Sonimawork-life balance – Sonima

How to Detach from Your Work Life

Sanjeev Verma — Mon, 25 Feb 2019 10:07:32 +0000

In today’s technologically advanced world, it’s incredibly easy to work on-the-go. But just because we can be plugged into our work phones, email, and even meetings from virtually any remote location doesn’t mean we should be.

Mainly, what I’m talking about is bringing your work home with you when you don’t really have to. Many of us continue to not only communicate with our colleagues after hours, but we also bring our “work headspace” home with us. Most people know this isn’t a healthy habit but can’t seem to stop themselves from doing it. They can’t force themselves to detach because, well, it’s not easy to leave work behind when you’re so connected to it.

But think about it this way: Even if you really identify with your job, the relationships you have outside of the workplace are not related to your job. This is a major reason you need to set your work identity aside when you leave your desk. You have other roles to play, and they’re just as important as your work role. You could be the CEO of a company, but when you come home and play with your dog or your child, you’re no longer CEO. Your dog has nothing to do with how your day at work was.

Most would agree that work-life balance and a little separation between the two are good things but are unsure of how to achieve them. In my experience, there are two main ways to ensure you leave your work where it belongs.

1. Awareness of your role.

When you have a sense of duty toward work, that duty often falls within a certain time limit. For some that’s 9:00 to 5:00. For others, there is no formal start or end to their work day. They are essentially “on-call” all the time. But even those who work irregular hours have other roles to play besides “worker”, whether that’s father, mother, sibling, child, partner, friend, or anything else. Whenever you identify with one of those roles, you’re able to do your duty in that role to the fullest. The key to getting this right is being aware of which role you are playing at any given time. Because when you’re aware of your current role, you can detach from all the others you play and move seamlessly from one to another.

So let’s say you’re a doctor, but you are talking to your friend and you really want to be a good friend to them in that moment. You’re ideally going to come to them from the perspective of a friend, not a doctor. In that moment, you are just their friend and nothing more. You detach yourself from your role as a doctor. Or perhaps you’re a manager at work. You can’t be a manager in your home, and you can’t be a husband or wife in the workplace. So your whole role shifts based on your environment.

If you’re aware of your role in a given moment, you can play that role to the maximum. It then becomes easier to disconnect from whatever is going on at work. You can go to a bar with your friends and not worry about your email. If you’re having a hard time setting work aside, simply ask yourself which role you ideally want to be playing in a given moment. As long as you are aware, you can shift very easily and spontaneously.

2. In-between activities.

The second method of separating your work and home lives is best for people who find it very difficult to disconnect from their work and notice it bleeding into their next role. If you’ve already tried the above approach and it’s not working, consider this one. Maybe on a daily or weekly basis, there’s a problem happening at work, and you’re not able to set it aside. You feel stressed even after you leave your workspace. You might even find yourself checking your email every few minutes, just to see if there are any updates.

If this sounds familiar, try this: When you come home from or finish work, do a short activity before you launch into anything else—like trying to be a good parent or a compassionate partner, or even just unwinding from a long day. The activity should be at the physical or mental level. At the physical level, you could go to the gym or do a bit of gardening or cooking. Or some choose to sit quietly and have a cup of tea. At the mental or spiritual level, you could take a mindful walk or do a 5- to 10-minute meditation.

Overall, the idea here is that a very short action can disconnect you from your whole day and really bring in that sense of moving into your next role. By repeating this action on a regular basis, you signal to yourself that whenever this action happens, your work day is done. It should be an activity that’s totally different from work and is not demanding in the same way your work is. When you deliberately separate the parts of your day and the roles you have to play, moving between them becomes effortless.

The post How to Detach from Your Work Life appeared first on Sonima.

Are You Subconsciously Holding Your Breath?

Brian Sabin — Fri, 14 Apr 2017 12:00:43 +0000

Stressed, seated, and staring at a screen. Sound familiar? If this is you right now—as well as most people you know—then you’ll want to keep reading. While last year’s standing desk craze may have alerted you to the dangers of sitting all day, every day, we have some more news for you: Being sendentary isn’t the worst of it.

You know that stress is unhealthy, sitting wreaks havoc on your posture, and the bright screen light can disrupt your sleep. None of this is good, but possibly even more serious is the sensation that you sometimes get at your desk when it feels like your head is underwater. Why do you feel like you’re drowning? Because, in a sense, you are.

“Email apnea” is a term credited to former Apple exec Linda Stone. Just like it’s better-known bedtime counterpart, sleep apnea, the term describes prolonged periods where you go without breathing—you hold your breath without realizing it—while at your desk or at work. And just as sleep apnea is under-diagnosed, email apnea may be a lot more prevalent than you think.

