Energising without Depleting

Some key points this Therapeutic Movement practice offers in terms of sustainable practice and intelligent relationship with our own energy:

In this session, we’re exploring how to energise without depleting - how to invite energy into the body without pulling too heavily on our reserves.

Have a chair nearby if you’re working with fatigue, recovering from chronic fatigue, or long COVID. You can sit at any point, feeling the weight of the body held and supported beneath you.

Notice that ss I move and speak, I pad gently through my feet. It helps me feel where I am, where I’m standing, and how I’m meeting the ground - you can feel this out intuitively from your own sensory experience and responses.

Energising Without Stress

Often when we think of building energy, we associate it with getting things moving, doing, and pushing forward, that “stoking the fire” kind of energy. But this can easily become tied into the stress response, a tendency toward sympathetic dominance, where we mobilise through effort. It might feel energising in the moment, but it often leads to depletion later, a crash after the rush. 

So as we begin to move through tissues and free areas that may have been locked or held, notice that this process itself can sometimes feel fatiguing. That’s okay. It’s part of the recalibration - an invitation to notice and adjust, not to force.

Ways to notice where we hold tension that depletes energy

Gently bring movement into the jaw and root of the tongue to allow self-soothing through the nervous system. A soft, responsive body allows energy to move freely and more easily than when we brace, grip, or hold ourselves in fixed positions. Holding ourselves in protective or habitual tension uses up a lot of energy.

Come back to awareness of soft eyes and jaw as I invite throughout the practice. Bringing your hands to the diaphragm or solar plexus, around the ribs beneath the breastbone also helps tune into breath down into the belly and diaphragm, allowing tension to drop away from shoulders, neck and jaw. Allow the lower jaw to slacken slightly, helping you access the breath more deeply.

The breath and the diaphragm

Let the breath arrive naturally, no effort, no expectation. Simply notice how it moves, how it meets this moment. The diaphragm reflects our state of vitality; it moves in rhythm with our energy and emotional landscape. A small smile, even inwardly, can recognise the kindness always available to us in this noticing. Movement at the diaphragm also represents movement throughout the whole body, the ebb and flow of life as we breathe ourselves into being.

Gentle Movement and Flow

As the diaphragm loosens, when standing, you may feel a soft bounce through the knees, a lightness through the body. In this practice you are invited to let this happen naturally. Moving the fingers, rolling the shoulders, and mobility through the shoulders frees movement channels and awareness between the breath and diaphragm. This helps release what we hold in the shoulders and jaw - two key places tension likes to live.

If at any time, lifting the arms high feels too activating for the heart, keep them lower, finding your own range of ease and therefore building energy at a pace it doesn't deplete. Not crashing into your own boundaries in this way allows you the find the most sustainable way of breathing and oxygenation; inhaling through the side ribs rather than lifting the shoulders, noticing the volume of the lungs expanding sideways and downwards. Each movement is a signal to the nervous system that we can mobilise without entering a stress response, that we can energise without depletion.

Listening to the Body

Let the decision of the nature of any movement, any pose to take come from the body, not the mind. You may feel the strength of holding yourself up, or the release of resting down - neither is better, they feed into each other. What matters is meeting what’s true for you in this moment. It often takes time to tune in beneath the noise - to sense what we actually need, not just what we think we should do. The quality of the transitions between poses reveals as much as the poses themselves.

Rest and integration

Respect the time and space of the rest time after activity - where you feel and acknowledge the ground holding you and letting gravity take your weight. Notice the aliveness of breath, the subtle pulse of life within. Even at rest, countless biochemical processes sustain us - respiration, circulation, renewal. Acknowledge this quiet vitality, the orchestration of being alive. In this way, we recognise that energy comes from recovery not pushing or forcing. 

As you finish, rest in this space of self-compassion and quiet acknowledgment. We often need to go beneath the surface - beneath the noise and pace of the world - to meet our true needs.
By tending to our energy with kindness, we reconnect to our inner source.

If you'd like to study more on therapeutic practices I invite you to look at my Therapeutic Somatics for Yoga Teachers certification. My Whole Health platform also offers an entire archive of pre-recorded Therapeutic Movement practices to follow.