Relaxation

 It is well known that stress plays a big factor in a variety of important areas of human health.  Research the benefits of regular relaxation in stress management, anxiety, overall physical health, happiness and depression prevention.  

I turned to a favorite health influencer, Andrew Huberman.  Here is his 2.5 hour recap.  You can also forward to 2:11 for a synopsis or 2:14 for a description of a multi-purpose meditation approach I plan to try next.  

Meditation and mindful relaxation techniques can increase focus, improve mood, and sleep.  

One approach to meditation is to consider whether you presently have a bias toward interoception and sensing your internal state or exteroception and distractions around you.  Can you sense your heartbeat without touching a vein?  Huberman suggests pursuing a meditation technique that challenges your 'ception bias.  For instance, if external distractions (exteroception) are dominant, closing your eyes and focusing inwards may be more helpful.  If small variations in your internal state are intrusive, you may find yourself prone to anxiety and it may be helpful to meditate with your eyes open or even moving to draw your awareness to your surroundings. 

A second approach is to consider if you want to exit your meditation feeling more alert or more relaxed.  In those cases, you may want to focus on some form of cyclical breathing.  Breathing which emphasizes the inhale (more forceful and/or for longer duration) will create a more alert state.  Breathing which focuses on the exhale will create more relaxation.  

I final consideration is if you are seeking a more or less dissociative state.  Dissociation may be useful if the circumstances call for a more stoic approach -- you and your kid aren't served if you empathize with them too deeply during a meltdown.  However, acting like a robot going through the motions isn't great either.  Huberman suggests that good sleep and a meditation practice can assist with taking the middle path of being connected enough to be moved by emotions but not completely unmoored.  

Take 5 minutes out of your day today to breathe deeply, clear your mind, and relax your body.  

Kevin Kelly had quipped in Excellent Advice for Living that the minimum depth for a porch people would hang out on was 6 feet.  I measured mine.  Just barely 6 feet.  A few books later, I am marveling how Amy Tan has incorporated observation of birds into her daily routine in the Backyard Bird Chronicles.  So I invested 5 minutes of the first day of the year "relaxing" on my porch, watching rain drops puddle in my cracked up walkway and roll down the trashbags protecting the newly-rebuilt posts that already have landed back on my general contractor father in law's punchlist.  This is clearly a good badge for me to work on because it was anything but relaxing-- "ooh, the rain is still blowing onto the porch a bit,"  "I should really sweep,"  "if I had been doing my core exercises and yoga more consistently, my hips wouldn't feel so tight and my back wouldn't be so slouchy," "hubby is probably chuckling at me on the other side of the porch cam data feed," "the traffic at this 4 way stop sounds kind of like ocean waves," "we do still have squirrel in the oak tree, the cats haven't scared them all off!"  Huberman would say the real neural plasticity and growth comes from all the times we return to the exercise, not from staying in a monk-like state for the duration.  Eventually I got a few good reps of following my breathing and listening to my heartbeat.  Progress not perfection! 

Intermediate: Discover what calms you.  Take 10 to 15 minutes out of every day to take a walk, listen to music, daydream, or anything that helps you melt stress away.  Don't multitask while doing this; focus completely on your relaxation.  Do this every day for two weeks.  

1/2/2026:  15 mins in the evening sitting with the feral cats I had fed.  I thought I would try Huberman's Space-Time Bridging approach.  My two cycles of it didn't feel successful.  The harsh floodlights kept coming on, I couldn't see the horizon to focus on it, the cats were so fascinatingly distracting.  But I took several untimed breaks throughout the day to read a few journal entries in Amy Tan's birding book and found that very restorative.    

1/3/2026:  relaxed by watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban movie with my family.  It is so hard not to multi-task!  

1/4/2026:  recess was a half hour assembling a baggie of Legos from a massive gift my daughter had gotten for Christmas.  She had it out in a high-traffic area and every time I saw it, I felt a twinge that a piece might get knocked away from the school of nurdles and frustrate the future builder.  Also spent about 2 hours in quiet contemplation with Quaker meeting, although we are sitting waiting for spiritual direction, not necessarily focused on relaxation.  I also spent my DEAR (drop everything and read) hour visiting with the last issue of Mary Jane's Farm.  So lots of restorative activity today.  

