Cease the Panic

Relaxation is deeper than “not doing anything”. The deepest of relaxation is far from passive. In Wu Wei (Action through Inaction), they call this De/德 (pronounced “duh”) which is also translated as "inherent character/inner power/integrity/moral character/virtue/morality”. 

There is very much engagement with the world, but you are exuding a presence that seems to “get it”. A detachment from the noise. A true mastery that sees the world as full of beauty even in the face of challenges, and still draws energy from the wonderful opportunity that we have got to engage and be a part of it in all its bitter, cruel, joyous, invigorating, hammering, claustrophobic, harassing, confusing glory. 

The depth of relaxation starts to emanate from you when you are able to cease panicking about the mystery. When you stop feeling like you are being played by malicious chaos. I immediately think of Dr Sooliman of “Gift of the Givers” whose wife tells him he is an alien because of his ability to detach. He has been facing the world’s disasters head-on for three decades, and yet it is hard not to feel more relaxed in his infectious presence.

"The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals"

Charles Darwin (1872)

Deep Relaxation

What do you do to relax? It feels like one of those things which we should just know, but we have to learn to relax. Proper Relaxation is neither passive, nor simply “not doing”. It is like sleep. Sleep is a fundamental part of our learning process. Sleep is where we embed the way we see the world as we have seen it during the day, from the perspective of how we have seen every day. Where we store, work through, and connect our memories. 

Learning to relax properly involves tensing and releasing. One of the most advanced Yoga postures is called Savasana, or the Corpse pose. It looks like someone is just lying there. A lot of people will walk out of yoga classes at the end, cutting Savasana short because they only focus on the conspicuous exercises as the most important. What you see is not all there is. 

Savasana involves doing a body scan to methodically search out where you are holding tension. It is direct and intentional. 

There are levels of relaxation that flow from each other. Physical Relaxation, allows Mental Relaxation, which allows you to get to the point where you stop thinking about yourself. Many of our waves of anxiety come from worrying about expectations, our worth, or our place in the world. 

Deep relaxation allows you to connect with what matters. Like a passionate public speaker gets to a point where they are in conversation with the audience, and everyone is thinking about the shared idea... they are no longer self-conscious. Deep relaxation can allow you to be still, even when you are still in the chaos.

No. 5 (1948)

Jackson Pollock

Pause the Music

It’s dangerous if you need, rather than want, the music to keep on playing. One of the challenges with work relying on any one particular individual is we only get concertina leave. Leave can become the thing we work towards, a reward for all the energy we need to focus on delivering. Leave becomes a glimpse of an alternative reality. You take some time to wind down from work. Then, as soon as you wind down it is almost time to mentally prepare for starting up again. 

If you do “worry work”. If the kind of work you do is not the kind that you leave in the office. If it is the kind you carry with you all the time, because you are solving complicated problems. It can be a mental challenge to avoid living with those problems 24-7.

What was fascinating with the Yoga Teacher Training course I went on was that it was, a full, four weeks. I started feeling relaxed, but going to layers and levels of relaxation that I had never gone to. I wasn’t stressed, but I also knew with a deep confidence that I wouldn’t be stressed in two weeks' time. I am also a creature of routine in a world that is too chaotic for that to normally be possible. The course was in an alternative construction of reality. 

I was waking up on rhythm. Going to bed on rhythm. Eating on rhythm. I was also exercising twice a day, eating well, and in a beautiful environment. It was a simple, inexpensive, bubble. There was nothing flashy about it. We were engaging and talking about stuff that really seemed to matter and unpacking the world. It was a beautiful time.

It shifted something deep inside me. I had warned a friend to come get me if I didn’t come back. You hear these stories of people going off to Ashrams, never coming back, and cutting themselves off from their communities. I did go back. I did re-engage, but it had a lasting effect on how I saw things and what I thought was important.

