When Post Vacation Blues are a Wake Up Call
By Lisa Crofton, RMT
hours, days, weeks and months of brutal work and life routine. For most of us, the minute we fi nish packing the suitcase we begin to fl oat away on the waves of decom- pression, pushing away thoughts of respon- sibility, intense demand on our time and technological connection. Taking our fi rst deep fully cleansing breaths, in what might seem like a small lifetime, we start entertain- ing life as it could be (and as we most likely wish it was); free, fun and joyful.
V
Be a Child Again Vacation takes us back to a time in our
lives when we were our most authentic selves; when we played all day without a care in the world, when no one told us who or what to be, when joy and happiness was simply who we were, what we did and how we rolled. Most of our adult lives we long to return to this genuine place of being and vacation gives us permission to release back into this space and time. Reminiscent of when we climbed trees all day, ran with our neighborhood posse and stayed just on this side of mischievous to feel rebellious with- out guilt, experiencing ‘the call of our soul’ like only children can, we embrace vacation with equal voracity.
As children, we were in complete
charge of creating our day and there was nothing better than rosy cheeks from fresh air, physical exhaustion from hard focused play and using our wildest imaginations. On vacation we acquire those same rosy glows from basking in the sun’s love (and maybe too much ‘it’s fi ve o’clock somewhere mentality’), pushing our bodies to exquisite exhaustion from testing our physical limits overdoing something: shopping, swimming, hiking, and our imaginations run wild in self-rediscovery. Nothing offers greater new life insight or candid perspective than step-
26 Natural Nutmeg - July/August 2016
acations are meant to provide respite for our physical, mental and spiritual bodies after what can be endless
ping out of our ordinary life to experience someone else’s for a while.
Using this time for exploration and re-
juvenation we venture into new landscapes, try new things, reconnect with those we love most in laughter, adventure and memories, and manage to allow time to simply rest and recuperate. Whether we escape to the mountains to soak in their majestic beauty and experience inspiring awe, stick our toes in the sand and our face in a book for hours on end, or we decide to embark on a trek through an amazing rain forest, our personal world is temporarily reframed.
We are free to ‘be’ without expecta- tions…free to roam without deadlines…un- raveling moment by moment until we reach that place of core strengthening internal peace and tranquility. Total expansion of mind, body and spirit; YES! While all this is happening the world back home goes on without our presence…drifting away like it never really existed in the fi rst place.
Re-entry from Vacation Before vacation…that period of time
taken up by structure, demand, living from clock hour to clock hour till we sleep, (if we sleep) only to do it all over again…is fi lled primarily with things we have to do…not necessarily the things we want to do. The exception is if we have been lucky enough in this lifetime to discover ‘the calling of our soul’ and spend our days doing something we love and were meant to do. However, even then, our hearts our heavily involved and we can become very imbalanced by the amount of giving involved. Taking time away is still necessary for regaining perspective and rebalance but for those of us content in life, ‘going back’ tends to be easier because we are returning to a life we’ve consciously chosen and desire so vacation is a bonus! Sometimes, because we enjoy our work and life so much, leaving for vacation can be harder than coming back.
However, for others, most we might
dare say, the reentry process is more dif- fi cult. Feelings can go from one extreme to another very quickly and the relaxation mode of vacation can seem like an illu- sion. It’s normal to stay in a post vacation euphoria for some time after returning to our ‘dull by comparison’ everyday life, however, when stress (anxiety and nausea that isn’t coming from your fear of fl ying) begins to set in before vacation is even over…as we are toasting to our ‘last night on the island’, we are seriously contemplating throwing it all away for a life of selling turtle shells for a living, we might want to notice that we aren’t really into the life we left back at home. That usually happens when vaca- tion is so drastically different from our ‘real lives’ that coming back to our ‘everyday’ is painstaking. The message is loud and clear: we’ve become imbalanced, unhappy and disconnected in our own lives. If we pay close enough attention, post (or even end of) vacation blues can reveal much more about our lives than we think. Very useful informa- tion if we allow it to be.
When vacation is a true escape from
our real lives and we dread going back we need to take a closer look at what’s going on. What aren’t we making time for? What soulful yearnings are we ignoring? Are we attaching our happiness to people, things and conditions? Where are our greatest stressors?
Time to Gain Perspective We can all agree, besides helping us
heal physically and mentally, time away can help us gain tremendous perspective on our lives. Using the following tips we can gain much more than that:
1. It’s helpful if we can remember the insight we gain while away and pack it in our suitcase for the return home. Whether you gained them while bask- ing in the sun or while draining your last
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