The Fall Busyness
The month of back to routine, the month where every activity starts and everyone seems to be going in different directions. It can feel chaotic, I often feel like I am running around without my head as they say trying to bring it all together and make sure everything is organized. I know I am not alone in that this time of year- especially if you have littles or kids to also account for. Often this busyness can leave us feeling disconnected from life, from self, from our loved ones. It can feel like we are trying our best and doing all the right things and taking our kids to the right places and activities - school, sports, extra curriculars. And sometimes there can be this feeling that you feel more distant, disconnected, a bit lost even.
The thing is our nervous system is not designed to keep this fast-paced, often high-stress lifestyle for the long term. We need pauses, spaces of slow, of where it seems like maybe we aren’t doing much - we need these spaces to integrate for our system to move toward more of a parasympathetic space, our littles and kids need this too. They also need slowness, and intentionality, and time to connect quietly to themselves, to their caregivers, to nature, to life.
When we keep ourselves and our families running in high gear we can often exist in a sympathetic charge for a lot of the time - telling our body we need to be on alert and our nervous systems are working harder than they need to be to try and keep up. Taking intentional rest is not a fad, or a buzz word but necessary for our nervous system to find some regulation, we need the space to ride the wave back down, we can’t just keep going up and up and up.
The key word also being INTENTIONAL rest, which is different from numbing out and checking out (which can serve their purpose too). But slow quiet time of connection. So think about as you're planning your month of back to everything and then somewhere can you put in pockets of intentional connection - cuddling with your animal or a loved one, drinking tea and watching the clouds, where can you create this connection with your kids. Meeting them where they are at - reading or going for a nature walk and marveling at all the beauty you find. These spaces tell their nervous systems they are safe too, they can let their guard down and connect to themselves to you to life on a deeper level.
Wishing you a soft return back to it all this September.