Switch Off and Find Calm, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 8 Phase 1: Disconnect

The hardest part of switching off is taking the first step of simply stopping. You have already stopped to take the time to read this, so high five to you. Take a moment to take a big, deep breath and slowly breathe out. Come on, don’t resist it. Breathe in, breathe out. How nice does it feel to just stop? We will explore ‘the power of breath’ in a moment, but for now let’s embrace how great it feels just to stop.

Stop

If stopping feels so great, why don’t we do it more often? The simple answer is we do, we stop a lot. We have many moments when our body is ‘still’ — when we’re watching television, sitting at our desk at work, lying in bed. Our bodies are still more often than we might think. So what are we complaining about? Well, there’s stopping and there’s really stopping. Most often when we are sitting idly in an effort to switch off, our mind continues to race. We try to slow down while still engaged in stimulating activities. We watch television while on our tablet, we go for a time-out coffee during which we respond to email, we push our kids on the swing while talking on the phone. Despite our best attempts to slow down, in reality we often don’t wind down at all but only build up further overstimulation. When we do this we are not fully in the moment; we are merely distracting ourselves from the here and now. While trying to switch off we embrace activities that ensure we are still switched on.

So how do we really stop? First we have ...