1/5/2026: today was pretty hectic with school resuming, but I squeezed some relaxation moments in.  I took advantage of the car's seat warmers, delighted in picking up a tray of tea in a flavor I'd never tried to share with Fallon's teacher, and watching a few minutes of a DVD from the library.  

1/6/2026:  Nostalgia recess.  I found a guided meditation for free on Youtube featuring Andy from Headspace.  It didn't make sense to keep paying the recurring subscription, but I had a years long streak going on the Headspace app before I lapsed, so hearing his voice was immediately centering.  

1/7/2026:  I revisited that Andy Headspace meditation today to "check the box."  It is so convenient to be able to play it in a parked car when I arrive somewhere early.  My other three "self-care" indulgences were first, to take a leisurely stroll through the Farmer's market while my daughter was in school.  I learned most things are more expensive at this market than getting them organic and bulk in the grocery store, but I scored a deal on "ugly" tomatoes and learned about what is in season right now (potatoes!  chard! zucchini!) and was thwarted on cucumbers (too late?) and bok choy (too niche?).  Avocados were better quality and comparably priced, but funny enough, one of Fallon's school friends is having an avocado emergency with their tree.  The best things in life may sometimes be free in the future.  Do you think god is winking at us?  Second was to go get my semi-annual hair cut.  I look so much more put-together and got an update on how my stylist's kids were doing (we had worked together in a co-op preschool a few years ago).  Third was to bring a book and spend a few minutes reading in the sun while Fallon played with friends from school in grades whose schedules don't align with hers.  She was having so much fun, I lost track of her, briefly panicked (opposite of relaxation), but Levi's mom, Amanda had been hanging out with her on a rock skipping activity at the edge of the park and was observant enough about my nervous pacing to nudge her to check back at my reading waypoint pretty shortly thereafter.  It is comforting to feel like I am increasingly a part of the local community here.   

1/8/2026:  Sticking with an Andy meditation in a parked car again today.  Jens let me "relax" and handled most of the super fun (and palate pleasing) hot pot dinner.  I also chased it with two pieces of premium chocolate as a dessert.    

1/9/2026:  I got in another Andy meditation and some paging through the latest MJF magazine but today felt like a red-line day.  My relaxation was mostly loaded into the morning and the stressful activities (two meetings that didn't go as planned and required a lot of extra flexibility) were in the evening.  I want to bed having eaten a dinner of an orange and a girl scout cookie and woke up the following day with a big headache.  Double servings of relaxation on the 10th, which happens to be a Saturday.  

1/10/2026: More Andy, I have gotten in a groove here.  I also did quite a bit of reading and finished a book club book.  Not explicitly relaxing, but definitely a relief was to connect with my folks and see how they were holding up after a bad fall.  I am not sure I would say board games are something I would reach for to relax, but it was so fun finding an easy 3-player game in Chinese Checkers we could all muddle through together this evening.  Oh, and to cap the day off, I got to hang out in the spa with with my bae admiring Orion for a bit after the kid fell asleep.    

1/11/2026:  Andy meditation.  Is organizing and decluttering a legitimate relaxation technique?  I definitely find it calming.  I took the day to sort the leaning tower of crafting projects and materials into boxes based on the medium (candle-making, sewing, crochet, soap, clay, etc.)  As a family, we watched an episode of MacGyver which is a quirky love for me-- that he gets into all these dire problems, has this great sense of self-agency and doesn't panic and everything turns out OK in the end.  Sort of like Scooby Doo but maybe with a little more nuance.      

1/12/2026:  Andy meditation (in the car right before pickup).  I refilled the social well today climbing with a dad friend today and even managed to top a problem that had stumped me last time.  This would be the opposite of physical relaxation, but created an ambient sense of progress and personal growth which I find comforting/relaxing.  Today I also treated myself to two delicious pieces of chocolate and the last 2/3 of a foreign movie with subtitles while my awesome husband handled Fallon's bedtime wind down (and overnight wake up!).   

