Post-festival Nervous System Regulation
Hello friends and citizens, strap in for a super long post!
I was writing this out to remind myself of my own integration toolkit but thought I should share it, as some newbies may be struggling after their first festival (and some veterans may need reminding like I did!)…
✨
So. We are all aware of how hard work festivals are to our mind and body and that they take some recovery time (sleep, food, rest, shower etc) … however, we often forget to tend to our nervous system, as all that crazy hectic Boomtown stimulation can put us outside our window of tolerance – either into fight-or-flight, making us feel anxious, irritable, tense… or into shutdown, making us feel empty, lethargic, disconnected, depressed. First, I must state - THIS IS NOT A BAD THING. There’s a lot on the internet about an activated nervous system being the enemy. This is not the case - this is your nervous system working as it should 🙌 However the longer we stay in one of these states, the harder it is to come back to baseline (and the back-and-forth journey between activation and baseline IS the important bit). And if you’re not aware this is your nervous system doing its job, it can feel scary or stressful to not know why you don’t feel better, even after you’ve caught up on all your sleep, eaten your bodyweight in food and rested your weary feet.
Usually, sleep is the best thing for nervous system recovery, because REM sleep is superrrr important for processing external input (and there is SO much of it at Boomtown!). – especially emotional memories. So if you’re having crazy dreams, yay! Your brain is processing! However, if you’re feeling like you’re not dreaming/ like you’re just passing out/ like you’re sleeping loads but waking like you haven’t slept at all….. you might not be getting enough REM sleep (if you have a smart watch with a sleep stage tracker you can have a look).
Unfortunately, we can’t MAKE ourselves get REM sleep but we can do other things whilst awake to help our nervous systems process, organise and take on board all that we experienced and here are some of my favourite examples:
✨
- Journalling.
My fave, I call it ‘manual processing’ and you can do it various ways. But most important is we’re going old school. Pen and paper. Crayon and notebook. Felt tip and the back of a newspaper. Whatever it is, just make it physical. No typing! Writing by hand engages wayyy more cognitive functions than typing. And then, just write down everything you experienced at Boomtown. This can be a factual story like “We arrived on wed, we camped here then we did this then we went here and then we did that” kinda thing … or you can word vomit your thoughts, emotions and feelings with no timeline. If this feels daunting, set a timer for 5 minutes and just try to write without stopping. Start with something simple like “my name is” and then try not to pause until the timer goes off. If you still feel you have more to say (or more energy in your writing hand) then just keep going until you’re all worded out 😊
- Verbal processing.
Basically the same as writing it down but some people vibe better with speaking out loud. Open a voice recorder on your phone, or send yourself a voice note on whatsapp. Tell the story of your Boomtown. Again, can be a factual story or a stream of consciousness, it really doesn’t matter. This one’s also fun because you can listen back if you want and there might be things you spoke of you’d forgotten about OR you can delete the whole thing straight away and feel like somethings been lifted.
- Doodling.
Very similar to both above, but sometimes you can’t even organise your thoughts/feelings into words and that’s where doodling comes in clutch because it taps into the pre-verbal parts of our brain. (Often I start journalling but it just dissolves into doodles 😂) It can be overwhelming to start as we all have a critical artist in our brain expecting us to ‘draw pretty’ so its sometimes easier to start literally scrawling. Like zigzag scrawling across the page. Make it ugly, make it messy. Or choose a motif, like a flower or a square or a cross and just do it over and over and over again. You might eventually feel your arm/hand wanting to do different motions or speeds… that’s where the magic is, just let it 🧡
- Shaking
Feels stupid the first time you do it, feels great by the end. Ever seen a dog get spooked and then it shakes itself off and is fine? Yeah, we're doing that. Pick a track or two you love (something pretty chill please we're bringing you back to baseline remember) and then stand up with your feet firmly planted on the floor... And then just shake. Bounce. Wiggle. Bend your knees. Wave your arms around. Can be big or small, just keep your feet grounded and let the wiggle take you. Try and keep shaking for the whole of your chosen song(s), even when you feel stupid. (Especially when you feel stupid ✌️)
- Bi-lateral stimulation
REM sleep stands for Rapid Eye Movement…. This is meant to be one of the reasons its so good at processing is that this eye movement tracks across both halves of the brain. So harnessing this cross brain/cross body movement can be beneficial even when awake! You can do this via Butterfly Tapping (cross your arms across your chest in a stereotypical vampire-in-coffin pose and then gently tapping your flat palms rhythmically one then the other) or by listening to Bi-lateral beats through heaphones (search youtube or spotify) letting your eyes track the movement of the music. Also, power walking/jogging/running is good because it makes your limbs move opposite to its pair. Also, if you struggle to fall asleep, looking as far as you can underneath your eyelids from side to side and top to bottom until you need to do a big yawn is a really quick reset.
- Somatics
Sounds fancy, is simply ‘body first’. Anything that gets you aware of your bodily sensations. This could be a body scan meditation, a slow movement practise such as yoga/tai chi/qigong or simply putting on music and having a dance – however the practise is in trying to drop into sensations of physical feeling rather than thinking. So noticing the SENSATION of feeling tired etc rather than just naming it “tired”. How does it feel? Is it heavy, dense? Does it feel buzzy or prickly? You can create sensation sessions too… grab something spiky (BUT NOT SHARP) like a comb and something soft like a plushie. Slowly touch one then the other, or drag them on your skin, switching between the two, focusing on the sensation. How would you feel it if you didn’t have words to describe it? Then once you feel like you're more IN your body, take some time just to BE there.
✨
If all of this seems too much, then simply take some time for some deep breaths. Even if its 3mins before bed, focusing on long slow belly breaths (top tip: breathe in horizontal to the back of the face rather than UP into the nose – helps take a deeper breathe)
And as always, prioritising rest, good food and lots of water. I wish you all a wonderful post-Boomtown rejuvenation 🧡
✨✨
TLDR: Nervous system regulation is important after a festival as bonkers as Boomtown. Write down or speak out loud your experience to help process and integrate it. Have a shake, draw some doodles, take some deep breaths, drink some water and know you’re doing okay 🧡