Wondering why you’re always tired?
Discover how tapping into your body’s natural rhythms can help you rest and replenish your energy during the day and help you to manage your energy reserves as we head into autumn and the busy end of year season.
Poor lifestyle habits and ignoring your body's natural rhythms
Short term tiredness is mostly down to poor lifestyle habits like lack of sleep and not being in sync with our natural circadian rhythms. Long working hours and our always-on culture mean that we’re not getting enough daylight and are often active and overstimulated after dark.
This interferes with our natural body clock which is aligned to the 24 hour cycles of the solar day, causing lifestyle or social jet lag. Every cell in our body operates on a 24 hour turn around to operate optimally. If you’ve experienced severe jet lag, you’ll know how discombobulated you felt!
Ignoring the differences in our energy through the seasons means that we can be unprepared for the fatigue we feel in the late autumn and winter. (See my blog ‘Low mood and energy levels in the winter?’)
Pushing through tiredness to get things done
Longer term fatigue and exhaustion may be the result of ignoring tiredness in order to be more productive and efficient.
Many of us have deeply internalised the protestant work ethic and have become our own taskmasters, believing that work defines our worth. Because work and productivity is so highly valued, taking restful breaks or a long lunch time is frowned upon, and seen as a sign of laziness and there’s the worry that we’ll miss out if we’re not present all the time. In southern Europe, siesta culture is fading away in favour of increasingly long working days that align with international working hours.
The productivity myth
While the protestant work ethic has fuelled progress, it‘s not so helpful for our personal wellbeing. We are not machines and that can work, create and produce at a continuous rate throughout the day. Our bodies have natural ninety and twenty minute rhythms of activity and rest throughout the day. We need periods of rest and inactivity to function well, so planning breaks around the peaks and troughs enables you to be more focused and effective when you need to be!
Tapping in to the body’s intelligence is the first step
By paying more attention to how our bodies feel, we may become better at noticing the dips in our concentration and recognising tiredness when it arises. One of yoga’s greatest strengths is it’s focus on body awareness: noticing not just how we move but the internal state of our bodies such as temperature, heart rate, tiredness and hunger.
Rest counters action and prepares us for the next bout of action.
Rest does not have to be a big thing if your day is busy. A short micropractice rest can be as simple as resting your head on arms on your desk with eyes closed for a minute or two. A restful activity like taking a short walk noticing your surroundings or doing an undemanding activity like watering the plants are types of undemanding restful activites which allow a reset for your brain and body.
What is the afternoon slump caused by?
By the afternoon, our sleep drive (or sleep ‘pressure’ which is the accumulation of time since waking) has built up and coincides with a natural dip in circadian rhythms, causing feelings of drowsiness. Digesting your lunch is not the cause of the slump, although an especially large lunch may contribute to feelings of lethargy!
The deeper rest practices of yoga allow us to recharge and replenish our energy more fully
Longer rest practices like restorative yoga take us deep into rest-digest mode or parasympathetic dominance. It usually takes around 15 minutes of lying in a very comfortable position, cosily supported by plenty of props and covered by blankets, for the autonomic nervous system to move into this deep parasympathetic state. The body is still and the brain is quiet, with the type of brainwaves we see in deep sleep, but we’re awake and aware, while the body is still and resting.
What if I fall asleep?
The question I’m asked most often! The idea of restorative yoga is to be in the liminal zone somewhere between sleep and waking. If you do fall asleep in a pose, it’s a clear sign that you’re very tired, but the purpose of restorative yoga isn’t to fall asleep or to replace sleep. Going into deep parasympathetic states is highly beneficial if exhausted or stressed and can be seen as a way of down regulating our overstimulated nervous systems.
Semi reclining poses are especially suitable if you’re new to restorative yoga, as the angle of the torso is around 45 degrees, which tends to keep you awake.
The more you start to make the constructive rest a part of your life, the better you’ll become at resting and managing your energy.