We all have long and arduous days, but some of us are better equipped to deal with them than others. As a longtime stress-head of the finest variety, I have found the transition from busy and adrenaline-fuelled work days to rest and recovery at home a difficult one – my Oura ring often informs me that I am “adequate” at balancing my stress load, which is the AI version of telling me it’s “disappointed”. What to do about this sorry state of affairs?
Turns out, it’s as simple as shaking it out. “The main thing is to connect with the body and the sensations that have come up,” explains Dr Safia Debar, one of the few doctors in the UK to run the Harvard Stress Management and Resiliency Training (SMART), who works at The Mayo Clinic. “Just like animals in the wild will shake (or tremor), which releases all the energy from the increased cortisol and adrenaline coursing through them, it’s a similar thing for humans. We make adrenaline and cortisol, which primes the body for fight, flight or freeze, and if we don’t expend this energy, it gets stored.”
Soothe by Nahid de Belgeonne
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Since the majority of us are not fleeing danger on the Serengeti, but – slightly comically – experiencing our stress while sedentary in an office, much of our extra cortisol and adrenaline remains in the body, which in turn impacts how we feel and move. “Some form of shaking movement is a good way to release – I usually advise starting with a few minutes and then see how it impacts the body. Combined with breathwork, it can help restore us to baseline,” she says.
It wasn’t the first time I’d heard this. At an event to celebrate her new book, Soothe, Nahid de Belgeonne a somatic movement educator, breath and yoga teacher, who is also known as the “nervous system whisperer”, demonstrated one easy way to help the body and mind switch off at the end of the day. It involves a kind of shaking-meets-rocking movement while lying on the floor – she calls it “jiggling”.
Designed to calm an overstimulated nervous system, this rocking movement “provides deep pressure and joint compression, which can help to modulate arousal levels, promoting a more balanced and calm state”. We get tense and tight trying to contain our many feelings, and rocking essentially releases a cascade of endorphins, helping to shift us into a more relaxed state.
All you have to do is lie on the floor and connect to your body, then gently press your heels into the ground until your knees bend a little and your calves and thighs come away from the floor. Then, you rock your heels on the floor, backwards and forwards, letting the motion move your body (allow it to be floppy) from heels to head. Stop and start this movement, noticing how you feel in between spurts, for around five to 10 minutes.
It sounds simple – and perhaps a bit wacky – but when De Belgeonne referenced the fact that parents rock their children to soothe them, it all made a lot of sense why it helps us years later. She is also a fan of more vigorous shaking: “It’s a natural response to your body to release itself from a fixed state,” she says, explaining that it releases a surge of chemicals in the body, and thereby releases them from both body and brain, undoing the damage caused by stress.
So, how will you shake? Well, in the first instance, you can treat your body like jelly and let movement travel through each part of it, however it comes to you. It will feel weird at first, but it works. You can also spend time dancing or bouncing around listening to music, which is another key activity the experts recommend. Or, Dr Debar also recommends yoga (hip opening poses, in particular) and TRE, also known as trauma release exercise, examples of which can be found online.
While I spend a lot of time feeling stressed in my own head, both experts have taught me to let my body do the processing – sometimes, feeling cool, calm and collected is understanding that body and mind are intrinsically linked, and, try as you might, you can’t think yourself out of a stressed state. Sometimes, all it takes is putting an excellent tune on, and putting the world to rights with a little shake.