Bite Size

In the first-ever introductory yoga class I attended, the intention was just to allow you relax. They did not teach a lot. It was just a taste. 

As a Marketing Actuary, I also learned that you don't try and give people too much information in one session. You can't dump knowledge. The way we learn is in small bites. We adapt slowly in successive approximation. Learning little bits, and gradually connecting everything. Good teachers don’t correct all your mistakes every time. 

The main aim of that first session, with a yogi named Bhima, was to feel relaxed. The default in learning is often to move on from simple things. To feel like we know how to relax, walk, breathe, swim, and run. Mastering something that is simple on the surface requires unlearning a lot of bad habits. With a little bit of guidance. In that first session, I walked away feeling a connection to that stillness. 

The first question we were asked is "how do you relax?" The most sophisticated yoga posture is called Savasana. Also known as the Corpse Pose. Like in investing, one of the most sophisticated responses is "doing nothing". Physical yoga is mostly about learning to relax the body. Investing is also about learning to let money do the work for you.

Interpreting the Chaos

Sometimes it feels like a decision is the defining moment of my life. I work hard at letting go of the idea of defining moments. I try build more faith in the collectivity of moments and how they connect. Part of fearlessness comes from confidence in the ability to repair, recover, and unwind. To nudge into the unknown. 

Derren Brown’s book “Tricks of the Mind” had a big influence on the way I try interpret the chaos. He talks about the big events we experience where we all KNOW for certain where we were... like 911, or when Princess Diana died, or when Nelson Mandela was released. There were studies done where they track the stories people tell, and we are often, very confidently, wrong. 

We change even memories that we are super confident about, as part of our healing process. The human capacity to create stories about the world to make sense of it. Comforting ourselves with an illusion of cause and effect, that suggests we can understand and control the chaos. 

“Tricks of the Mind” also talks about hallucination and hypnosis. Our ability to relax into versions of reality that help us make decisions. Hypnosis is simply relaxing into giving someone else control of decisions. You are not faking. It is not that someone else has control. You are letting them instruct you. Those who are super sensitive to this being “acting” would have barriers to this working. Myself included. Someone telling you to relax often has the opposite effect. 

I saw a show where they removed the middle chair, with someone’s head and feet on the others. They stayed stiff as a plank. It’s not that they were doing something impossible, instead they were not imposing their vision on the world of what was and wasn’t possible. They were relaxing into it, and then physics was setting the boundaries rather than them. 

Going deeper into yoga stretches is similar. It is more about relaxing than about trying. You allow your body to stretch by releasing control. You go deeper by breathing.

Releasing Tension

You can over-extend metaphors. When you care about something, you can see analogies in everything else. Meaning comes through connection. 

It may strike many as a misuse of the words when I talk about Financial Yoga. Money is something a lot of yogis would say they don’t care about. 

The reality is money is something that can control you, if you don’t control it. You can’t opt-out of the world of money any more than Arjuna could opt out of war in the Bhagavad Gita. 

Lots of people aim to do what they love when they grow up. My choice was more pragmatic. I studied money partly because I hated money fights and the souring effect of money anxiety on the things that are valuable beyond the weighing and counting of price. 

When you realise that money can make money, and you are in a position to build financial breathing space, you can start on a path that releases you from being forced to allocate your time and energy to money-making. You can practice focusing on the things that really matter, but don’t meet the constraints of money-making. 

That starts with releasing tension. Releasing tension starts with seeing where you are holding it.

Open Architecture

Adam Smith’s big insight was that win-win (the wealth of nations) beats win-lose (nations fighting). Open-Architecture, breaking down walls, and opening roads, can be frightening in a world where wealth is built in containers. You can’t tell someone who isn’t relaxed to relax. They need to start feeling it in their bones. They need to breathe.

In pure-play meritocracy, only the best would win. In reality, we all need to eat. So friction allows us to talk our own book. There are 7.9 Billion people on the planet. Very few are “the best”. Particularly in the early stages of setting yourself up, while you are living hand-to-mouth, relaxing is a challenge.

