Meat Suit, Meet the Mind: Part 3 - Learning to Pause
You finally sit down at the end of the day. Nothing urgently requires your attention. There are things you could be doing, of course. There are always things you could be doing.
But you’ve decided to stop for a while.
Your mind, however, is reviewing a conversation from earlier, remembering an unanswered email, and bringing up something embarrassing you said in 1998. Your body is on the couch. The rest of you is apparently still at work.
In the earlier installments of this series, I talked about the conversation between the mind and the body, including our tendency to overlook what the body is saying until it becomes quite insistent. Recognizing those signals is useful. It also leaves us with a perfectly reasonable question: What am I supposed to do now?
As a mental health and yoga therapist, I like having something practical to offer here. Although I’m well aware that being given another thing to do when you’re already overwhelmed can be received with limited enthusiasm.
So, these are small things. You can try them in your regular clothes. You’ll need a sturdy chair and, for the resting options, a few pillows or blankets. The yoga pants can stay in the drawer.
Before you respond, STOP
Sometimes we need an actual pause before we can decide what would help. The STOP skill, borrowed from Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), gives us a simple way to create one.
S – Stop: Pause what you’re doing. If you’re writing an angry response, take your fingers off the keyboard. The message can remain unsent for a moment.
T – Take a step back: Give yourself a little space. You might put down the phone, lean back in your chair, or briefly leave the room if that feels right.
O – Observe: Notice what’s happening. What are you feeling? What thoughts are running through your head? What is your body doing? What are you tempted to do next?
P – Proceed mindfully: Consider what would help you handle the situation. You may still need to have the conversation or set the boundary. You just get a moment to choose how.
You don’t have to become magically calm before using this skill. You can be thoroughly annoyed and still decide to wait before pressing Send. That counts. Once you’ve paused, you can consider what your body actually needs.
Giving the body something to work with
Polyvagal theory, developed by Stephen Porges, offers one way to think about why we can know perfectly well that we’re safe and still feel completely on edge. It draws attention to how our bodies instinctively respond to a perceived threat, as well as to experiences of safety and connection.
Think of a time when hearing a familiar voice instantly helped you settle, or when you finally got comfortable on the couch and realized just how much microscopic effort you’d been using to hold yourself up. From a polyvagal perspective, experiences like these are offering cues of safety. We can explore that idea through gentle movement, physical support, and where we choose to direct our attention.
Of course, lying down doesn’t automatically feel restful to everyone. Some people settle much more easily when they’re moving. Others prefer to keep their eyes wide open or have someone nearby. You get to notice what actually works for you.
A little gentle yoga
When people hear the word “yoga,” they sometimes picture someone folded into a pretzel position that raises serious questions about the permanent location of their internal organs. There are much simpler options.
Yoga philosophy gives us a beautiful principle to bring into this practice: ahimsa, a Sanskrit word meaning non-harm or non-violence. That includes how we treat ourselves. We can be surprisingly willing to override our own discomfort because we think we should stretch farther, hold longer, or manage whatever the person next to us is doing. Pushing ourselves into pain can become a form of violence toward our own bodies. Ahimsa asks us to pay attention and respond with care.
For these movements, stay within a completely comfortable range. If something hurts, ease back, change the movement, or stop. If you feel dizzy or unsettled, pause. Let your breathing happen naturally, and give yourself full permission to do less.
Seated cat–cow
Sit in a sturdy chair with your feet supported on the floor and your hands resting on your thighs. Slowly lift your breastbone a little, allowing your shoulders to move back. Keep your neck comfortable; you don’t need to tip your head toward the ceiling, but if that feels good, please go ahead.
Then gently round your back, letting your shoulders come forward and your gaze drift down toward your lap. Move between those two positions four or five times. The movement can be tiny. Notice how it feels to move after holding yourself in one rigid position for a while.
An easy side stretch
Still seated, rest one hand on the chair for stability. Lift the other arm as far as it comfortably goes and lean slightly to the opposite side. If raising your arm bothers your shoulder at all, leave your hand on your hip or rest it across your chest.
Return to the center and try the other side. Repeat a couple of times, moving slowly enough to notice when you’ve gone far enough. [This is called finding your edge.] Afterward, sit quietly for a moment. You can also stop right here. You haven’t enrolled in anything.
