So how do you relax?

As I sit here, I am listening to a Joy Division live album on a Sunday afternoon.  My mind is somewhere else.  I am embracing fifty million thought pathways at once.  Some are productive, some are diverting me from the act of writing.  When I am not relaxed can I still write?  Indeed, can I even think coherently?

Relaxation is an unusual phenomenon.  If you consider human beings as biological entities, even when we sleep, our bodies are a mass of processes.  Our blood flows through each vein and artery, allowing our heart to pump vigorously and our brains to operate this complex shell of water and matter.  So essentially, when we are talking about relaxing, we are only usually referring to our thought processes.  Our bodies are always by their nature pushed and challenged.  They can take more than we allow them credit for.  In typing that statement, I surprise myself as I am feeling quite tired. 

Physical tiredness is nothing like mental fatigue for most people (it can be if you suffer from certain conditions).  Feeling mentally exhausted can lead to physical exhaustion and it is interesting to consider how one constantly offered piece of medical advice for depression etc is to exercise for at least thirty minutes a day, as it increases the serotonin levels in the brain.  So in other words, the lump of matter in our head should be the primary focus of our attention.  If we can address the needs, worries and concerns of the day, some of the ailments of the body could ease up.  It disturbs me how medication is used so regularly for headaches, without addressing the causes of the headaches.

So providing you are prepared to at least partially accept my belief that the brain by its nature is the most important part of the human body (remember that it not only controls the biological impulses but also the emotional, psychological and neurological aspects of the body).  But that leads to an immediate problem?  How do you relax something that is by its nature, constantly active  (Sparking synapses will stop for no man or woman)?  I would suggest through stimulation.

Returning to the question, so how do you relax?  I relax through stretching myself.  Stimulation through books and cultural products.  Objects, people, sensations that engage me and help me to feel.  I need to feel.  Emotional stimulation, sensual stimulation, intellectual stimulation.  Give me a park bench with someone I care about, give me bird song and a rippling lake.  Air tearing through my head.  Give me a space where I can think in a way that excludes superfluous details and leaves me with the things that matter.  I would say love to but it's a word that has been corrupted and packaged for too long.  No one remembers what it means anymore.

So how do you relax?

                                                                Barry Watt - 22nd September 2013.