If you don’t have the capital and confidence to believe you can adapt and adjust as problems change. Walls are built because of fear. As fear subsides you get a trust premium. You release all the wasted resources we put into worrying, guarding, fighting, and defending. 

Berlin

Deeply Applied

We carry on. Through reflection we can think about what short cuts we put in place to make our decisions. We can not avoid short cuts. Short cuts allow us to relax and act. Reflection is hard, slow, and taxing. We do not always want to be reflecting. Reflection allows us to embody our decision-making. 

You don’t have to think about how to walk. This means walking can be a small part of much more complex actions. If you get hurt and need rehabilitation, then you do need to think about walking. Slowly rebuilding to the point where it is automatic again. Acting freely. Acting intuitively. 

Magnus Carlsen at his best, plays chess like Roger Federer at his best. Trusting their bodies. Trusting their decisions. It seems magical and is beautiful to watch. Yogis call this Siddhis. When mastery seems supernatural. It is dangerous to be that brilliant, because the ego lurks. In the sense that you are godlike and above anyone else and in control... which is an invitation for a fall.

The real mastery comes with cycles of lightly held, deeply applied, reflection. 

Classe Debutant

If you were incredibly small, and you came up to a little drop of water, it would be a huge bubble. We were about three feet tall when we were two years old. We were surrounded by people bigger than us. I am six feet tall now. I like imagining being surrounded by twelve-foot adults running around protecting us. 

I did my first ski lesson on the holiday my now wife proposed to me. I saw little kids being picked up by the adults as they were about to go into a snowbank. Swooping in to the rescue. When I was about to go into the snowbank, no twelve-foot adult came swooping in. 

Once we become adults, we build in our own protections and ways of making sure consequences are not too grave. We carry on.

We build our own set of congnitive biases that help us relax. Biases help us make decisions quickly so we don’t have to think of every snowbank. We can just ski. That is what mastery is all about. When you trust your capacity to engage with the world and get to a level that is intuitive, the anxiety falls away.

Soutie learns to Ski

 

Going Wild

Everything has gaps and holes. That is the key idea behind biodiversity and wilding. We are wild. We are rough on the edges. We don’t know, and we don’t have full insight, and we try, and we make mistakes. It is that imperfection that allows us to drive forward as an active participant in the chaotic change. If you want to be someone who decides, you need to build the skill to do the emotional work required for self-reflection. You also need to know yourself and the level that you want to go to. You need resources. You need guides, and you need to guide yourself. You need commitment, because if you are going to do the work, you are going to need to do the repair work. No risks or actions can be taken without regular maintenance, repair work, and downtime. The five core points of yoga are proper exercise, proper breathing, proper diet, proper relaxation, and proper mental health. We focus on our actions/choices, but the support/foundation that allows you to make choices is just as important. 

Free-ranging Longhorn Cattle

The Deep Work

The first read of anything worth understanding is incredibly confusing. Like listening to an audio book in a language that you haven’t learnt. Nothing sinks in. But not nothing. Surrounding yourself in something you don’t understand is exactly what you did for the first few years of your life. We all did. We soaked in different worlds which is why we see alternative realities. But we were all wide eyed and confused. Gradually picking up cues as to what is funny. Reflecting emotions. Recognising patterns. Words that get repeated. Words connected to things we like. Things we don’t like. The power of words. The real power of sentences. The super-power of whole conversations that can be summarised in a knowing look. Whole conversations that can be connected. Anything worth understanding is worth relaxing into the confusion for. We over value people being “naturals”. We over value finding things easy. The good stuff needs you to do the deep work. Doing the deep work needs you to relax.

