Everything in balance. Take a break!
Just up from Trafalgar Square at 9am on a Saturday morning we would turn up for our 3 hour Tai Chi class in a hall set below street level. We’d see legs go past the window, but it was an otherwise quiet setting. Upon arrival our instructor would have us all grab a mat and take a nap.
Silence descended and I’d turn my head, slyly opening one eye to see a number of restless bodies. As the minutes passed, the twitching legs would become less twitchy, and I even heard snoring. After 10 to 15 minutes, without comment, and as if by telepathy, everyone would slowly begin putting their mats away and we’d begin.
One of the students asked the question I was wondering. “Why did we just do that?”
The replied was soft, and brief. “You looked like you needed it.”
Take a break to prepare yourself.
I thought this was all the response our Tai Chi instructor was going to provide but after a brief pause, he elaborated. “You commuted here. Commuting is rarely a stress-free experience. Even if it was stress-free, you will have exerted yourself. Tai Chi is about being relaxed. I was letting you relax. Now you can do Tai Chi.”
In an era of ever greater emphasis on productivity, we seem to have forgotten art of balance.
- We exert ourselves, and then we don’t.
- We eat, and then we don’t eat.
- We are awake, and then we sleep.
- We exercise, and then we recover.
Take a break to avoid being a sheep.
I’ve fallen asleep at my keyboard at work trying to meet a crazy deadline. The quality of the work had dropped off a cliff, but I couldn’t afford to stop. It was a false narrative. Stopping would have allowed me to go faster, but my colleague, who was imbued with more stamina than me, kept going and so I didn’t feel I could let them down by taking a break. There is courage, and often sense, in refusing to be swayed by the judgement of others.
Take a break to recuperate.
Athletes understand this need for doing and not doing. There are many things that separate top athletes from mere mortals, but one that is overlooked is their ability, and capacity, for rest (or should I say, ‘recovery?’).
When you challenge your muscles you can damage them. In fact it’s these many tiny bits of damage – hypertrophy – and then repair, that builds muscle. If you do yourself damage but then keep going, you’re going stop doing damage and start doing harm. You take a break to let your muscles repair themselves.
Take a break to improve performance.
Runners may know about interval workouts. These are short bursts, followed by recovery, repeated several times. The awful thing about interval workouts is that I hate like them. The great thing about interval workouts is – if you’re doing them correctly – you never get to the point of exhaustion where your technique degrades, i.e. you are not teaching yourself bad habits. This is important because contrary to popular belief, practice doesn’t make perfect. No. Perfect practice makes perfect.
Take a break to improve memory.
There are three components to memory – acquisition, consolidation, and recall. The first and third take place when we’re awake. Sleep has an important role to play in consolidation.
We sleep in roughly 90 minute cycles, moving from light sleep, through deep sleep, to REM sleep. Deep sleep is rather cool, because there is evidence our brains ‘squeeze,’ as they purge themselves of toxins, but it’s in REM (rapid eye movement) sleep where we consolidate our memories.
We commonly experience more deep sleep earlier in the night, and more REM sleep later on, so cutting our sleep short to get more stuff done has consequences.
It’s not just sleep where memories are consolidated. We even retain things more quickly when we step away for a break just after learning them.
My Tai Chi teacher always used to say, “when we know better, we do better.” He knew we can be too hard on ourselves. We show kindness to others but can forget to be kind to ourselves. Of course another way of saying this is, ‘give yourself a break,’ which is exactly what he was doing at the beginning of the class.
Be kind to yourself. Give yourself a break.
