October 7, 2024
October is Mental Health Month, and we'd like to keep the focus squarely on the "health" part of "mental health."
From Monday 30 September through to Friday 1 November, we're offering fun, practical daily experiments in flourishing. They'll help you bring down stress, improve recovery, tune in to what your nervous system is telling you, and put the pieces of the puzzle together in a way that works for you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Welcome to week 2! Last week was about fixing unnecessary holes in your tank. This week we'll help you find new and better ways to top it back up.
Top up that tank!
The right kind of stress can be great for flourishing, but that’s only true if you’re getting enough time between periods of stress to rest, recover and hopefully rejoice.
Good recovery is more than just getting enough sleep and maybe some vegging on the couch. Variety counts: this week we’ll help you experiment with recovery activities across a range of categories that research tells us are effective in putting your body into recovery mode.
Experiment 1: move
Gentle movement is an under-rated recovery activity. When all the attention is on high-intensity workouts, it's easy to forget that a walk around the neighourhood or a stretch in front of the tv can have meaningful benefits. Slow movement, like slow breath, signals to your body that it's safe.
High-intensity exercise raises cortisol, one of the main stress hormones. That doesn't mean you shouldn't work out - we'd never discourage you from doing exercise you enjoy! - but if that's your jam, try ending your session with a slow, gentle warm-down, and give yourself plenty of time before bed. High cortisol can really mess with your sleep quality.
Experiment 2: play
Somewhere in early adulthood, many of us lose the habit of play. We laugh so much less, so suddenly, that researchers have described this period as falling over a humour cliff. One antidote: rediscover something that used to light you up - either completely absorb you, or make you laugh out loud, or ideally both.
Play is by nature absorbing. It takes your mind off lingering worries, and puts your body into an alert state without over-activating your sympathetic nervous system, which governs the stress response. With its combination of movement and absorption, play has also been shown to have a strong positive effect on creativity.
It may not feel like it, but play is a great source of recovery.
Experiment 3: connect
Meaningful connection with our people comes up in study after study as one of the golden tickets to a long life, well-lived.
One of the best examples is the Havard Study of Adult Development, which has been studying what goes into a long, happy life for over 80 years. The one clear lesson that comes through in cohort after cohort: the quality of our relationships, even just one or two close ones, has an outsized effect on our wellbeing.
Close, supportive relationships are a highly effective source of recovery: they buffer stress by providing support, perspective, and meaning. Even spending 5 minutes imagining a quiet dinner with a loved one can put your body into its rest-and-digest state, but why stop at imagining?
Experiment 4: surprise!
A fun way to combine play and connection, smiling at someone whose eye you've accidentally caught can be a great experiment. It's a simple, low-stakes way to bridge the social gaps we increasingly live with, especially in big cities. As a bonus, it also creates an opportunity to be fully present, forcing stressful thoughts into the background.
If this one feels too uncomfortable - we're introverts too! - adapt it to something that feels a little less out there. Say hi to your bus driver. Wave to a neighbour. Pet a cat. Hug a tree. Find one small way to connect with your community in its biggest, broadest sense.
Experiment 5: fuel
Eating well is not only a recovery activity, it helps your body build resilience to stress. In other words, this is an experiment that tops up your tank and helps to reduce the speed at which it gets drained by stressors.
To be fair, you may not notice much of a difference to your stress levels if you run this experiment just once. That's why today's experiment is really about savouring. Rather than thinking about fruits or vegetables, nuts or other proteins as something you have to suffer through to be "healthy", pick something you really love, and linger over it.
Experiment 6: sleep
While sleep isn't the only kind of recovery, it really does deserve a special category of its own: we probably don't need 8 hours of connection in a day, or 8 hours of play, but almost all of us need a solid 8 hours of quality rest.
Sleep can be a real challenge, though. We're often glued to screens or racing through other chores right up until (beyond!) bedtime, which leaves our brain busy and our body ready for action at exactly the time when we most want the opposite.
A wind-down routine can put a highly effective gap between a busy day and a good night's sleep. Try a deep relaxation routine, such as a guided yoga nidra session, for 15 minutes, and observe how your sleep quality changes.
Experiment 7: reflect
Just like last week, we're including reflection as an experiment. If journaling isn't your thing, you might try combining this one with Experiment 3, and tell your loved-one about what you've tried this week. Recounting the events of the week to someone else can be a great, interactive way to reflect and make better sense of things.
Good luck, don't forget to share what you get up to, and we'll see you next week!
