#52. Choose Awareness Over Exhaustion: The Neuroscience Of Taking Breaks

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A quiet grounding episode honoring the power in the pause, the dark moon, and the science of integration- released as a threshold between what has been and what is becoming.

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Transcript

Naming The Need To Pause

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, welcome back, or welcome if it's your first time to transform your life, just count me in. I'm Sari, I'm your host. Um, I hope you had a great week this past week. And to be really honest with you, it was kind of half and half for me. I almost didn't record this episode. Not because I don't care, definitely not that, but because I care really deeply about honoring what's real. And what's been real for me this week, and actually real for a few of the people I'm working with, is the feeling of just needing to take a pause. It's it's something that comes up for a lot of us, especially those of us who care deeply about people, leaders, creators, people that serve. Sometimes slowing down is really hard. So if you're listening to this and you're feeling a little quieter than usual, maybe a little less inspired, I want you to know that you're in exactly the right place. There's nothing wrong with you. You might just be integrating. This often happens after there's been a lot of realization or a lot of work or a lot of momentum going, all of a sudden, we just want to curl up with a cup of tea and a blanket for a while. And that's okay sometimes. Right now, we're actually in the space. I always look to the stars, and we're actually in the space before the new moon, before a new beginning. And culturally, we are not in America taught how to honor this kind of space. I was taught very thoroughly how to push through it, how to label it, or how to just think, okay, I'm going to outgrow it. But some seasons don't ask to grow forward. They ask us more to settle inward. Slowing down happens not always because we're lazy, not because we've lost our edge, not because our system is asking for it. I try to not wait until my system asks for it and I get sick. Somewhere along the way, many of us learn that momentum only counts if it's visible, and growth only matters if it's productive. The rest has to be earned. That's not how nature works, and it's not actually what makes us strong. Real momentum doesn't start with pushing, it starts with grounding. Strength flows more out of containment, out of allowing, out of letting ourselves to just inhabit the ebb as much as the flow. It's like ease and flow is something that we talk a lot about in yoga. And when we slow down without guilt, which is hard for me, we're not stopping the journey. We're more like consolidating it. We're letting what we've already lived settle down so that it can integrate and become wisdom. And this is where we actually get more clear. This is where our next aligned step becomes more obvious and not forced. So if you're in a season right now where your energy feels quieter and you need to move inward and be a little bit more reflective, it doesn't mean that you're off track. Don't panic. It just means that something inside of you is organizing itself for what comes next. Life is about expansion, but strength doesn't come from constant expansion. It grows out of containment, from allowing ourselves to fully inhabit the pause instead of fighting it. I mean, I'm looking out my window right now, and granted there's a lot of trees that kept their leaves in their green, but there's a lot that didn't. There's garden beds that I have that nothing's coming up because it's not that time. They're pretty barren right now. Nature doesn't apologize for winter, and seeds don't rush their roots because we want them to. There is like a necessary inward season before anything meaningful can rise. Even if you watch a baby or you watch a little child who's learning how to walk, they take a moment, they stand up, they get a grip on themselves, they kind of get their balance between their two feet, and then they go for it. Something inside of you is often organizing itself for what comes next. So when we feel guilty about this, which I used to have huge guilt about slowing down or taking a break unless I was sick, and alignment comes from listening more to our internal, internal voice. Guilt was more like measuring myself against an external pace. So I'll say that again. When we're feeling guilty, it's all it's usually coming from measuring ourselves against an external pace or a pace that we see somebody else doing, or a pace that we made up for ourselves. When we align, this is how sustainable momentum is born. Not ever from pressure, because that's not. It's from presence. So when we honor the ebb, the flow becomes really effortless. Nothing's really wasted, not the pause, not the rest, not the stillness. So calm down if you're in one of those stages right now. I live with a musician, and there's times that he goes into the studio and I'll ask him how it went, and he'll say, not, you know, not real well. Not a whole lot happened. And but maybe it's just a time to pull in. Because usually after those weeks comes his most beautiful music. So I see it in him and I see it in my clients. I still have a hard time when it happens with me. So I looked into what exactly it is that is going on in my brain when this happens and why this is actually good for people. Or am I just trying to make myself feel better about it? So the neuroscience tells us that the brain integrates meaning in rest, not in striving. I know we tell people to study something before they go to sleep, not on a screen, but to study something on paper before they go to sleep, or try