This is One Thing, a column with tips on how to live.
I used to luxuriate in 90-minute yoga classes at a studio an hour away. Then came two kids, and a slew of family responsibilities: My mother fell ill, and then died. My grandmother came to live upstairs from us for the last 2½ years of her of her life. Currently, my father is in chemotherapy.
Suffice it to say, I’m well acquainted with fight-or-flight mode. As a yoga teacher myself, I’ve felt like a fraud standing in front of people looking to me for a calming experience while I was personally a bundle of nerves.
On a quest for self-regulation, I realized: Integrating little bits of yoga and other exercise into my day is a sanity saver. And I mean, really little. Before running downstairs to change the laundry, I stop for a 20-second chest stretch with my arms in the doorframe. Before running back up, a calf stretch on the bottom step. I accompanied my dad to chemo last week, and while he was in the bathroom, I waited in the hall in a deep squat.
This is not the seven-minute workout, promising to get you fit in no time. It certainly won’t hurt your fitness to do these stretches and moves, but fitness isn’t the point. The point is an interruption of the nervous system’s stress response. Stress accumulates all day long, so why shouldn’t stress reduction be ongoing, too? When my body feels better, so does my mind.
Sure, ideally, this comes on top of a longer self-care routine. Here’s a best-case scenario: You wake up early, break a sweat, and sit to meditate, all before breakfast! Gold stars!
But then … you are filling lunchboxes and packing backpacks and the dog needs to go out and the kids are arguing over a Pokémon card, their beds unmade (purely hypothetical). Then, the water starts overflowing in the pot of oatmeal on the stove, and you are yelling. Why not instead bust out a downward dog? Or at least, once the kids are off to school, recalibrate with 30 seconds of alternate nostril breathing (in one side and out the other).
Here are a bunch of other ideas for mini-movements: Shake out your body. Give yourself a quick jaw or foot massage. Lie with your legs up the wall, or stand barefoot in grass. Sitting in traffic? Try a box breath (in four, hold four, out four, hold four, all with the nose). Lightly cupping the hands over the eyes and blinking makes for a lovely break when you’re at the computer. Stand on one leg when brushing teeth. Heel raises pair well with washing dishes. The key is to find a handful of exercises soothing to you—and then, eventually, to learn to deploy them in high-stress situations.
I still get overwhelmed—that’s life. But when I do, it’s easier to bring myself back to a state of calm.
