In a Moment - Issue 6

I find that stress has this sneaky way of lingering once its taken up residence in our beings. It can take hold after a specific event — like a missed flight, a frustrated exchange with a client or coworker, the loss of a job — or it can accumulate over time, building upon itself slowly. In either case, it tends to make a home in our bodies.

There are the familiar hiding places — the brow, the jaw, the shoulders, the belly, the low back. And stress knows these places. Recognizes that these are places that often accommodate tension.

For me, it’s my belly. This tightening when there’s a bit too much pressure externally and it responds by compressing internally. It wasn’t until I started integrating relaxation practices (restorative yoga, meditation, body scan) that I realized how much tension I held there.

I remember lying in savasana at the end of a yoga class several years ago, the teacher instructing the class to “relax” — “relax your feet…relax your knees…relax your hips…relax your belly…”

I laid there, trying to relax my belly. Trying to ease the tissue. Trying to soften the fibers. And it occurred to me how odd it was to exert so much effort to find ease.

It was then I began my relationship with restoration. Relaxation does not come from effort, from trying, from force. I’ve found that the body doesn’t respond as readily to instructions to relax. Rather, it takes time.

See if you can find a few minutes today — maybe 10 or maybe 3. Find a place where you can lay down. Maybe your couch, the floor of your office (depending on how often it’s cleaned), reclining the seat of your car, a plot of grass outside.

Close your eyes. Scan your awareness evenly throughout the body, observing both the places of tension and the places of opening or softening. Meet those areas of tension with compassion. Holding them in your awareness with less of a goal to “release” and more of a sense of being present with that tension. Begin to notice what happens when you are still, when you stop trying and start witnessing.