Let something hold you up
Restorative yoga uses support so your muscles can do less work while you rest. At home, pillows and folded blankets can serve perfectly well. Arrange them for your specific body, rather than trying to make your body fit an idealized picture of a pose.
If you can comfortably get down to and up from the floor, try astronaut pose. Lie on your back with your calves resting on the seat of a stable chair or sofa, your knees comfortably bent. Add a thin pillow or folded blanket under your head if that feels better. Adjust the support until you can rest without holding yourself in position, and begin with just a minute or two. Despite the cosmic name, you’ll remain safely on the floor. There’s enough going on already.
Another option is to lie on your side with a pillow under your head and one between your knees. You might like a pillow to hug, too. Adjust until you feel completely supported. You can also stay seated, with your back resting against the chair and your feet fully supported.
Once you’re comfortable, you can try the following relaxation scan.
A gentle body and relaxation scan
You might find it easier to follow this scan if you record it on your phone first. Open your voice recorder and read slowly, leaving several seconds between areas so you have time to notice, imagine the breath reaching that place, and silently offer the word relax. Then get comfortable and play it back. You can follow your own voice without having to keep checking the page.
If listening to your recorded voice makes you briefly reconsider the entire undertaking, you are definitely not alone. Most of us have strong opinions about how we sound. If recording yourself is a hard pass, you can have an assistant like Alexa or Siri read the text out loud for you [^1], ask a friend with a calming voice to record it, or simply read through the list once or twice and let your mind drift through the areas from memory.
Begin by noticing where your body meets the chair, bed, or floor. Feel the support underneath you. Adjust anything that needs adjusting. Your eyes can close, remain open, or rest softly on something nearby. You can move whenever you need to. If attending to a particular part of your body feels uncomfortable, skip that area entirely or look around the room for a while.1
Notice your breathing exactly as it is. There’s no need to take a massive breath or get a particular rhythm going. As we move through the body, you can imagine breathing into each area. The air is still going into your lungs, of course; we’re just using the image to bring gentle attention to a place that may be working harder than you realized.
Start up top with your forehead. Are you lifting your eyebrows or drawing them together right now? Just notice. Imagine your breath reaching across the skin there. As you breathe out, silently think the word: relax.
Shift down to the small muscles around your eyes. Let them go soft. No need to squeeze them shut. Just see if you can find a little bit of slack around the temples and right behind the eyes. Silently say: relax.
Now the jaw and cheeks. Is your tongue pressed hard against the roof of your mouth? Are your teeth clamped together? If it feels okay, let a tiny bit of space open up between your teeth and let your tongue just drop. Imagine breathing right into the whole mouth. Relax.
Move into your neck and shoulders next. Don’t try to force them into a perfect posture yet—just notice where they are sitting. Maybe make a microscopic adjustment, letting the shoulders settle down a fraction. Breathe right into the tight spots and quietly offer: relax.
Let that awareness travel down your arms. Through the elbows, past the forearms, right into your hands. Notice your palms and the shape of your fingers. Let them rest wherever they landed. Relax.
Bring your focus to your chest and your ribs. You’ll feel a little movement there as you breathe. If it feels tight or bound up, see if there is just a tiny bit of room to soften around the edges of that tension. If not? Leave it alone. That is fine too. Relax.
Notice your belly. Let it move naturally with the breath. If you are holding your stomach in tightly, try letting go of that effort just a little bit. Silently say: relax.
Move around to your back. Feel the specific spots touching the chair, bed, or floor. Imagine the breath spreading out across your upper back, then down through the middle and lower back. Let the furniture underneath you actually do the heavy lifting for a second. Relax.
Keep moving down through your hips and pelvis, right into your thighs. Are you bracing or gripping there? Imagine the leg muscles getting a little bit heavier as they rest. Relax.
Finally, the knees, calves, and ankles. Let your legs settle completely into whatever support you have set up. Then notice your heels, the soles of your feet, and your toes. Relax.
Take a second to notice the whole body at once. Some spots might feel a little softer now. Others might feel exactly as stiff as they did when you started. You don’t have to fix them. The word relax is just an invitation; bodies take time. When you are ready, bring your attention back to the room. Let your eyes open. Wiggle your fingers and toes a bit, and take your time moving.
