Everyone feel overwhelmed, at some point of time. period.
And when such situation occurs, all the productivity hacks/tools, doesn’t feel helpful at all. These tools are only reminding you about still pending work. So, are they bad? Absolutely not. There are many wonderful tools, without which, it would be mess to handle all the roles and responsibilities we have currently. But, they don’t help us to tackle this feeling of system overload.
The main point here is, what to do when you feel overwhelmed? That sense of tiredness, irritation or pure helplessness. Well, this is what we are looking into, in this post. Read on!
What and why of it:
One of main factor, which makes yoga a holistic approach for health and mental well being is the approach itself. Rather, then treating symptoms which trouble us, it delves deeper into the root cause. Once cause is taken care of, effect goes away.
In this current scenario, fundamental understanding of how our mind works, states that, mind needs break to process the flow of constant information. When we sleep deeply, this happens on its own. This worked well, till we have limited amount of tasks on hand. But not these days, when we have multiple channels of information onslaught. We have mails, messages, social media and plain old multiple deadlines at work. In such scenario, mind is constantly jumping from one (*seemingly*) important task to other. This keeps our emotional state to high alert and body on semi tense mode. Add to this, the long commute to and fro office, which in today’s traffic is another pressure.
So, you see, except for few situations (which are unexpected or beyond our control), we have a pattern of leading our mind to such feeling of overload. Now let’s solve it.
Easy (but hard to do) solution:
What yogic approach recommends in such situation is to pause everything, for sometime. Simply, stop what you are doing, for alteast next 5 min and sit. Don’t play music, read whatsapp message, open email, or talk to someone. Simply don’t do anything. It will feel odd. Mind will itch to do something, so as not to waste time. Control this urge. Sit
Don’t mentally go through about list of work. Or what you should be doing. Drop all thinking. No solution finding, nothing.
It is easy to read, but very difficult to do beyond first minute. But believe me, it is worth it. And this is effective, no matter what got you in the feeling.
And you don’t need to do it for long periods. Regularly done, even 5–10 min on daily basis are more then enough.
As you see it, in yoga asana practice:
| maximum benefits are received when savasana is performed, with stillness, after practice. These benefits are lost, if practice session has no savasana in end.
Why it works?
When you pause yourself from everything for sometime, it allows your mind to take break. After first few moments, the mind starts to slow down and this allows better processing of information about situation, without interference of new information. Once, it is done, we(as in our mind) gets better picture related to totality of things, and realistic approach to handle them.
In addition to that, when we pause, it effects our breathing too. It leads to better breathing, and thus more oxygen to mind which it really required under feeling of being overloaded.
More things can be said about this approach. But best conviction will come from actually applying it. So go ahead, try this now. Right now, at your desk or wherever you are reading it, just drop everything for 5 min and observe. Simple.
When you done, come back, and share this article with everyone :D