Sleepy Mamas

We didn’t sleep well last night, I have the winter lurgy and Aunt Flow has stopped by for a visit this week. Fantastic. I’ve spent the past few days retreating to the sofa at every available opportunity, and I want nothing more than to once again melt into its comfy, cosy, upholstery-y embrace, but since I’ve been gifted with some time alone I have decided instead to ‘exercise’. I place this word in inverted commas because the exercise I’m talking about does not include vigorous activity. It does include physical effort as that is by definition exercise, but this can come in a variety of shapes and sizes. When you are truly tiered, it’s not a case of mind over matter as many YouTube videos will claim, but simply ‘what can I physically achieve?’ Even if that’s just walking up and down the stairs a few times, that’s fine. In these moments where I do not feel like moving a muscle here is what I do.

1. Ask myself ‘What can I realistically achieve today?’ ‘Where am I on my scale of exhausted?’ and then adjust accordingly.

2. Sit quietly and breathe for 10 minutes to the count of 6 in 6 out. My husband taught me this meditation technique. It is simple, fast, effective, achievable and excellent for finding a small dopamine hit that we would otherwise gain from a quick jog down the road.

3. Hold and release excersises. I have stollen most of these from my days working in music tuition. The physical elements from a good vocal warm up serve excellently in stretching, softening and revitalising your body when you can’t do much more than stand upright.

Stand with your feet hip width apart and give your body a gentle shake. Wobble all your limbs, hips, shoulders, hands, feet, and imagine your body is covered in a thin layer of gunk; gunk which you are successfully shaking off yourself the more you move your body. Let your breath relax here too; feel it fall out of you as you shake, and take nice deep breaths in as you do it.

Stand with your feet hip width apart and scrunch your shoulders upwards towards your ears. Hold them here for a moment, then release – and I mean release. Drop them! Imagine your shoulders are held up by string, and that string is being cut, leaving the heavy weight of your shoulders to flop down into their sockets.

Next, roll your shoulders, 6 rotations forward, 6 rotations backward. Repeat until you feel those rotations transform from crunchy and uneven, to soft and smooth.

Give yourself a big hug, and see if you can feel the edges of your shoulder blades with your finger tips. Don’t strain to reach them, breath and relax, and you may be able to stretch a little further.

Stand with your feet larger than hip width apart with your feet pointing outward a little (rather than in paralelle.) Shift your weight over the knee from one side then to the other, feeling a gentle stretch on the inside of your legs.

Stand if you can or find somewhere firm to sit (so you can at least keep an upright spine). Massage your face with your hands. Press firmly into your cheeks, rub your forehead, massage your jaw, your brow, your temples, your chin, explore all the hard and soft parts of your face with your finger tips, gently working in soft but firm circular or sweeping motions. Try your best to be conscious of tension in any of your muscles which you can release as you rub.

Give yourself one final shake. Hopefully your body is feeling a little softer now. Although it may not be a time in your life where you can skip merrily into your usual 5k loop, that doesn’t mean you can’t still connect with your body. A warm bath or shower before, after or even during this sequence will also add to that feeling of post exercise glow, even if it’s not ‘exercise’ as you usually know it!

It’s easy to feel judged when you’re as tiered as you are right now. Not only because your mind is vaulnerable and fragile and your thoughts are a little out of sync right now, but also because you simply don’t have the hours that other people do in the day to look after yourself, to prioritise your body, or even just to think about doing those things. I find it incredibly hard to feel ‘nice’ about myself when I’m going through a low sleep patch. Partly because I know how tiered I look! But also because I haven’t had the time to make myself feel nice. The truth is you are doing incredibly well just by keeping your eyes open and showing up. The people who matter in your life only care about how you look or seem because they love you, and if you need to answer ‘actualy I feel pretty rough today’ to the well meaning ‘how are you?’ question, then that’s ok. There are times in life where we can’t fix it straight away, and we just need to keep going until we can. So keep going sleepy mama! Your low sleep patch is going to pass eventually, and until it does keep connecting with your body and reminding yourself that’s it’s doing and incredible job too

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Lots of love xxx