated by the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) or the rest and digest mode. This mode helps the body to digest, detox and build immunity.
The balance between being and doing is related to the balance between the fight and flight mode and the rest and digest mode. Unfortunately it is much easier to get into the stress mode than the healing mode, since the fight and flight mode is build for quick, short term reactions. It takes more time to bring on the biochemistry of rest and digest. Some of the following 10 tips are adapted from the website Your skillful means, others you will recognize from the workshop.
Permission to be
We live in a world where so many of us are waiting for permission to simply be. We often learn at young age that rest has to be earned. Hard work and diligence are highly valued at the expense of our self-care, which keeps being postponed until our holiday or even our retirement. This unbalance is easily exploited by industries selling us the promise of rest: have a break, have a ... What we have to break is the spell that unbalancing ourselves leads to happiness and that trying to consume our way out of it only makes things worse. Luckily there are simple ways in which you can help others around you break the frantic pace:
Build a Flowing Vocabulary
Finding the right words to fit your flowing state helps to give it a place in this world. Below are some English words. Find varieties in your own language!
Follow, tune in, resonate, cocoon, feel at home, relax, nurture, receive, nourish, chill, cultivate, down time, tone down, harmonize, rest & digest, care, foster, recharge, attend, ground, center, attune, cruise, hang out, settle down, take time, listen, sit back, stroll, unwind, refresh, welcome, take in, blend, earth, soften, loosen up, agree, sense, comfort, go with the flow...