land, arrive, relax: 30-minute antidote to chronic stress & tension
As we transition into the holiday season, many of us are grappling with the paradox of coming together amidst all the suffering and pain in the world. And this is all happening on top of the stress and overwhelm of the last several years.
Chronic stress is an epidemic, and when our nervous system is stuck in fight, flight, or freeze, it impacts our health and well-being, and makes it difficult to meet the moment with heart-centered presence and attention.
The good news is that science tells us that there is an antidote to the constant over-firing of our sympathetic nervous system. We can create an inner environment for ourselves that helps us down-regulate, turn off the stress response, and initiate rest and digest for optimal health.
However, we can’t just flip the switch on command. (Anyone who has ever been told to “Just relax!” can attest to this!)
What we can do is set the foundation for progressing toward relaxation.
Sharing tools and practices to release the habitual tension caused by stress has been at the heart of my teaching over the past 25 years, and over time I developed a technique to release tension, create a sense of spaciousness, and feel a deeper connection in our bodies, minds, and hearts.
It’s called LAR LAR, and in this post, I want to focus on the first LAR, which helps create conditions for relaxation.
L: Landing on the ground
A: Arriving in the present
R: Relaxing on purpose
The first part of the acronym is that first you have to "Land." I’m literally referring to the way we feel connected to the ground underneath us. Like feeling your feet on the earth or letting your body weight drain down. When we experience support, we can stop gripping and clenching and holding ourselves up. It’s only when we begin to feel support that we can begin to feel safe, and support and safety are prerequisites to being able to relax.
Next, we "Arrive," which means we become present or aware of what is happening in the moment. Initially we use the breath as a tool to help us arrive, as the breath is only happening in the now moment. Therefore, gently paying attention to the flow of the breath helps us to naturally arrive in the present. Placing our awareness on the breath also begins to deepen the breath, which in turn will calm the nervous system. As the breath deepens, it stimulates the vagus nerve, which brings us into the Rest and Digest response.
Finally, we "Relax" on purpose. There are areas in our body that harbor habitual tension. In this phase, we notice the places we are gripping and clenching and holding — the jaw, the shoulders, the fists, the belly. When we relax areas of habitual tension, we send a message to the body that we don’t need to be armoring ourselves and defending ourselves from a threat. The nervous system gets the sense that it’s safe, and it puts in motion physiological and neurological responses that allow us to begin the process of moving out of the stress response and into the relaxation response.
Through this process of showing up and connecting with ourselves, we are able to become more aware of ourselves in relationship to others, our environment, and the conditions around us, so that we are not reacting from a place of stress all the time. The thing to remember is that it’s not about staying present and relaxed all the time. It's about being able to notice when we are no longer centered, grounded, and open—and being able to bring ourselves back.
We can do LAR on the mat in a yoga practice, as I’ve shared at the top of this blog post, and we can bring this technique—Land, Arrive, Relax—into any moment in our daily lives, any time we need to bring ourselves back.
May you feel more centered, connected, grounded.
May you feel the earth supporting you.
May you feel the breath nourishing you.
May you feel more present. More welcome. More here.
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