Words connected to things we like

Financial Yoga

Yoga is a practice of increasing levels of relaxation. It stills the waves of the mind. Financial Yoga is the practice of increasing levels of security and empowerment. It stills the waves of money worries. Yoga starts with releasing niggles of the body. With the physical. Financial Yoga starts with finding an income. The skills and knowledge to earn enough to live. Yoga then focuses on the waves of thoughts (negative & positive) that come and go. On the mental. Financial Yoga finds space between hand and mouth to build a buffer to deal with waves of money emergencies and opportunities. Yoga then raises the level of consciousness to focus on something more than your self. To identify deeper and wider. Financial Yoga aims to release you from being a Productive Asset. You are not your job. Salary is not your worth. Financial Yoga releases you from income dependence. Relaxation and stillness allow a point of focus. Consciously chosen by you, through practice. Develop your daily practice of increasing levels of relaxation.

Financial Yoga

“Yoga is stilling the waves of the mind.” My wife recently asked me when I was at my happiest. Two moments sprung to mind. When I was doing my first Yoga Teacher Training, and the period when we got together. A few months before we met, I had done the sums and made peace with a simple life in exchange for release from the Corporate World. Clearly that peace was sexy. It got me the girl. Yoga talks of three levels of relaxation – physical (no niggles), mental (no anxiety), and spiritual (no concern over you vs others). I am at my happiest when I am at my most calm. Not worried about now, but also not worried about a week from now, or a year. My “Financial Yoga” is based on this. A deeply secure foundation, where the uncertainty is upside. A comfort with the base. That doesn’t mean inactivity. Ironically, stilling the waves opens up creativity. That is the heart of the idea of Wu-Wei (Action through Inaction). Start with a buffer to reduce the noise. Build a base. Then from the stillness that comes the creativity that matters will flow.

Yoga (and silliness) in the Mountains

Mental Health

You don’t “go on a diet”. Diet is what you eat. We all eat. The question is, what is the quality of food you put in your mouth. The same is true of Mental Health. I don’t believe working on proper Mental Health is something you do when you have had a breakdown. It isn’t something you do when your relationships aren’t working, or you are wrapped with anxiety and behavioural problems because of a horrible childhood incident. Proper Mental Health is just one vital part of living a full and meaningful life. Making sure we are aware of the quality of our maintenance and upkeep. It’s all connected. What we put in our mouths. How we move our bodies. How we draw in and release breath. How we sleep, process, and recover. Looking after Mental Health isn’t a sign of weakness. It is a sign of the resilience and endurance necessary to release your own special creativity.

Escape the Concertina

There are levels of relaxation. Usually we just touch the surface. Weekends and Holidays are often “Concertina Leave”, where the work squishes up on either side. A rush to finish. A pile to clear. If you have a worry work job, it comes home with you. It sleeps with you. It looks at you in the mirror. Yoga talks of three levels of relaxation: physical, emotional, and spiritual. There is a long-term nature involved that can’t simply respond to the often irritating and counter-productive request to, “Relax!”. Physical relaxation requires the stretching and strengthening of your body. Not just switching off. It is a lifestyle. A practice. Not an event. Emotional relaxation is hard when there are niggles and knots in your muscles. Emotional relaxation is stilling the mind. Having perspective, and the focus to channel your energy where it is creating the meaning you want. Spiritual relaxation is letting go of that constant measuring and angst of who we are. It is letting go of the rat race and focusing on something bigger. It is truly understanding what really matters to you.

Concertina Leave

Surrender

Yoga is, for me, a form of self-hypnosis. Instead of prejudging where the boundaries are, I use it to learn to relax into what is possible. This doesn't come naturally to me. I am not a "surrender" type of guy. I am a step-up, all-in, do-what-it-takes fighter.  I have had to learn, and am still learning to relax. There is nothing that will stop someone who struggles to relax, like telling them to relax. It is a skill you have to learn. Not by a snap of the fingers, but through a gradual process of permission, trust, and practice.

