self-care Archives - Janine McCarthy

Menstrual Cycle Rescue - 7 women standing in a row laughing - stress relief

How to clear stress from your body

29 December 2022 27 February 2023

So it’s the end of another year. I don’t know about you, but I can still feel the 2022 stress hanging around in my body.

It shows up as tension and a mild aching below my ribs that I can’t quite let go, and feeling tired even in the mornings.

It’s essential to clear stress from our bodies so we can clear it from our minds, so I’m taking some time in this liminal ‘nothing’ week between the crazy Xmas and New Year intensities to release my pressure valve.

How?

First, I’m returning to my favourite book of the year, Burnout: solve your stress cycle by Emily and Amelia Nagoski. I really can’t recommend it highly enough if you have stress stored in your body too…..which is, um, all of us nowadays!

Here are their recommendations for releasing stress:

ANY physical activity is ‘the single most efficient strategy for completing the stress response cycle’. It’s ‘what tells your brain you have successfully survived’ whatever threats you’ve experienced. So walk, run, cycle, dance in your lounge room like nobody’s watching, or just shake your whole body for a couple of minutes like a deer that’s just out-run a lion. You’ll feel SO much better – do it daily, if you (like most people) get re-stressed everyday.
Slow breathing – deep, slow breaths with a longer exhale helps your brain and body switch out of fight/flight/freeze and into rest/digest/restore, where all healing and recovery can happen.
Positive social interaction – a brief, friendly chat with a cashier at the shops, your coffee barista, or a friendly neighbour helps to reassure your brain/body that the world is a safer place.
Having a big belly laugh with someone – helps with social bonding and turns down the volume on the stress response, relaxing muscles and sending good vibes through body and brain.
Affection – physical or not, with someone you love and trust who loves and trusts you. Try a 20 second hug, which can ” change your hormones, lower your blood pressure and heart rate and improve mood” and even increase oxytocin, the social-bonding hormone.
Having a good cry – it might not solve problems but it completes the stress cycle in your body so you can recover physically. Turn on your favourite ten-tissue movie to get your tears flowing!
Creative expression – doing anything creative can be a great way to express and release big emotions in a socially acceptable way.

Deep Rest in 15 Minutes

And my other go-to technique for releasing stress from my body is something I call the Deep Rest technique – try it today:

Lie on your back on the floor with your legs up on the couch (or on the bed with a pile of 4-5 pillows), rest your hands on your belly and breathe slowly and deeply for 15 minutes.

If you need help with more persistent tension and pain, book your appointment for an Ortho-Bionomy session here and start 2023 feeling great.

If you’d like to support my work with a regular or one-off contribution, head over here

Why we need rest for natural pain relief

25 October 2022 25 October 2022

Usually when we feel uncomfortable in our body it’s because we’re not attending to our own essential needs. The most underrated of these is REST.

Most women put their own needs last – after the needs and demands/requests of their colleagues, partner, children, parents, friends etc…….

Like my friend. She looked tired recently so I asked her if she was okay. She rolled her eyes and said she had been up since 7am (this was Saturday) to work with her personal trainer to try to stop her awful perimenopausal hot flashes. She works full time supporting disabled people. She also has a husband and two teenage sons. And she does ALL the cooking and housework. You read that right. All.

Women need a lot more rest when we’re progressing through the major life transition of menopause. So I suggested she might need to rest more than she needed to work out. What she said next shocked me: “If I rested, I’d have to leave my husband and sons because I couldn’t look after them.” She believed she couldn’t be part of the family AND get enough rest.

She also believed she had to work her body hard to conquer her symptoms, as if they were signs of weakness or something being broken.

This is an extreme form of what many of us believe. It isn’t deliberate, it’s unconscious. Society has programmed us to look after others first. These expectations mould the psyche of people assigned female at birth from the time we are infants.

So it’s not our fault – don’t feel bad if this is you (because that’s another thing we’re taught to do – self-criticise).

And although there is evidence that nurturing instincts are biologically driven, putting ourselves last is not, especially when we do it at the expense of our health and safety. And those who depend on us need us well-rested and well-resourced.

When we ignore our body’s call for rest the call gets louder until we can’t ignore it anymore. This is what’s happening when you’re irritable and short-tempered, lacking patience, feeling tired, making errors, forgetting things.

If we keep on ignoring it, it starts to hurt – we get achy and stiff, we get a cramp or a pulled muscle, a headache, sore neck, back pain. If there’s a particular part of your body that’s been injured or troubled, it might start hurting ‘out of the blue’.

This doesn’t necessarily mean it’s damaged now – it might just be that you’re ignoring your body’s needs. Next time you hurt somewhere, stop and think:

Are you tired?
Do you need to eat or drink water?
When was the last time you sat still and did nothing, (or moved if you work all day at a desk)?

