Why Relaxing is Harder Than it Should Be

One of the main reasons people come to me is because they want to relax.

In this article, I want to share a little bit about the scientific side of relaxation and why it can be so challenging.

To understand this, we need to look at the autonomic nervous system.

The autonomic nervous system has two major divisions. These are responsible for keeping many of the basic functions of your body working as they should.

These two divisions are called the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.

The Sympathetic Nervous System

The sympathetic nervous system is what we often call the fight-or-flight response.

It is a network of nerves that helps activate the body's response when you are stressed, active, or in danger.

When this system is activated, your body prepares itself for action. You become more alert and ready to either fight the situation or run away from it.

This worked wonders when our ancestors were facing a lion or a bear.

The Parasympathetic Nervous System

On the other side, we have the parasympathetic nervous system.

This is often called the rest-and-digest system.

As the name suggests, this is the system that brings the body into a calm state. It is the state where the body can restore, recover, and prevent itself from overworking.

Its purpose is to conserve energy and regulate bodily functions such as digestion, heart rate, blood pressure, and more.

Our nervous system is connected to every organ in the body, so it is very important that these systems work in balance.

The sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems work together, but generally only one can be dominant at a time.

If one is on, the other is off.

Why Is It So Difficult to Relax?

The fight-or-flight response is meant to activate when we are facing danger.

You experience fear and your body prepares itself to decide whether you are going to fight the situation or run away from it.

The problem is that most of us are not facing lions anymore.

However, our society has made us believe that we need to meet certain expectations in order to be successful, accepted, or loved.

These ideas become so ingrained that we often act on them without even realising it.

So if you struggle to truly relax, there is a good chance that your sympathetic nervous system is activated much more often than it should be.

In other words, you may be spending much of your life in fight-or-flight mode.

Signs You May Be Living in Fight-or-Flight

You can start by asking yourself whether some of these experiences feel familiar:

• Frequent headaches

• Tightness in the chest

• Dry mouth

• Dry eyes

• Poor digestion

• Increased menstrual pain

• Problems sleeping

• Difficulty relaxing

These can all be signs that your body is spending too much time in a state of stress.

So What Can You Do About It?

This is the big question.

How do we activate the parasympathetic nervous system?

How do we enter that state of rest and digest?

And if you have no idea, it's not easy.

Before I understood this information about the nervous system and the practices behind it, I thought relaxing was taking a nap, pampering myself, or watching a TV show.

The thing is, those activities were mostly distracting my mind from feeling stressed.

They helped me step away from the stress for a moment and maybe feel a little less tired.

But afterwards, that tiredness was still there.

It kept accumulating.

It never really got better.

The Key: Stimulating the Vagus Nerve

There are different ways to activate the rest-and-digest response in the body.

I won't go into detail in this article, but I do want to share one important piece.

The key is stimulating the vagus nerve.

As you stimulate this nerve, it affects your heart rate and sends signals to the brain that you are safe.

It tells your body:

You can let go.

You don't need to keep carrying all of this.

When the body receives that message of safety, it becomes much easier to relax, recover, and restore.

Final Thoughts

If you've been struggling to relax, don't assume that taking more naps or distracting yourself for a few hours will solve the problem.

True relaxation happens when the body feels safe enough to leave fight-or-flight mode and enter a state of rest and digest.

The good news is that there are practical things you can do to support this process.

In future articles and videos, I'll be sharing simple exercises that can help stimulate the vagus nerve and activate the parasympathetic nervous system.

My hope is that these practices help you enter a deeper state of relaxation, recovery, and balance, so that you can start feeling more like yourself again.

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