In fact, Belisa Vranich, Ph.D., says that in nearly every office setting that she has encountered, three out of every 10 people are breath-holders. Vranich teaches breathing classes in person and online for everyone from corporate office types to tactical military operators. She likens the focused-to-the-point-of-breathlessness that we feel at our computers to being in a “modern predatory state.”

“Think about shooting at a range, or if you were an animal stalking something,” says Vranich, who is also the author of Breathe: The Simple, Revolutionary 14-Day Program to Improve Your Mental and Physical Health. “You would naturally hold your breath so that you won’t make an errant movement.”

Obviously, bringing that level of intensity to your inter-office “reply all” is overkill. You wouldn’t choose to do it. The problem is that, unless you’ve actually caught yourself holding your breath as you type or read, you probably aren’t aware that it’s happening. Here’s how to tune into your body as you go about your day and notice whether it is happening to you.

Two Types of Breathers: Which One Are You?

Let’s start with how you breathe. Believe it or not, people respire in many different ways when you consider the pace at which they inhale, what muscles they use to pull the air in, and so on. But Vranich says you can simplify things by separating people into two broad categories: vertical breathers and horizontal breathers.

Vertical breathing describes how most people breathe. When you do it, your shoulders move up on inhales and down on exhales. You may even feel as if you’re getting taller when you breathe in and shorter when you breathe out. If you were to put one hand on your belly and another on your chest when you breathe, the hand on your chest would move more.

In horizontal breathing, your shoulders and neck stay completely still as you breathe. Only your midsection drives the inhalation and exhalation. Rather than growing taller and shorter, you feel as if you’re moving outward, then contracting.

Horizontal breathers, who are in the minority, breathe by properly using their diaphragms. For vertical breathers (a.k.a., the rest of us), muscles in our back, shoulders, neck, and even face work to help “pull” the air into our bodies. This not only causes us to expend more energy than we need to, it also tightens up all of those compensatory muscles, and still provides a lousier dose of air than does lower body breathing. Why is quality compromised? Because so many of our lung’s alveoli (the air sacs that allow for the exchange of oxygen into the bloodstream) lie in the lower portions of the tissues.

Making matters worse, vertical breathers are more likely to also be subconscious breath holders, Vranich warns. But the good news is that you can do the old “two birds with one stone” and fix both problems by learning how to breathe better with your lower body.

Stop Needlessly Drowning at Your Desk

To change your breathing pattern from vertical to horizontal, Vranich says you need to think differently about how you breathe. Rather than concentrate on pulling air into your lungs, imagine your breathing starts at your hips. A drill you can use to help learn better lower body breathing is something Vranich calls “Rock and Roll.”

In Rock and Roll, you start in a seated position. You can be in a chair or cross-legged on the floor. On your inhale, expand your belly and lean forward. The extra lithe among us may have to actively push their belly out to achieve what we’re going for here. Your goal is to achieve a sensation akin to having your belly land in your lap. Then when you exhale, lean over as if you were slumping down into a comfy cushioned loveseat. Contract your belly fully, exhaling until you are completely empty. Do this 20 times (an inhale and exhale equals one rep).

“When you move your breath toward the bottom part of your body, you’ll actually feel relieved,” Vranich says. “Not only because you’re taking a breath that helps your parasympathetic system, which controls your “rest and digest” response, but also because you won’t have to recruit your shoulders to do the work of breathing for you. You’ll be breathing more into your anatomical center, and that will actually make you feel more centered.”

Vranich offers two other tips for noticing and correcting your breathing as you go about your workday. First, occasionally breathe through your mouth so you can hear it—yes, you can ujjayi breathe at work. Second, remind yourself to exhale. People rarely hold their breath on an exhale, Vranich says, but often do on an inhale.

Take Your Breathing to New Heights with a Balloon

Advanced breathers who want to take respiration a step further can try balloon breathing to improve exhalation, the very important underdog. Here’s how Vranich teaches it: Place the balloon between your lips. Take a big belly breath in. Then on the exhale, blow into the balloon while you squeeze the air out with your ab and core muscles. The first exhale may be difficult, especially if you’re using a new balloon.

Once you’ve fully exhaled, keep the balloon in your mouth without letting the air escape. Inhale through your nose and repeat, filling the balloon even more. Do this for up to four breaths, or until the balloon seems “about to pop” full. Then pinch the balloon with your fingers, remove it from your lips, and let the air out.

The post Are You Subconsciously Holding Your Breath? appeared first on Sonima.