Pressing Pause ep 139 How to shake off stress
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Welcome to Pressing Pause, I’m your host, Gabrielle Treanor, a coach, writer, introvert and sensitive soul with an inclination to ponder over the stuff of life. Join me as I explore how we can create, find and feel more calm, ease and joy in our daily lives.
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My book, The 1% Wellness Experiment, is published in the United States and Canada next week, on 27thFebruary! The 1% Wellness Experiment is packed with ideas and tools to boost your mental and emotional wellbeing that take just ten minutes or 1% of your waking day, and which you can experiment with so that they work in your unique life. Since the book was published in the UK last December I’ve had some brilliant feedback and reviews so I’m excited for it to finally be available to readers in the US and Canada.
You can pre-order the book now from your local bookshop or your favourite online bookstore and the book will be available from Tuesday 27 February. And, as a thank you for pre-ordering because it makes a big difference to how well the book is stocked and found after publication, you have the chance to win a one-to-one coaching session with me! Just go to thewellnessexperiment.co.uk to find out how to have your chance to win. I can’t wait to hear what you think of The 1% Wellness Experiment!
Right, here’s today’s episode.
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Welcome to episode 139. I never quite know when inspiration for this podcast or my Substack posts is going to strike. It can be at quite unexpected times, like a dog walk in the rain.
There was one morning when our pup, Bailey, had just encountered a bigger dog who was pulling on the lead and snapping at him. Bailey didn’t like this very much, understandably, and once we were a few metres away he stopped and shook his entire body from head to tail. And it was in that moment that inspiration struck me.
Because I’ve seen my dog do this a lot. I used to think there was no particular reason for it apart from to perhaps shake out a wet coat. However, I learned that it’s also a stress response – after a dog has had an experience they found stressful they move through it by shaking their whole bodies, as if to disperse and dispel the cortisol and adrenaline. Once he’s finished shaking he happily trots off. The moment has passed, he’s moved on.
When you watch wildlife documentaries you see the same thing. A gazelle runs from a chasing lion and once it’s escaped far enough away it stops, shakes its whole body out, and then continues walking on. That’s how animals instinctively know to deal with something that’s provoked a stress response.
What they don’t do is keep thinking about it, replaying it in their heads, wondering if they could or should have said or done something different. Wondering what the other animal thinks about them or what they’re telling the rest of their pack or herd about them. Wondering what this says about who they are, their qualities and abilities. They don’t continue going over the experience as if it’s still happening.
They shake it out and they move on.
We would do well to follow suit.
Emily and Amelia Nagoski write about this in their book, Burnout: The secret to solving the stress cycle, as they describe the importance of moving through your stress rather than getting stuck in it. We may not find ourselves chased by lions, although we might meet a snappy dog, but we encounter stressors all the time, from a driver cutting us up on the road to a snarky boss to arguing children to a social media post to a story in the news… the list goes on.
If we stay in the stressful response this stressor provokes, experiencing a racing heart, tense muscles, short and shallow breathing, raised blood pressure, we’re going to continue to feel stressed long after we’ve parked the car, we’ve left work, the kids have gone quiet, we’ve put down our phone, switched off the news or whatever it was has passed.
And one way to do this is to make like a dog, or gazelle, and shake it out. Literally, shake your body out.
In fact, if you’re feeling a bit tense, a bit stressed right now, try this right now.
Stand up, and shake your hands like you’re flicking water off your fingers. Expand that to your arms so you’re shaking them too. Stand on one leg and kick out the other one, swapping from one leg to another. Jump up and down on the spot, lift and drop your shoulders, hop from side to side, swivel your hips around, shake your head – whatever feels like moving your whole body. You don’t have to do it for long, you don’t have to be super vigorous, just shake out your limbs and shake off the stress. Channel your inner Taylor Swift if it helps.
Now, how do you feel?
Doing this little trick doesn’t change the annoyances of life, it doesn’t change what other people do or say. What it does do is allow you to move through the stress and come out the other side rather than stay stuck in it, trapped in the annoyance, upset, frustration, anxiety, fear.
I put this technique into practice after I gave my first ever bookshop talk for my book, The 1% Wellness Experiment. The evening went really well, everyone was so lovely and I still found it quite nerve-wracking because I’m not someone who’s comfortable speaking in front of people. When I got home I put on my PJs, made a cup of tea, watched some lighthearted TV and relaxed. But when I went to bed I could not sleep. I was exhausted but I felt like I’d had a double espresso!
And then I realised that I hadn’t completed the stress cycle. My nervous system had been on high alert for hours and although I logically knew the stress was over, everything was fine and dandy, my nervous system hadn’t got the memo.
So I got out of bed and, just as I’ve described, I shook my arms, my legs, my head, my hips, my whole body. And giggled to myself as I did it which probably helped too. Having felt like I’d really shaken it off I got back into bed. Within a few minutes I was asleep.
Try this tool for yourself the next time you realise you’re still feeling stressed after the initial stressor has gone. I’d love to hear how you get on.
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Thank you for listening to Pressing Pause, you can find the show notes at gabrielletreanor.com/podcast.
Remember if you’re in the United States or Canada and pre-order my book, The 1% Wellness Experiment, before it’s published on 27 February you have the chance of winning a one-to-one coaching session with me. Go to thewellnessexperiment.co.uk to see how to enter.
And if you’re in the UK and you’ve already been enjoying a copy I would be so grateful if you could add a quick review to the page on Amazon because that helps the book to be found by other readers. You don’t even have to have bought your copy from Amazon to leave a review.
I always love to hear from you so if you’d like to tell me directly what you think of the book, as well as this podcast or anything else you want to share drop me a line at [email protected].
Thanks again for listening, until next time.