What happens when you address these needs – is the pain still there? If it is, then by all means check with your health practitioner, but often this will be enough to reduce or stop the pain altogether.

It’s because your body can’t do without rest. It just can’t. You can’t. You need it so you can repair and recover – from the physical, emotional and mental work you do everyday, from the stress we experience on a daily or hourly basis from living this pretty unnatural life, cut off from nature and forced to ‘make a living’ instead of just living.

The good news is there’s gold on the other side. When you rest often, you are well-resourced, refreshed, resilient.

You can think clearly, make decisions easier, hold to your boundaries and express your needs to those around you.

When you prioritise your own rest you also give others permission to rest more.

And this is how we’ll change this crazy world from one that pushes constant productivity at all costs to one that’s nurturing and sustainable – for us and all of Nature. In a capitalist, rationalist society Rest is a radical act.

So how do you change a lifetime’s habit of putting your need to rest last? How do you do it when you think you don’t have time to rest?

First, notice those thoughts of ‘I don’t have time’, ‘I should be doing something else’, ‘this is selfish’ etc. They come from outside of you. They are conditioned by society. Animals, babies and children don’t think these thoughts when they’re tired and need to rest, because they haven’t learned that they ‘shouldn’t’.

And Black, Brown, Indigenous and People of Colour are conditioned even more than white women that they don’t have the right to be well-rested – for more on this topic see the excellent work of Tricia Hersey of The Nap Ministry and @thenapministry on Instagram.

Once you notice your body is telling you to rest while your mind tells you not to, trust that your body knows best and do what it asks. If you need to schedule it, add it to your calendar with an alert to remind you to do it.

Then just stop for 5-15 minutes and breathe slowly. Listen to your breathing. Feel your breathing. Let your mind follow your breathing. Do this every day for a week. Notice the difference as your body and mind start to enjoy it and look forward to it.

Next week, add something to your rest time like lying down, or napping, or walking if you’re restless. Notice your moods and energy levels this week. The following week, increase your rest/nap time to 30 minutes or twice a day – if you dare!

The people who depend on you need you rested and nourished. But don’t rest for their sake – rest like YOUR life depends on it – because it does.

What to do next:

If you still have nagging pain after trying this approach (and you’ve confirmed with your health practitioner that it’s not caused by a medical condition), book an appointment to see me for in-person sessions or online coaching, or check out my online course & workshops, Rest & Release

Soothe your body to calm your mind

15 April 2022 30 May 2022

Because we’ve collectively experienced a lot of trauma over the past 2 years, many of us are currently feeling a deep sense of exhaustion, also known as burnout and even depression. This often comes with an intensification of our physical symptoms too; when our brains feel unsafe they sometimes amplify our tension or pain to make us reach out to someone for help.

Despite being cloistered at home so much in recent times we are simultaneously living outside of ourselves, desperately looking for signs from the external environment that things are ‘normal’, that the danger has passed. And when we’re looking outside of ourselves for things to make us feel better, we usually find something – often more than one thing – that makes us feel worse.

So what to do? How can you stop spiralling into burnout, feeling guilty about not being able to do anything about the big traumatic events happening in the world and ending up in a heap, unable to look after our families or ourselves or get out of bed each day?

Soothe the body to calm the mind

The best way I know to help yourself is to come home to your body. It’s the only thing that’s with you in every moment. It’s the only place where you can create a tangible, repeatable feeling of safety, a sense of being in control. It’s the only place where you can really take care of yourself. And taking care of yourself is the only way to start making a difference in the world, when everything else is out of your control.

Traumatic and stressful events are emotionally – and physically – exhausting. Our recovery from them requires two things:

1. Complete the stress cycle

We must release the built-up charge from our bodies so that we don’t stay in the stress cycle. There are examples of this in Nature – when the deer outruns the lion it shakes all over and leaps about, discharging the excess adrenaline, sweating and releasing the intense energy from its muscles – and signalling safety throughout its nervous system. This is a great model for us too, because we, like deer, are animals in Nature (though we deny it to ourselves). The difference is that we live with constant daily stresses, so we must actively release the charge every day to complete the stress cycle and return to a calm baseline, allowing our bodies to repair, recover and restore. Some great ways to do this are

walking, running, cycling, swimming – any exercise that increases your heart rate
punching or screaming into a pillow
dancing (on a dancefloor or in the loungeroom)
laughing – with kids, with friends, at funny movies
rolling around on the ground outside – with kids or animals if you have them (with the added bonus of connecting with the immune system-supporting natural biome)

2. Deliberately, intentionally R E S T

Resting is one of our superpowers – one we vastly underestimate. We must rest as a matter of course every day. It should be scheduled in – it’s a non-negotiable basic daily need, like drinking water, moving and eating real food. Nature is always seeking to repair and restore balance and your body is the same. You don’t need to force it to repair itself, it happens naturally given the right conditions – one of which is rest.

