The other day my daughter, Mae, and I went to a new park…. And did you know this is what see-saws look like these days?! Who knew!
Anyway… it got me thinking about balance. We talk about see-saws in the office quite a bit when we’re describing your nervous system being in a state of balance.
It also got me thinking that we aren’t only supposed to be in that balanced state. How boring – we’d be in one spot and never change. The beauty about balance is the ability to go into an extreme and come back. The ability to adapt.
Life is all about balance.
Balance between work and family.
Balance between movement and rest.
Balance between pushing and slowing down.
Balance between eating well and indulging a bit.
Balance between stress and calm.
Balance between coffee and everything else… ok, we’re all still a work in progress, right?
Balance between stress and calm… it doesn’t mean that we’re always calm and even-keeled, and never stressed. We actually need both extremes. We need high stress.
Whoa. I said it! I bet that goes against everything you’re thinking. We need periods of high stress.
High sudden stress is life saving. You see your child slip and you instinctively jump to catch them before they fall. You see a car in front of you stop suddenly and you slam on your brakes. Sudden, high stress that’s life saving. Think about exercise — purposely putting yourself into a heightened stress response in order to move your body, build strength, and stabilization.
We need periods of extreme calm. We need to be able to sleep. And I’m not talking about some lousy 4-5 hours a night of tossing and turning. Your body needs rest. Your body heals, repairs, and regenerates as it sleeps. It needs at least a solid 7+ hours. And your body should recharge during this period, so you wake restful and have energy throughout your day.
So balance isn’t about always living right in the middle. It’s about being able to be in each of those extremes and come back out to a neutral, balanced state. We take care of an athlete, who because her nervous system wasn’t allowing her to come out of the intense, high stress she was putting herself in with exercise — she couldn’t sleep. I mean got maybe 2 hours of sleep a night. Her body was out of balance, stuck in a stressed state and not able get restful sleep. As she progressed throughout her care with us, her body was able to come out of that stuck stress state and actually sleep. She now sleeps a solid 6-7 hours per night without sleeping medication!
That’s the main thing we evaluate when people come into our office. How well is the nervous system getting out of those extreme situations and getting back the that neutral, balanced state. How well is it adapting to that necessary stress to be able to still get that necessary calm, recharging rest? How well do you think your nervous system is adapting to stress? If you’re interested in our initial testing that looks at exactly that – CLICK HERE to schedule an assessment.
