Active Recovery as Life Skill
There are a great number of things I wish had been a part of my formal education. Like how to fold a fitted sheet. Or how to check my tire pressure (let’s be real: I still don’t know how to do either one of those things…). But atop the list of lessons in Being Human 101 that somehow never gets taught is: how to recover from an emotionally intense situation under pressure. It’s well and good to say that, when you’re emotionally overheated, you should go take a walk around the block to cool off. Or close your office door and take 5 deep breaths. Or, in an emergency, hide in a bathroom stall while you collect yourself. But what we never seem to hear about from meditation and self help gurus is what to do when you are 0.2 seconds away from actively losing your shit…and you’re standing in front of your colleagues, about to give a presentation. Or standing at the altar about to celebrate the Eucharist in a church full of people who often confuse clergy with God. What do you do when your blood is boiling and you can’t take a time out?
The trick is learning how to put your intense emotions in time out while you finish whatever it is you need to do – without shoving them down and repressing them indefinitely. It’s a terribly tricky balancing act. But it is possible. And actually, the place where I have honed this skill is not in church, or even in my breathwork practice, but on the running trail.
I have decided that 2018 will be the year I finally complete a half marathon and an Olympic distance triathlon, and so my life has turned into an endurance cardio extravaganza. In becoming a certifiable Crazy Person who gets up at 6:00 am to run in sub-zero wind chills, I have discovered the crucial importance of active recovery: learning to let your heart rate return to a sustainable level after an intense hill or a sprint interval – without actually stopping. This part of training basically amounts to torture. After grinding my way up a gnarly hill, my first instinct is to fling myself onto the ground and roll around dramatically. It is most assuredly not to keep running. And that is precisely why athletes train: to learn to push their edge, to increase their tolerance for intense discomfort, and to find a way of dialing down the intensity while still moving forward. In other words: you intentionally practice feeling like you’re going to die over and over again until your body and brain learn that you’re not actually dying.
Whether or not you have any interest in taking up endurance sports, the concept of active recovery is useful to every human being who ever has a feeling. It’s especially applicable to those moments when all we want to do is scream and throw things, but instead have to function as professional adults. Here are a few of my go to active recovery strategies, adapted from my athletic pursuits, that (thus far, at least!) have prevented me from punching anyone on the altar:
1. Assess what you can control in the situation. The answer may well be “not much,” but there’s always something that remains yours, even when the shit is hitting the fan. It might be your fists: go ahead and give yourself an A+ for keeping your hands to yourself. It might be your feet: can you stay in the room instead of running out in protest? You win. It might be your facial expression: resist the urge to death glare and award yourself 100 points. Focusing on what agency you do have is typically much more productive than mentally reciting the 502 things you wish you could do, but can’t.
2. Breathe. Your breath is always on the list of things you can control, so use it! Your breath is your superpower: free, invisible, potent, and always available. And because I despise it when people condescendingly tell me to “just breathe,” as though it were something I hadn’t successfully been doing for three decades, let me break it down. The following are some super sneaky ways to make your breath work for you without anyone noticing that you’re working some powerful magic:
- Count: track the length of your inhales and exhales. Start with 3 counts in, 3 counts out, and see if you can work up to an exhale that’s twice as long as your inhale. The point is to make sure you ARE exhaling – when we’re super stressed, we clench our bodies and forget to release air, just like we take on more and more intense emotion without a release valve. Plus, long exhales activate the parasympathetic nervous system, help switch the body out of fight or flight mode, and lessen the sensation of “oh my God, I’m going to die.” Win.
- Ground: feel your feet firmly on the ground and send your breath as far down into your abdomen as you can. You can even imagine your breath flowing all the way down to your toes, connecting you to the earth. It’s a great trick for getting out of your head and into the present moment.
- Visualize: this simple exercise is my absolute favorite, tried and true breath technique to keep myself from killing people in the middle of Mass. Visualize a strong magnetic line running vertically through your torso. With every inhale, imagine that your breath is drawing in any bits of energy that you’ve given away to other people or situations, anything that’s distracting you from being in your body at this precise moment. Your breath becomes a kind of energetic vacuum cleaner, restoring you to yourself. This one a speedy and silent way of reclaiming your power when you feel totally helpless in the face of anger or anxiety.
3. Commit. Promise your intense feeling that you will tend to it as soon as you possibly can. Actively make a plan and then follow through. Ask yourself, “what would feel good RIGHT NOW?” and make a mental note. Chances are, by the time you actually have time to deal with your feelings, the lessened urgency will make it harder to pinpoint what you need, so do it now. What I typically want is a forceful, physical release: a long run followed by a full breathwork session with lots of opportunities to scream. You do you. Figuring out what you need and learning to offer it to yourself is another of those crucial life skills I wish I’d learned a long time ago.
4. Forgive. Not if, but when you crack and find yourself yelling, swearing, or exploding…take responsibility for whatever harm you caused, make amends as needed, and move on. Don’t bludgeon yourself with guilt. That serves no one. Offer yourself as much compassion and forgiveness as you possibly can. And yes, I definitely did save the hardest one for last.
None of this is a magic fix. But these tools are ways to feel a tiny bit saner while the world is spinning out of control. And, over time, those little snippets of sanity start to add up and make a difference.