Why You Can't 'Just Relax' - And That's Actually Normal

0:00 If you've tried everything to relax, but your body just won't calm down, I got news for you. This is totally normal. Your nervous system is doing exactly what it's supposed to, [music] which is keep you safe. But here's the problem. It hasn't gotten the message that there is no danger. So, it stays stuck in this protection mode where it's scanning, bracing, just unable [music] to rest. This is why meditation and deep breathing often feel useless. You can't relax a body that's convinced it's in danger. So, in this video, I'll show you how to get your body relaxed so that you can feel restored once and for all. Number one, relaxation isn't something you do. It's something that happens on its own. Have you ever tried to force

0:47 yourself to sleep? Maybe you're just laying in bed at 2:00 a.m. telling yourself, "Just relax. Just go to sleep." What happens? You learn very quickly that you can't make yourself sleep. In fact, the harder you try to sleep, the more awake you'll be. Sleep only happens when you learn to let go. When your body lets go. Relaxation works the exact same way. When you start adding pressure to yourself, it only keeps your nervous system on alert mode, on protection mode. So the first key is to take the pressure off. Your nervous system has the ability to relax on its own. It doesn't need you to micromanage. Now this doesn't mean that you can't use meditation apps, breathing exercises, or

1:34 develop sleep hygiene. You just don't need to control your body. These tools help supplement your body to rest, but it doesn't force it. The moment you turn relaxation into another thing that you have to accomplish, you're giving your nervous system another reason to stay on guard. Your nervous system right now is just more stubborn. When it's in this protection mode, it's not going to let go very easily. It wants to keep you alive. So, it's just going to be a little bit stubborn. When I was young, I went to India and I was on a train and in the carriage, I noticed that a lot of people uh were packed in that carriage. There wasn't any room. So, people would go on top of the carriage. I would see young kids that were on top of the carriage that were falling asleep. And

2:21 every time they were falling asleep and dozing off, I noticed that they were about to fall. And it would always give me like a heart attack. And I remember thinking, "What's wrong with me?" Those kids that are outside on a moving train that were falling asleep. And here I am in a comfortable bed where there's AC. And I just wasn't able to relax. What I didn't understand then was that my nervous system wasn't broken, it was just stressed. And that stressed nervous system becomes more stubborn. Think about it from a survival perspective. If you've already been under threat, your body can't afford to let its guard down. It needs to stay extra vigilant, extra protective. So the more stress your nervous system gets, the less it responds to your attempt to relax. And

3:07 here's the thing, the stress doesn't have to be something big. Sometimes the pressure of trying to sleep adds more stress. Trying so hard to fix yourself that effort itself becomes another stressor. Your body is responding exactly how it should. This leads me to number two, which is you don't need to relax, you just need to be able to respond. So many people are adding so much pressure. They're adding so much stress to their nervous system because they want to relax. They feel that if they don't relax, if they don't sleep that their body will never heal. And so as you realize that your nervous system doesn't need to be forced into relaxation that happens on its own. The key is how you respond whenever your

3:54 body doesn't relax. What happens is that a lot of people feel like they get frustrated. They start focusing on how much they've slept. They start fearing what if I can't relax. They stop fighting it. They anytime they feel like they are not relaxing, they want to feel like okay, I need to calm down. But all they're doing is just micromanaging. Instead, if they can just focus on responding, which is having this attitude, which is whether I relax or don't, that's totally okay. My body knows what it needs to do. This is where you let go of control. where you start recognizing that some nights you might sleep, some days you may feel relaxed, some days you might be on edge, but that's okay. Again, you don't want relaxation to be the metric of whether

4:40 you're healing. You want to focus on how you're responding. Good metric or a good framework that you can use is something that we call the alarm method. So the alarm is an acronym. A stands for acknowledge. Acknowledge that you are having sensations, you're having symptoms, you're not able to relax, you're not able to sleep. L is label it. What we define this is label it as anxiety or label it like your nervous system is stuck on high alert mode. A is accept it. Accept that your body isn't able to relax. Except that your body's feeling a little bit more stubborn right now, a little bit extra protective. R is refocus. and M is move on. Now, with refocus, it's a little bit different

5:26 with relaxation because if you refocus in real life, you can be focusing on other things. That could include doing the dishes, driving. But when you're laying in bed, all you need to refocus on is just laying in bed, just being there, just being mindful. You're not fighting it. You're not analyzing it. You're not doing anything with a certain end result. You're just letting yourself be there. and recognize if you sleep, if you relax, great. If you don't, that's okay as well. It's taking the pressure off your nervous system that allows your nervous system to realize that there is no threat, that there is no danger, and that the nervous system will calm down on its own. Now, you might be doing this for a while, and you might be wondering,

6:12 "Okay, Sean, how long will it take for my body to finally relax?" This leads me to point three, which is don't put a timeline on your healing. How long your body takes to relax is dependent fully on your body. Imagine you just broke your leg. Now, you can go to the doctors, get everything taken care of, but if you're always hyperfocused on how long is it going to take, how long is it going to take? Your leg won't heal that way. You can't just be looking at your leg just yelling, "How long are you going to take? How long you going to take?" You recognize that your body is going to take as long as it needs. Your nervous system is the exact same way. As long as it gets enough evidence that there is no danger, that there is no pressure, it will relax on its own. A lot of people don't recognize, but our

6:58 bodies want to conserve energy. Your body does not want to be burning through all the stress hormones and all this anxious energy. It actually burns through a lot of resources. Your body wants to conserve those resources. So your body will naturally come back to baseline on its own. As it recognizes that there is no danger, there is no threat. There is no fear around relaxing or sleeping. You'll see that your nervous system relaxes on its own. Your body will start conserving energy and sleep and relaxation happen by themselves. But anytime you add a time limit, anytime you add a time frame, anytime you tell yourself, "By this point, I want to be sleeping," that's just adding more pressure. Recognize that you may not feel relaxed, but still

7:45 be healing at the same time. You don't need to relax first to heal. Your nervous system is dynamic. It goes up and down. Sometimes symptoms will be high, sometimes symptoms will be low, but your nervous system is adjusting itself. And the way it adjusts itself is based on how you're responding. If it sees that Shawn isn't reacting, that Shawn might feel a little bit agitated, anxious, not as relaxed, but he's taking the pressure off, he's not adding any pressure into himself. Well, what you will see is that the nervous system will calm down on its own. As you do this over time, you'll recognize that your nervous system is able to relax over time. You'll notice that stubbornness fades over time. I remember when I was dealing with this, I could not sleep. As

8:33 I got better, sleep just never became an issue. I never thought about it. Nowadays, I just go and go to sleep and that's it. I don't think much about it. But when I was in this state, my nervous system just wouldn't let me sleep. Even when I was completely exhausted, even though I had been taking sleep medication, I've been trying everything, but it just didn't seem to work. And so, recognize that there's a stubbornness that's going on. The key is really learning how to respond to your symptoms. And three is about not putting a time frame. As you do this consistently, you'll see that sleep and relaxation comes on its own. Don't make healing a end goal. Don't make it a finish line. Make other things important in your life. Recognize that some days

9:19 you may sleep, some days you might not, but your body knows what's going on. And when your body is ready to relax, ready to sleep, it'll give you those signals.