1/13/2026:  Andy meditation (in the car right before pickup again).  Another gift of decluttering as I took time while Fallon was in the classroom to shred a bunch of tiny projects she had started but hadn't come back to and cleared a storage bench that was so full of her stuff paperwork to be filed was piling up next to it, dangerously close to the paper shredder.  There was also the relaxation of a bunch of kitchen cooking experiments and the state of flow that comes with it-- what happens when you bread and fry mashed potater--tots?  How does DIY seitan turn out and how annoying/expensive is it to make?  

1/14/2026:  More Andy in a parked car.  Also a lot of recreational reading.  Plus some whimsy and comfort of bringing the dog with me on errands.  I had a poor night's sleep and gave myself permission to do the minimum today.  

1/15/2026:  More Andy in a parked car.  Also went for a walk for the first 20 minutes of my kid's gymnastics class-- I probably shouldn't have streamed YouTube videos if I wanted the time to be maximally restorative, but it was a "treat" that got me going.  I also spent recess at a Spanish book club meeting which is anything but relaxing as a language learner, but the cognitive change of pace definitely refreshed my motivation to keep practicing.  It also gave me cause to pick up a coffee table sized cookbook in both the Spanish and translated version to figure out how to make home cooking something my husband will look forward to.    

1/16/2026:  No time for Andy today, but I did have a delightful chill around a fire circle at a friend's parents + kids hang out session.  Does anyone else have trouble totally relaxing in a group setting?  I felt like to be an "engaged" guest, I had to keep peppering the fire-tender and my husband with small talk bids, even though I've known them both long enough to know they are happy in silence or lost in their screen.  The most restorative thing I did was a party foul (but I had warned the hostess in advance) of sitting in my car and watching an Audubon Zoom class about birdwatching while the others ate.

**Apply for Intermediate Badge Interlude**   

I am finding that some of the things generally suggested as "relaxing" are the opposite for me.  Meditation and intentionally doing nothing is the best example of this.  Maybe with more practice, I will find it more relaxing?  In the meantime, I am giving myself permission to relax in quirky ways other people might categorize as "work."  It is so satisfying to "putter" around the house, putting things away, doing a bit of tidying and decluttering, and enjoying how the nagging visual cues of a legion of silent to do's subside in the process.  

1/17/2026:  More Andy meditation, plus I gave myself permission to spend a lot of the afternoon reading, taking a little movement/to do break in between each chapter.  My daughter and I intentionally signed up for the "sensory hour" admission to a local open house at an art school and went in an hour early before the crowds.  I love that we made a plan to take a break and visit the "quiet room" which turned out to be our favorite room, even if they didn't stamp our passport.  As part of attending in this group, they loaned us a sensory bag with some fidget toys and headphones, which were instructive to play with.  I hadn't realized how calming flipping sequins over on a fabric mat would be for her, but now reflecting on her favorite shirts, which often have a sequin design, I can see why.  A wearable fidget toy!   

1/18/2026: Back to Andy guided meditation.  It is incredible I have been listening to this 10 minute thing all month and every time, I notice and focus on something different.  

1/19-1/22/2026:  Still getting in an Andy meditation break daily in the car.  The stress is ramping up with an imminent trip (how ironic for a relaxing getaway).  My daughter and I are trying putting our worries in a worry box and revisiting them at a predetermined time (2:30PM) but after the first day, we have forgotten to keep the appointment.  I received the information I needed to continue my service project to get my daughter's school parent group back to 501(c)3 status.  The mail came in the evening and I had a restless sleepless night anticipating working on it the next day (22nd).  Now the books and forms are in good shape and I can worry about the next things-- getting the pet sitter oriented tonight and getting us packed.  

1/23-1/27/2026:  Continuing to carve out 10 minutes of "arrived early" time to work through an Andy meditation.  I've also settled into a DEAR, or "drop everything and read" hour.  Sadly, sitting for a full hour isn't feasible, even if there weren't external interruptions.  But I set a kitchen timer for 25 mins and try to do two sessions per day.