Fortunately the Ortho-Bionomy self-care techniques offer a way to deliberately take your body into a deep resting state to soothe your body AND calm your mind. One of the ways we do this is by using the principle of exaggeration. It assumes your body knows best what it needs right now.

Test it now:

Sitting where you are now, close your eyes and tune in to your sit bones – the two big bones under your butt. Is your weight evenly balanced on both sides, or do you feel more weight on one side?
If it’s the latter, normally we would try to ‘fix’ it, to correct it by adding more weight on the lighter side to even it up. Instead, I want you to try exaggerating what is present by leaning slightly towards the side that feels heavier to add more weight to that side.
Stay there for about 30 seconds, breathing slowly, then move back to the centre.
Now notice again how the weight is distributed on your sit bones. Do you still have the same imbalance with more weight on one side, or has it changed?

When I use this with clients, they almost always notice the weight has at least changed – if not completely balanced. This happens because your exaggeration of the imbalance has acknowledged something your body needed – with gentleness, not force – and your brain has responded by restoring balance.

You can use this with any part of your body that feels tight or sore. Find a way to exaggerate the positioning or tension in that area – e.g. if your shoulders are held up towards your ears, position them up closer to your ears while lying down (so you don’t have to hold them up) and relax into the position, breathing slowly for up to a minute. Then slowly sit up and notice the changes and responses in your body (in your physical body and also in your breathing, emotions and thoughts).

This process brings you into a calmer state because it also brings your whole self – brain/nervous system/body/mind – into present time, into your body, into your breath. And it avoids re-traumatising you because you’re not talking about the things that are stressing you.

I hope this helps you feel better, even for a few minutes. If you’d like to share your experience with me, email me from the Contact page or send me a DM via Instagram.

Image credit: Shane – Unsplash

How to relieve jaw pain and save your teeth

3 April 2021 25 October 2022

Do you suffer from jaw pain or clench your teeth while sleeping? Learn to prevent it and save your teeth.

I went to see my dentist recently. We (well, mostly she, because my mouth was occupied) chatted while she worked. I learned that the no.1 thing she did in 2020 was make mouth guards for her patients. The aim was to relieve jaw pain and help them stop grinding their teeth. She believed that the extra stress her patients were experiencing from COVID-19 was creating the increased jaw tension and pain they were reported.

I remembered when I used to clench my teeth during sleep, at a stressful time in my life. Happily I was able to stop it and save my teeth by using some simple Ortho-Bionomy techniques to reduce the tension and pain.

In case this helps you or someone you know, here’s how to do it:

General muscle tension release:

When you hold a lot of tension in your jaw it often feels really tight and possibly sore in the strong chewing muscles at either side of your face. These extend from your cheekbones just below your eyes down to the jaw bone below your lower teeth. It might also hurt around your jaw joints just in front of your ears.

To give these muscles a rest, first place your palms on your cheeks with fingers pointing upwards along the sides of your head. Support your jaw bone with the base of your palms and press very gently upwards to allow your cheeks to soften under your hands. Close your eyes and breathe slowly for a minute or more (this is a good stress-reliever too). Then try the steps below:

3-Step Release for Jaw Joint:

First, hold your lower jaw bone lightly with your fingertips on both sides of your chin. Move your jaw slightly (using your fingertips) to one side and then the other, noting which side feels better, moves more easily or feels more comfortable. Then move it to the side that felt better and hold it there for 5-10 seconds before allowing it to return to a neutral position.
Next, with your fingertips lightly on your jaw bone again, this time slide it slightly forwards (as if jutting your chin out), then back (towards your neck), again noting which feels better. Hold it gently in that preferred position for 5-10 seconds before letting it return to neutral.
Now use your fingertips on the sides of your jaw bone to guide your mouth open a little way, then guide it closed, noting which felt better. Then hold it gently in that easier or better position for 5-10 seconds.

Be gentle!

Your jaw muscles are super strong and work really hard. Plus we often hold tension there when we’re stressed, angry or tired. So it’s really important to work gently here – if you push too hard in the movements shown above, it can just overwork these muscles even more. If you go gently and breathe slowly, you’ll notice your whole body relaxing.

Use these as often as you like. They’re especially useful first thing in the morning if you wake with jaw pain or tension, and again before you go to sleep at night to reduce the build-up of tension. You can also reduce jaw tension by releasing neck tension – I’ll be covering this in an upcoming newsletter and blog post.

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Did this help you? Let me know in the comments below.

Image credit: Houcine Nib – Unsplash