Yoga Teacher Training

Learning to Relax

Deep Relaxation

In Austria in 2011 I learnt what deep relaxation was. I was in a somewhat false set up. On a Yoga Teacher Training Course far from any commitments. In the middle of the course, I knew I wasn't stressed. I knew I hadn't been stressed for two weeks, and I knew I wouldn't be stressed for another two weeks. An absolute privilege in a manic world. 

Four weeks of leave was very unusual. I didn't take a lot of leave, and never more than two weeks. Leave was usually of the Concertina form. You work really hard before you go to make sure your desk is cleared, then really hard when you get back to catch up. While on leave, it takes time to wind down, and then mental preparation starts for getting back into it.

Saying "No" often gets treated as a fear of commitment or unwillingness to step up. As weakness. I think there is an alternative approach. 

I wasn't inactive on that course. Every day I was learning something, and I was investing heavily in my physical well being. Eating properly. Exercising properly. Breathing properly. Relaxing properly. Relaxing doesn't mean doing nothing. Proper relaxation is active. You actively relax your body, and your mind. Then there is a third level of relaxation. When you are able to let go of measurement. When it stops being about you.

In a meritocratic world, we are constantly assessing our value, worth, contribution and growth. We are constantly being weighed. It is very hard to let go of your ego when it is all about you. Have you done a good job? Have you had a successful career? Where are you headed?

When you have a good practice, that becomes less relevant. It becomes about the process. Ironically, when there is no expectation, you can give significantly more. 

I came back from Austria. I am skeptical of transformational experiences. The most important part of a Fast is the Break Fast. There is no point giving up booze/chocolate for  40 days and then drinking/eating twice as much on day 41. The habit that lasts will be the binging. The trick is how to make the thing you learn a regular, sustainable, part of what you do.

I haven't cracked the code. I still work at my anxiety and stress. I just no longer see it as aspirational. I don't think busyness and high-stress levels are worth applauding. I believe you can build a life where the relaxation soaks deep. Where it ceases to be about you.

Ten Pin Yogis

Proper Relaxation

Relaxation is a skill you can work on. Proper Relaxation isn't passive. You can relax your body by being aware of where you are carrying the tension. The most advanced Yoga pose is a relaxation pose. In Savasana, you follow a process of 'auto-suggestion'. Moving around the body, you tense and relax. You use your breath to reawaken your body through relaxation. Mental Relaxation requires conscious practice. Our minds need a moment not to do the heavy processing work of running through a gazillion real and imagined scenarios. The most important relaxation is learning not to worry about You so much. To relax the boundaries between what is you, and what isn't. To pause the worry, issues, and lack of quiet that comes from figuring out your place in the world.

Relax Your Body

Relax Your Mind

Relax Your Self

Afterthought

Somewhere between narcissism and self-negation, sits self-care. We over-simplify into Good and Bad. Our stories, conversations and play all reinforce the things that make us work better together. One of the things that made us work better together in a world of scarcity is hard work. Effort. The ability to prioritise and focus on things that add explicit, demonstrable value. To avoid things that are indulgent. Self-care is mostly internal. Proper exercise. Proper diet. Proper relaxation. Proper breathing. Constructive and caring thought patterns. None of this is externally obvious. We can't see the growth. We can't count it. So we don't prioritise it. Every day, we get up and go to work. Till we can't because we haven't looked after ourselves. Self-care is not indulgent. It shouldn't be an afterthought.

Detachment

Detachment is the ability to walk away. It doesn't mean you actually do walk away. A friend of mine practices the feeling of detachment while showering. How do you feel dry? Imagining a separation between the water and your skin even as it pours onto you. Even as you feel the warmth. Mostly when we think of relaxing, we talk about the physical side. The next level is mental relaxation. When somehow you manage to pause your concern for all the things that matter to you. Not stop. Pause. The third level is when you are able to relax what it is you think you are. When you pause the separation between you and everything else. That is detachment. You stay connected. You can only stay connected. But (you) becomes )you(.