There are so many strange things about our modern world: sidewalk robots delivering $16 burritos, billionaires with personal space programs, and AI companies promising to save and potentially destroy humanity.
But here’s one more thing that is genuinely bizarre:
We complain endlessly about being stressed out and yet rarely invest in training ourselves to relax.
Why? Because relaxation seems different from things like running a marathon, learning a language, or playing the piano. It’s not something that can be trained. It’s something that just kind of happens.
The reality, however, is that modern life is itself a training…in stress. Each day, we practice hundreds of stress-reps: notifications, rushing, email, multitasking, traffic, deadlines, doomscrolling. And we wonder why relaxation rarely happens.
The result isn’t just irritation, anxiety, and overwhelm. It’s tension and conflict in our relationships.
Relaxation, after all, is the gateway to connection. It’s what opens up the space to ask a good question and stay attuned to your partner’s inner world.
Relaxation is also the gateway to eroticism and intimacy. It’s what slows down the swirl of logistics in the mind so that genuine desire can begin to emerge.
You know how not to relax: just keep doing what you’re doing.
But what if you want to try out the radical act of training relaxation?
Try these two tools.
1. Stop, drop, and breathe
What’s the most direct path from stress to relaxation? Changing the way you breathe.
Breathe heavy, short, and fast, and you will feel stressed.
Breathe slow, softly, and intentionally, and you will begin to feel more relaxed.
Over the years, we’ve experimented with countless techniques for making this shift. In the end, our favorite tool is what Patrick McKeown calls LSD Breathing.
Here’s how it works:
First, notice when you’re stressed, then find a time between meetings or tasks to stop.
Second, drop by lying down on your back for 5 to 10 minutes.
Third, breathe in a relaxed way by applying the principles of LSD Breathing.
- L: Breathe Light — See if you can breathe so subtly that you barely feel the sensations of each inhale and exhale at the tip of your nose.
- S: Breathe Slow — Slow down the pace of breathing and see if you can lengthen the exhale. If it feels comfortable, you might even add a slight pause at the end.
- D: Breathe Deep — Not big. Let the breath gently move your belly, ribs, and chest rather than lifting your shoulders or forcing air in.
The goal isn’t to master the complexities of breath; it’s to experience the radical simplicity of having nothing to do, other than following the rise and fall of each breath. You might even notice the experience of your body being breathed.
2. Schedule time for waking sleep
We get it. This one sounds strange. But over the last couple thousand years, a powerful technique has emerged for shifting the nervous system into a deep state of rest.
The yogis call it yoga nidra. Modern scientists call it Non-Sleep Deep Rest (NSDR).
Here’s how it works. Carve out 10 to 20 minutes in the middle of the day. Use an audio track to guide you. Here is one of our favorites: Yoga Nidra – Relaxation Lite.
Lie down on your back, with palms facing the sky. Follow the instructions and allow yourself to relax into this subtle state between waking and sleep.
Early research on these practices suggests benefits for stress, anxiety, sleep, and certain aspects of learning and memory.
In a culture that promotes living in a near-constant state of stress, taking a small amount of time to train relaxation is radical.
But that is precisely the point. Staying connected in your relationship requires pushing back on the momentum of a culture that prioritizes getting closer to Inbox Zero over getting closer to each other.