Have you ever hit a wall? Like can’t get up you’re so tired from working too hard and/or too much? Or you finally snap because you haven’t had a moment to just be, to breathe, to tap into how you’re feeling? That used to be my mindset mantra, work hard, play harder. Because that’s how you get where you want to be in life, right? Wrong, its at the expense of SO many things. Which only makes you more exhausted (if you’re doing it right…aka doing wrong and overextending yourself).

Despite being a self proclaimed yogi for 15 years, I STILL had this mindset. It has taken me almost two years to retrain my brain to think differently about the way that I work day to day, and it’s STILL a work in progress. Don’t get me wrong, things come up and every so often you have to work extra hard and extra late, that’s life, and that can happen. But I’m talking about inviting in balance to your DAILY life so that last minute rushing hopefully doesn’t happen, because you have found the value in slowing down.

First things first, your health suffers with this overworked, overstressed kind of lifestyle. Take it from me, a metastatic papillary thyroid cancer THRIVER. Being overwork and overstressed can make you sick and even kill you. And that is no exaggeration. Think about it, even the work disease…break that down, DIS-EASE. Disease in your body is your bodies way of saying hey yo, I’m NOT ok! I am a firm believer that stress is the root of all sickness and specifically cancer (read more about that here). Cancer shakes you to your core and makes you realize yes, be strong, but if you let it, it will allow you to re-evaluate how you are living your life. Me personally, I learned the value of REST. Rest is SO important. We need it to survive and to thrive and live our best and most fulfilled lives.

We live in a society, whether we want to admit it or not, that exists in CONSTANT stress…Between the things we see, read, hear, need to process. It’s physically almost impossible to process it all with the way we live our lives, and to exist completely in your fight or flight brain, or sympathetic nervous system. We don’t often take the time to tap into our parasympathetic nervous system, otherwise known as our rest and restore brain. Our parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for giving us that ahhhh feeling after any type of meditative practice. This is also why yoga is SO important for our everyday life. And I’m not necessarily saying a gnarly vinyasa style class everyday. I mean movement of our bodies, and our souls, to get out of our everyday thinking minds.

Learning about the yin and yang of the systems working within our bodies is what lead me to Breathwork. Specifically Two Stage Pranayama. Yes, we do need to experience stress in life, but we also need to experience rest and restore. Breathwork has been LIFE changing for me (learn more about this type of breathwork here). It got me out of that fight or flight brain and allowed me to process things I didn’t even know I needed to process. We hold onto stress in different areas of our bodies and this breath allows you to untangle those knots and release them. Amazing, right?

Coming from the Corporate world myself, I made it my mission to help bring these practices to the workplace and make them more accepted as not something that you may or may not have time for that day, but as practices that you MAKE time for everyday. This is why corporate wellness is SO important for those of us working a 9-5 (learn about corporate yoga and breathwork offerings here). When we are stressed, believe it or not, we are NOT working at our optimum capacity. Inviting yoga and breathwork into your daily life brings about a laundry list of benefits, but I’ll leave you with these: boosting immune system function, reducing stress, increasing energy, improving posture, sharpening concentration, boosting productivity, boosting mood, improving mental clarity, improving overall health and improving sleep quality. Why are we NOT making these a priority in our society?

So what should you take away from this quick read? Work passionately towards your dreams and remember to MAKE time to rest. It’s not that you “have” or “don’t have” the time. You have to teach yourself to MAKE the time, and let other things go that you think are SO important. In reality, the idea of any deadline is all in our heads (read more about that here). When you accomplish one goal you are only going to be looking towards that next goal or deadline, so what’s the rush? Focus on what you have to do, do what you can if you’re interrupted, and let the rest go. Your health will thank you.

Stay strong, positive, happy and healthy!

From my heart to yours,

Maja Re