When getting started is the hard part
Anxiety makes it incredibly difficult to settle down. Depression makes it tough to get moving in the first place. When they overlap, it creates a strange kind of internal gridlock where you feel wired but completely stuck.
If you’re feeling heavy, withdrawn, or frozen, don’t worry about the long relaxation scan. Start with one of the seated movements instead. Then pick just one tiny, manageable thing to do next: grab a quick bite, step outside onto the porch for a second, or text someone you actually like hearing from.
Stretches and mindfulness are great tools, but deep, persistent depression needs proper, dedicated support and care. Having a hard time functioning is a completely valid reason to reach out to a professional—even if you’ve been doing your daily movements. For now, keep it small. Try a quick seated stretch between your appointments. Throw a few pillows together when you have a free minute. Try the scan and see how it feels. The rest of that endless to-do list isn’t going anywhere. It will absolutely be waiting for you tomorrow.
For the Curious
The brain–body conversation
The autonomic nervous system regulates things we don’t think about, like heart rate, digestion, and breathing. Its sympathetic and parasympathetic branches help us tackle challenges and recover afterward. But they work in highly complex, coordinated ways—the old “accelerator and brake” analogy only gets us so far.
The vagus nerve is a major player in that parasympathetic system. It runs signals back and forth between the brain and several internal organs. Interestingly, the vast majority of that information actually travels up from the body toward the brain. The body has a massive say in the conversation. Healthy regulation is all about flexibility: being able to turn “on” when something needs attention, and dialing back down when the moment passes. Trying to stay completely calm all the time isn’t just unrealistic; it’s an impractical goal.
A closer look at polyvagal theory
Porges’s polyvagal theory breaks down our nervous system into a hierarchy of responses based on safety, danger, and life-threatening threat. In this model, the ventral vagal system handles social connection, sympathetic activity handles mobilization (fight-or-flight), and the dorsal vagal system triggers immobilization when a threat feels entirely overwhelming.
The theory uses the term neuroception to explain how the nervous system scans for safety or danger completely behind the scenes, without conscious thought. It explains why we react or freeze before our conscious mind even registers what bothered us. A lot of clinicians love this framework because it helps people understand their automatic survival responses without a bunch of self-blame.
That said, the exact anatomical and evolutionary details are still highly debated by scientists. The model is a brilliant way to interpret our lived experience, but we can’t map a person’s exact vagal firing rate just based on how they feel. Depression, for instance, is a lot more complicated than simply being stuck in a “dorsal vagal state.”
What the practices may offer
Gentle yoga pairs movement with attention to give us a different experience of our physical selves. Restorative yoga uses props so muscles don’t have to work to hold a shape. A body scan simply invites us to notice tension and experiment with dropping some of it.
Research shows yoga can absolutely help manage anxiety symptoms, though studies use vastly different styles and groups. The data for treating diagnosed anxiety disorders is a bit more mixed. Testing an entire yoga program also doesn’t mean a single, specific pose has a magic biological effect.
Mindfulness works well for some people, but everyone responds differently. Looking inward can actually make some people feel more anxious or uncomfortable. Keeping your eyes open, moving around, skipping an area, or stopping entirely are all perfectly valid choices. You will see people online claiming these exercises will “reset” or “stimulate” the vagus nerve, but the marketing is way out ahead of the actual science. We can explore whether a practice makes us feel more present and comfortable without pretending we know the exact nerve pathway we’re isolating.
Ahimsa applies to the science, too. We can approach our own bodies with curiosity and a little grace—even when they don’t respond exactly the way we wanted them to.
A quick note on letting Alexa or Siri read this right off your screen: You don’t need to print this post out on paper. As long as you have this page open on your device’s screen, your virtual assistant can scan the digital text and read it aloud like an audiobook.
If you are on an iPhone or iPad: Go to Settings > Accessibility > Spoken Content and turn on “Speak Screen”. Once it’s active, simply swipe down with two fingers from the very top of your screen while looking at this page, and Siri will instantly start reading.
If you use Alexa: Open this blog post link inside the Alexa app on your phone or tablet and simply say, “Alexa, read this web page.”
