Written by Nat Young – Yoga Teacher and Clinical Hypno-Psychotherapist.
As a yoga teacher and hypno-psychotherapist, embracing stillness is once of the things I encourage in all my classes and sessions. However, I feel these still moments are often the most difficult for people. I’ve often heard clients say that if they aren’t moving, they mustn’t be making progress. This couldn’t be further from the truth – let me tell you why…
Quite simply, the body needs downtime. Let’s look at this example of a key contributor to workplace stress: Many people in corporate workplaces believe that if they continuously work through lunch and stay late at work, they must therefore be successful and ‘going above and beyond’. It’s somewhat of a hero mentality, and many of us want to save the world! If this way of working doesn’t bother you and isn’t causing you stress, then there’s no issue but sadly this mind-set can commonly end in office burnout.
If you often find yourself in this situation and you’re feeling stressed as a result, I would encourage you to at least consider taking a break to be ‘still’ for a few minutes throughout the day. Better still, try leaving work on time and make staying late the exception rather than the rule. Work is unfortunately one of those tasks that is never finished and there will always be something else to do. An important way to overcome this type of stress is to get yourself feeling comfortable with not finishing something.
‘Stillness’ gives you time to reflect and absorb the goings on in the world. Without this time, we’re constantly living in a world where we’re flying by the seat of our pants with no time to think. That’s certainly not good news for our stress levels or our wellbeing. How could you embrace more stillness in your everyday life?