A YOGI CHA BLOG

Tired is the new normal

When it comes to feeling tired, the mainstream medicine is as helpful as the phrase “it’s probably just stress”.

We never get a root cause explanation and often the idea of getting some rest either turns into distracting ourselves with all the habitual things that feed our addiction to pleasure or becomes a utopian concept of “when I get the time to travel”.

Neither of these two are helpful or even beneficial to the tiredness. Instead, if we can bring an understanding to why the organism is tired, we can adopt daily practices of recovery. 

Because life is those small steps I take every single day. 

The danger of the “if and when” scenarios is of course that they never transform into reality but also that we feel really small and helpless. They become the solution that I can never access and so I am doomed to stay where I am. But in reality, this is of course an illusion of our limited perception of our lives. 

This article is for exactly every single person who wishes to take themselves from point A to point B, no matter what A is. 

Whether it’s Ayurveda consultation or Psychotherapy, we first need to accept where we are at and that means to support the Now. We can do that when we understand what is actually happening to us. In Ayurveda we get a great foundation for this with the illustration of the elements. Space will always be necessary for life to be. Without space, no room for consciousness to flow and therefore no relationship between energy and matter.

Air and space forms the constitution of VATA dosha with the inert tendency of movement. It will always be in flow so it will always be susceptible to imbalance. When VATA is out of balance, the qualities of DRY, LIGHT and COLD are dominant in our organism which means that both PITTA and KAPHA will get unstable as well. 

When the wind is blowing freely and excessively, the fire spreads and the water dries up. 

The drier we become, the more the fire becomes intense and the less water there is. Imagine an oil lamp : the more we increase the flame, the more oil will be needed to sustain it. But if we leave it with the strong flame without tending to the lamp, soon there will be no more oil. 

This is exactly what happens inside of us when our VATA has been out of balance for long enough. The PITTA aggravates, the heat increases and after a while it has used up the resources of KAPHA that kept us stable. 

This is what I see around me on a daily basis. Whether the symptoms of a person are physical, mental or emotional, they are rarely due to increased KAPHA actually. Yet people seem to think that it’s their KAPHA that needs to be balanced out. Ok, so most of them don’t think in those terms but what they believe is “I need to move more, I need to push further, I need to eat less and stimulate movement inside the organism even more”.

They think this because the symptoms they are experiencing seem to be KAPHA related : low motivation, lack of will to do things, depression, weight gain, overeating etc.

But what is really happening is that they are so depleted of vital energy that the “low battery mode” is switched on. 

This translates into an incapacity to digest well and therefore they do not absorb nutrients as well anymore. When that happens, they think they are intolerant to certain foods or they become anaemic and start supplementing instead. 

But since they are so low on vital forces, they cannot absorb the supplements which means that they are throwing all that money spent of pills (“oh, but they are natural and organic!”) out the window. 

What is needed here is to rejuvenate the whole organism. And it starts with PROPER rest. Not increasing the number of hours slept (although that might be needed too!) but to sleep at the RIGHT time. Neither to spend more time passively scrolling through Netflix’s offer of movies while snacking on something greasy, sweet and salty but by teaching the brain to rest without the nervous system being stimulated. Only then can we relax and when this rest happens, we begin to recover again.

There is a journey to take here, for sure. It’s not always easy to do or to even allow oneself to take the time for it. But let me ask you this : can you afford to NOT do it now?

Because the backward situation we have come to is that we don’t see the medical bills it will imply later in life. We don’t see the years we lose in productivity due to decreased longevity. 

Remember that your current life situation is actually what your life is built up of. 

Take action today, it’s not normal to constantly feel tired.