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Writer's pictureNatascha Krauss

Radical & Unconditional Rest

Updated: May 1, 2023

How does it feel to be completely Relaxed? Completely at Ease? Feeling Peace in your Mind? Feeling Whole in the Body? Feeling 100% well. When everything is in Balance and Regulated.


When somebody tells you to relax you don't even know how to do that? What to do with your endless thoughts or what to imagine that could be relaxing? "I'm lying in the green grass"? "Clouds are passing over my head"? Seriously?! Is that relaxing? Lying in the green grass? Really?! I don't remember ever feeling relaxed lying in the grass, ants biting and bees buzzing too closely. But if you can feel utterly relaxed just like that, you can stop reading.


Or maybe you rather relate to this one:

“I can never relax. I can relax my body, sure. But my head doesn't stop. There is always pressure of what I still need to do or where I still need to go. And I don't sleep well so I never feel rested anyways. How can I feel relaxed?”


Rest and relaxation are the most natural state of our nervous system when there is no perceived threat.


To feel utterly at ease in every cell of the body. To feel deep rest and peace.

For many of us our central nervous system does not allow this state (anymore?). Did it used to be there? Was it ever there? Could I ever really feel deeply in peace with myself?


Well, here is what I can tell you...


We were not born with pain. We were not born with insomnia. We were not born with anxiety & depression. None of them are natural states of our bodies, obviously. Deep rest & natural calmness are unconditional. It is the essence of our nature. The purest form of our being. Only from here we can connect to ourselves & to the world. From here we can truthfully experience. It is the only state in which we can faithfully create from. We don't have to earn it. We don't need to do anything to deserve rest.

If we neglect this need for rest or think we first have to work hard in order to earn it, we come from a place of trauma. Our nervous system gets shaped by other nervous systems - the people we have interacted with and still do. It gets shaped by our experiences. So it is toned uniquely. Therefore what is an indication of threat for me might not be an indication of threat for you. The more PERCEIVED danger there is, the more it is tuned into fight, flight or freeze mode and not rest. Danger could mean the angry parent or the absent parent, the bullying kid at school, the overbearing teacher, the cheating ex-partner & ... There is no limit to what your primitive brain may have perceived as danger. For trauma survivors e.g. their nervous system is shaped more towards protection and away from rest and relaxation. Let’s break it down...


Imagine you move into a new house and equip it with an alarm system because it can't hurt to have one. One night there is a straying cat in your house and the alarm system went off, which scared the cat away. The alarm is startling, you start running scared to death!


The system was effective. The next day you go to get an even sharper alarm system, so the cat can't get into your house next time.

The updated alarm system went off while the cat was only passing your front door on its nightly mice haunt. You got scared and ran again, danger! You tune the alarm even sharper so nothing can get near the house.


The next time the alarm sounds when the cat is just strolling along the street on a bright sunny day in a perfectly safe neighbourhood. Yet the sound is striking, you are scared, you run again.


This metaphor can be transferred to "the school" of our central nervous system.

It is like an alarm system that gets tuned sharper and sharper. The more it gets sharpened, the more it will go off. We always need a sharper one because we don't feel safe. But your nerves will be blank. You will not sleep. You are prepared to run. Your body doesn’t allow you to leave the fight, flight, freeze mode because the alarm could go off any time.


This is where the biochemical reactions in our body come in. Yes, your body is constantly under “stress”. Because the chemicals to fight, flight or freeze are persistently triggered and released into your system. These chemicals are evolutionary short term responses of the body to provide the energy to survive the sabel-toothed-tiger attack in the wilderness. Only they are constantly present by now even when the cat is just strolling down the street.


Let’s feel into our day to day life. How do you feel? Do you have expectations and plans for the day that you think about from the second you wake up?


Do you only feel okay when you meet - even surpass the expectations of others and yourself? Expectations are always there. Constantly. They can get so intense that they will haunt you into perfectionism in all stages of life. Think about the role of expectations for a second. Isn’t it true that we are only happy or satisfied when we live up to the expectations we have or the ones we think people around us have? So doesn’t it feel threatening to think about what happens when we don’t succeed? Is it scary or does it make you nervous? It is a perceived threat for your primitive brain.

So we would do anything in our power to avoid the fear of the unknown (unknown=what we feel when we don’t manage to live up to our expectations). We all do it. The unknown will create an immense amount of fear which again will lead to the pressure you might be feeling in your head, belly, etc. (see blog post inner pressure). So what we are actually scared of are our own feelings. We are scared of the feeling of disappointment maybe. Sure, disappointment will lower our energy immensely. We would rather not be disappointed. But how does disappointment really feel to you? As a sensation in your body?


Expectations are created in split seconds all day long based on whatever piece of information we have. Do some of your days look like the following more or less? You expect to wake up early to have enough time in the morning. You “fail” to get up. So you already get up as a failure. You already have a circus of thoughts and (wrongly) created ideas going on by the time you leave your bed. ➟😣 Then maybe you expect a 10-minute ride to the office but there happened to be an accident. ➟ 😡 🤯

Anger. Fear of being late. Then you expect your boss to congratulate you on the successful project you have finished. But he was too busy thinking about his son's school grades instead of you. ➟ 😕 Disappointment. Fear that maybe it wasn’t good enough. You expect to have dinner with your partner but your better half is out with friends. ➟ 😞 Disappointment. 😟 Sadness. Even rejection? You invite friends over for a little party. You expect everything to be perfect and everybody to have the time of their lives, after all they have expectations too. ➟ 😵‍💫 Stress. Maybe you go on that date with somebody you have created expectations around based on some photos. You go because you expect with this person “there really is something”. But there really wasn’t. ➟ ☹️ Disappointment. Sadness. Fear of being alone.


You could say: that's part of life and normal. Yet, like with everything in life, it can get too intense to deal with it. You are drowning in all the little things in everyday's life, feeling completely overwhelmed. Failing to zoom out. There is no more energy. And then? Burn out? Depression, Anxiety, Panic?


Walking through life in this state means constantly scaring your primitive brain & body.


That means that your alarm system goes off all the time even when the cat is just strolling down the street on a sunny day in a perfectly safe neighborhood. We often come across the term hypersensitivity. In this case the “extremely sensitised nervous system” experiences for example touch as pain (danger signal) or music as uncomfortable noise.


The overactivity of the nervous system can be linked to many diseases. Digestive issues, poor immune response, insomnia, depression, anxiety, panic, breathlessness, high blood pressure, migraines, high cholesterol, diabetes just to name a few.


Due to experiences the nervous system might not allow you to leave the fight and flight or even freeze state at times in order to protect you. But the state where you can open yourself up in, look around you and engage fully in human interactions and connections is the ventral vagal state. The basic tone of this state is the feeling of safety. If you feel like social engagement is too much for you and you can not enjoy it, this can be explained biologically. Help your body feel safe. Give yourself unconditional & radical rest! It is only in this state where we can truly connect.

Without a doubt will you experience a different life once you rebalance your nervous system. Back to a natural state.


Love, Natascha














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