Read time : 3 minutes
Hello, wonderful person, how are you?
I’m just recovering from a cold, and it took a bit of a knock on my energy levels! I’m reminded of how it feels to regain strength again, and start to feel more myself. It’s reminded me of how we’re always moving through stages of expansion and contraction. And recovery from stress is a lifelong practice, there is no end point. We might experience what we feel is progress towards health, and then also setbacks along the way. Both are actually very much a part of being alive, in this human experience. It’s quite normal to judge ourselves in the periods where we take a knock or we need to pause as a setback , and periods where we’re more active as progress (we’re conditioned to and rewarded for productivity). But actually, both are needed to take us forward. And we’ve needed both to take us so far to this very point in our lives. Consider for a moment how far you’ve come, in your life so far? A mind-blowing thought. When we consider recovery from stress and trauma as a lifelong practice, it can allow us to cut ourselves some slack, and to promote resilience and recovery.
I remember one of my yoga teachers, fondly, about 15 years ago, in her 70s at the time, imparting wisdom to an early 20s me, that we have our whole lives to learn this stuff. It always used to make me breathe a sigh of relief and feel more optimistic.
Here are some things that I like to consider and ways to reframe (seeming) setbacks on a journey (whether you're working on a health goal or any other goal in your life):
We have our whole lives to learn and practice this stuff!
We can begin again, over and over again
We only have capacity for so much at any time, before rest and integration is needed
Healing isn’t linear, and there will be moments in our lives when we are reminded of stressful events from the past, even though they're not happening in the present moment. We might need to tend to ourselves again, with more care in these moments
Events in our lives will also require us to tend to ourselves with more care : periods of illness, death of a loved one / family member, loss of a job, birth of a child, even reaching an accomplishment or achievement all will likely require more of energy and perhaps even remind us of challenging past situations, we might need to tend to ourselves with more care over these times
Upturns and downturns can only be experienced relative to each other : we experience a downturn or a setback only in contrast due to the way we’ve had a period of upturn. Is it possible, through the ups and the downs, to notice a baseline shift over time : notice the way you're making new choices, and things that used to cause a lot of activation are no longer so difficult?
When we’re building capacity in our nervous system, and we feel more space and ease than we used to, often we will start to feel more. More enjoyment, but also more challenging feelings. These have risen up because we now have the resilience to be with them.
Creating new habits and making changes requires a lot of energy. It's likely if we’re going through a period of focusing on our health and creating new habits, that we will feel more tired or need more rest.
Finally, a reminder that, feeling is a part of this human experience of being alive. We will never escape difficulty, unfortunately. However, through our body-focused practices to support healing and resilience, it's likely we will hurt less along the way, find things become easier over time, we increase our capacity to be with discomfort, and we feel more ourselves and more human.
If you’rve experienced a setback of late, and you feel like gently reconnecting with yourself, consider joining an online class, or send me a message to discuss working together 1:1.
Or have a look at this blog, which gives some free guidance for nervous system nourishment.
More next week….
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Take care and thanks for reading / listening
Charlotte