to memorize something, to listen to something before they go to sleep, or before they work out. Because when your brain is resting, it can actually be more open to integration. When we stop pushing, a whole different part of our brain comes online. That part weaves the experience into our wisdom. When we pause, the default mode network, the DMN, becomes active. And this is the network that integrates meaning and processes identity shifts. It also consolidates any emotional learning that we've done and helps our brain make sense of our experiences. This explains why insights often come like when you're taking a shower or when you're going for a walk or when you stop trying. The brain doesn't integrate growth when we're pushing, it actually integrates when we're resting. If we put ourselves under stress or we're feeling stressed, stress actually narrows your creativity, and that's protective. When we're under any kind of emotional or physical stress, the brain shifts to safety, monitoring, and caretaking. That's that prefrontal cortex. So creativity, planning, inspiration, they need to quiet down because basically your brain is just trying to keep you alive. So if you can't access your inspiration right now, it does not mean it's gone. It just means that your system is prioritizing care. Constant output during emotional strain can actually lock stress into your nervous system. It can create resentment towards your work and disconnect us from intuition. When we can take a pause, when we give ourselves permission to pause, it allows the nervous system to return to regulation. So that explains a lot. If inspiration feels quiet right now, it doesn't mean it's absent necessarily. It means that it may be incubating. You're not really losing your momentum, you're deepening it, just getting it a little bit deeper. We often talk about momentum as something that's always generated through effort. And it's not selfish to take a pause, it's actually maintenance to take a pause. Real momentum doesn't start with movement, it actually starts with grounding. So when we're regulated, when we're clear, when we're connected to ourselves, action becomes more efficient and not reactive. Strength is not built by ignoring when we need to hit the pause button. Strength is built by containment. Containing ebbs and flows. Containment is actually what allows your energy to gather. Without it, momentum is gone. There's so much misconception in the professional culture that it that momentum only comes from constant output. But neuroscience is totally a different story. And in leadership, the pause is not disengagement. This happens especially after seasons of growth, change, or emotional demand. Periods of pause allow your brain to integrate your experience, to consolidate listening, to kind of recalibrate, to make better decisions. In leadership, the pause is never disengagement, it's discernment. The most grounded decisions I've ever made in my career did not come from urgency, they actually came from stillness. Alignment in our professional lives isn't proven by how much we produce. It's more revealed by what we refuse to rush. And my standard is living in congruence with myself and alignment with myself. And I definitely had a hard time slowing down this week, but that is totally where I felt my energy was. And when I honored it, I just felt so validated. I feel so much better. I feel so much more peaceful inside. So after we clarify our standards and values, there's often a natural pause. Not because we're stuck, but because the nervous system needs time to kind of catch up with the truth that we've already acknowledged. And this is the space where integrity is formed. Before you make a goal, before you come up with another strategy, before you say yes to anything. And if you're in that in-between space right now, just honor it. Strong foundations are built really quietly. So here are some journal prompts for you if you're inclined to do those. And this they really help me a lot. I journal every morning, even if it's just for five or ten minutes. Where in my life am I rushing something that wants to ripen naturally? Where what do I need to give myself permission to do? Where can I write my own permission slip? Or I've been waiting for somebody else to give me permission. What would it feel like to trust this pause instead of resisting it? What is strengthening in me right now, even if I can't see the results yet? So momentum doesn't disappear when we slow down. Don't be scared that's happening. It actually becomes more sustainable. This episode is not here to motivate you, it's here to sit beside you. Sometimes life brings me into a season where love requires more presence than productivity. And in these moments, pausing doesn't mean I'm falling behind. It means I'm just staying human. Wherever you are right now, the pause is not the end of your momentum. It's actually the place where you gather your wisdom. So I hope that this episode helped you in some way or made you feel a little bit better about the times in your life when you have needed to slow down. And if there's anybody that you think could benefit from listening to this episode, please hit the subscribe button, download, and share it with them. I would love it if you left me a comment on Apple Podcast as well. That would be really supportive of the podcast. Until then, I will see you next week. And thank you for counting me in. Thank you so much for joining me today. If you like this episode, please let me know. Stop by at social media on Instagram or my Facebook page, just count me in, and please leave a comment. If there's anybody that you think could benefit from this episode, please forward it to them. And I look forward to seeing you next time. We're all in this together.