The Healing Power of Vacation
It is finally SPRING! Although it was 32 degrees in Rochester, NY, yesterday, and I woke up to a few snowflakes on the deck, the birdsong, the daylight in the morning, and the brightness of the sunlight all confirm - spring is here.
It is time to shake off the sluggishness of the dark winter and step boldly forward into the peak time of CREATION, giving birth, new life, fresh starts, and green smoothies!
In Classical Chinese Medicine spring brings the most Wood energy into our lives. Wood energy is the energy of the plant kingdom and is associated with:
Organs: Liver (Yin) and gallbladder (Yang)
Energy: Growth, flexibility, expansion, and the energy of upward movement
Emotions: Anger, frustration, and the need for justice
Color: Green
Taste: Sour
Sound: Shout
Climate: Wind
Stage of Development: Birth
This is the time of year I want to go outside run and shout, and feel the fresh wind on my face. If you don’t feel like this it would be good for you to do anyways ;).
This is also the time of year when all the young, fresh, tender greens spring up from the ground. It is the time to start incorporating bitter greens like kale, spinach, kohlrabi, and spring cabbage into your diet. It’s best to eat them raw in salads or green drinks. You can even go foraging for your own wild greens like dandelion, plantain, bittercress, and chickweed.
(Recall last year’s blog post on Spring Detox which includes my favorite green drink recipe if you need a reminder.)
Now as we look forward to longer warmer days and possible summer adventures I ask you this…
When is the last time you took multiple consecutive days off to completely unplug, relax, have fun, play, and enjoy your life?
Is every weekend filled with DIY home projects?
Can you even tell the difference between a weekday and a weekend?
What dose vacation mean to you?
Read on for why taking vacations are CRITICAL for your health and the balancing of your life force energy.
When is the last vacation you took? How long was it?
What’s the longest vacation you have ever taken?
How many vacations have you taken in the last ten years?
va·ca·tion /vāˈkāSHən,vəˈkāSHən/ (n.)
an extended period of leisure and recreation, especially one spent away from home or in traveling
to travel to a place in order to relax, when you are not at work or school (Cambridge Dictionary)
a period of suspension of work, study, or other activity, usually used for rest, recreation, or travel (Dictionary.com)
to spend a period of time devoted to leisure or recreation instead of work, school, etc.; esp. to do so away from home or while traveling (Oxford English Dictionary)
Looking over these definitions we begin to actually see VACATION as a distinction in our lives - as a possibility we can create, as a distinct experience we can cultivate.
Extended period of time, relaxation, suspension of work, and DEVOTION to leisure and recreation…
What would it actually be like to be devoted to leisure??? What would it take for you to experience that even once this year?
If you google it, as I did, the internet will tout how vacations are stress relieving and research shows that people who take vacations have a reduced risk of heart disease. They also reduce burnout, improve relationships, and can make you more productive.
Please, let us not be seduced into vacationing to increase our productivity!
How Alive Do You Feel?
I want to get to something deeper. Something more intrinsic to the core of what it means to be human.
WHY do we want health? Why does our health matter to us?
As I have experienced with the thousands of people I have worked with, health is about the freedom to do what we want in life and to be who we want to be in life.
Health is about our EXPERIENCE of life. How living actually feels to us.
When was the last time you stopped just to notice how you feel right now, living, breathing, just being here? What does being alive feel like to you?
On a scale of 1-10, how ALIVE do you feel?
Yes, I am asking the big questions here - what is your life FOR? Doing more sh*t? Or experiencing more love, joy, satisfaction, and delight?
The Dark History of Work Obsession
Our society has become hyper fixated on our lives being FOR productivity, results, and accomplishment. When you dig into the historical origins of our work-obsessed culture it actually has dark origins in the philosophies and practices of the founders of The Untied States (Benjamin Franklin is sited to have publish the first ‘to do list’ in 1791) and was grounded in slavery and the abuse of labor. The industrial era, invention of the cotton gin, Ford’s assembly line and the hourly worker (which encouraged maximizing minute to minute productivity to increase profits at the expense of the health and lives of the workers) all provided the backbone of today’s work-obsessed, productivity obsessed culture.
Have you ever asked yourself WHY you feel you only have value if you have ‘accomplished something today’? Where did that belief really come from? Is it baked into our DNA as a species? Or has it been literally and figuratively beaten into our culture as a matter of course?
We have forgotten someone told us this is who we need to be and now we think it is our own personality trait.
The Anxiety of Sitting Still
What comes up for you when you sit still for a day, lounge on the couch, do nothing, don’t tick a single item off your list?
For most of my clients they would say anxiety or even depression.
THIS is why vacations are critical for your health. We MUST allow ourselves to unwind, to reset, to let it all go. To step away. To take a full 100% unquestionable break.
We need to have uninterrupted extended periods of just staring off at the ocean, the mountains, the trees. Sauntering through a garden, wandering on streets of an unknown city, the discovery of an unexpected delicious meal at a cafe, or the thrill of finding yourself in the middle of a festival or street parade you didn’t even know existed.
We need the fresh, new, bright perspectives that come from experiencing being in nature, exploring new places and cultures, and allowing parts of our minds to rest and reset. Expanded vistas bring expanded minds. The experience of awe, wonder and discovery are all healing to your brain, your nervous system, your circadian rhythm, your hormones, even strengthening your immune system.
Beyond our individual health there is something even more important about stepping away from the daily grind to allow ourselves to relax and reconnect.
The creative solutions we require in this time of great conflict and possible ruin of our democracy will only come from new views of life, expanded vision for our future, and the brilliance of fresh ideas birthed from wellness, cooperation, grace and love.
Yes, you can find all that on your next vacation. Take out your calendar, block off the time, invite the family and friends (or not!), and commit to giving yourself and the world this gift of freedom.
So, when are we leaving? And where are we going?