The Antidote to Burnout
on cold plunges in december + protecting our tender spaces
Welcome to Slow Folk - a community for gentle hearts and rebellious creatives, thirsty for a slower life in a world obsessed with speed.
Welcome to the Unbusy Revolution.
Yesterday morning I did my first proper cold plunge. Outside. In December. In Canada.
( Ya, I kinda can’t believe it, either, but there it is. )
What the heck do December cold plunges have to do with Slowness? Well, believe you me - I never thought I’d be connecting the two, either (never mind being crazy enough to actually do it), but here we go.
Since my spectacular burnout breakthrough of 2010, I’ve been using Slowness to heal and cultivate a sense of ease in my body and my life as a whole.
Lately though, I’ve noticed a shift. An unfolding. A need for something more. Maybe ‘more’ isn’t the word. Something different? A new set of tools?
The thing is - after more than a decade of intentional, mindful practice, I’ve learned how to Slow Down. To make Slowness a reflex when my world moves too fast, to say no, to identify and focus on the essential.
Slowness has helped me heal from the worst case of burnout of my life.
In 2010 I was in the clutches of a major depression and woke up each day to immobilizing anxiety.
I don’t have that anymore.
But what do we do when ease no longer cuts the mustard? When we want to take our mental health, and our life to the next level?
One of the gifts of Slowness is, that once you get out of fight-or-flight and your body begins to trust you, you realize how much more there is to life than mere survival.
When you don’t need to battle your body and your mind and the craziness of your life at every turn, there’s an expansiveness that opens up. A sense of options, of choices.
You no longer feel penned-in, tied-up and pinned-down by your own nervous system. As a result everything feels . . . impossibly vast. Both the world and your own internal spaces expand, like a clearing suddenly exploding into sunlight in dense woods.
I thought once I reached this glorious, bright expanse that I’d run into that meadow like Maria in the Sound of Music :
Turns out, this next phase of Slowness hasn’t quite gone down that way.
Honestly though, when I think about it, I shouldn’t have been so surprised.
See, everything I’ve learned from my life on the farm and in the garden is that equilibrium is key to, well, everything.
The kind of equilibrium we see in the garden isn’t about some magic sense of perfect balance; it is the coming together of seemingly opposing forces to create a stronger whole.
My students in my deep-organic gardening courses are always shocked that I don’t teach ‘organic’ ways to blow garden ‘pests’ and disease to pieces. I don’t wage war on them because they aren’t my enemies. They are my allies. They are essential to the health of the garden as a whole.
The same holds true for people.
It’s true that ease is essential to live a Slow, wholehearted, present life. So is effort.
And this is how I find myself putting my near-naked body into ice cold water, on purpose, in December.
Slowness and ease have provided me with a solid place to plant my feet. To root myself. To feel grounded and safe and supported. Slowness has also taught me the importance of asking what I call more beautiful questions. The more beautiful question I have been asking myself of late has been -
What do I want to do with this newfound sense of rootedness?
And maybe the answer is nothing. That would be a-ok.
But in noticing, in paying attention, in making space for the answers - I’ve noticed that that hasn’t been the case.
I’m realizing that if I want to be truly anti-fragile, I need - in fact want - to cultivate grit alongside that ease. If I want the full brightness of my being to be lush and self-creating and resilient like my garden, I need my own version of the aphids that attack my plum tree each spring.
And as I write that I wonder if ease can truly be easeful if it exists in an imaginary vacuum that denies the truth of the world, which, let’s face it - is a pretty tough place to be alive right now?
If we deny admittance to the aphids and the late tomato blight, are we really living a wholehearted life?
Maybe, the way to avoid burnout and protect our tender spaces is to cultivate grit in equal measure to ease.
Maybe those ‘opposing forces’ in the garden aren’t actually opposing at all? Maybe they only appear that way on the surface? Maybe the aphids and the kale are working together in an elegantly choreographed dance, one that is also echoed within each one of us?
If that is true, I wonder how we can intentionally nurture grit in the same way we’ve nurtured our sense of Slowness and ease? Can we welcome tenacity and effort into our lives without undoing our work towards Slowness?
I’ve been feeling my way around the edges of this question lately. Slowly (obviously) and tentatively, as in the piece below.
I Don't Want to Be 'Safe'. I Want to Be Whole.
Every morning, with coffee in one hand, I walk through the house and say good morning to my tomato plants by running my fingers through the forest of stems. I bend them. Stress them. Create delicate fractures in their flesh. This stress is what they require to thrive. Without the wind to bend them, my hand must do the work, must intentionally remove them from their safe space into one in which they can grow strong and resilient. Without that stress, they will grow tall - too tall, too fast. It will be an illusion of greatness.
As I’ve practiced this, I’ve noticed that ease and grit are forming a virtuous circle within my Slow Life.
Many of my intentional practices to this end fit together hand in glove. My after-swim sauna has been a perfect example.
When I started this summer, I could barely manage two minutes on the lower bench. I had to draw on all my reserves of grit and tenacity just to breathe without completely freaking out. (I’ve always hated the heat.) Now, just a handful of months later, I look forward to my sauna sessions, can sit on the top bench and relax into a 20 minute session with ease.
Same has been true with learning to swim the front crawl. For the first few weeks it took an incredible amount of effort to simply breathe. I floundered and choked and got water up my nose. The back of my throat burned with salt and chlorine.
I am still nowhere near a strong swimmer. But one morning I noticed with delight and surprise that I could now cross the pool without water up my nose, not even once! Even better, I’ve been getting fleeting glimpses of what it will feel like to surrender to the movement, to completely relax into the stroke.
Ease has arrived.
None of this delicious ease and slowness would have been possible without effort and grit.
And that is why, despite the fact it’s 2 degrees Celsius and they’re calling for snow, I’m psyching myself up to get back in the plunge.
I am probing the edges of my comfort and ease because my tender spaces are worth protecting. It’s counterintuitive, but I’m starting to believe that the only way to truly cultivate and expand our tender spaces of the heart is to open them up to the world, with all its uncertainty, pain, disappointment and fear.
The beautiful thing is - Slowness provides us with the courage and self-awareness to take the risk. It allows us to walk alongside our fear without shame or judgement, to make our mantra Fearfully Forward. To trust that we have the capacity to stretch or dig-in as the moment demands. That we will figure it out, whatever life throws at us.
I don’t ever want to experience burnout again.
And so, instead of viewing burnout as something that we treat after it happens, I’m striving to cut it at the root. I can’t do that with ease alone.
Instead, I’m resolved to fortify my tender spaces by bringing them out into the light of day.
By trusting myself. By choosing to believe that no matter what this wide and often heartbreaking world throws at me, I’ll cultivate the strength to face it.
Whether that’s finding the courage to share my heart truthfully with over 1000 of you reading this each Sunday morning or looking uncertainty about my future in the eye - I know, in my bones, that these choices are essential if I want to live a brave, wholehearted, purpose-driven life, free from the plague of burnout that haunts so many of us.
So here I go. Into the wind and the drizzle of a cold December morning, to expose my tender spaces to the shock of the cold, so that they may remain tender in the face of whatever my life may have in store.
Stacey Langford is a writer, renegade farmer and slow business mentor living and working in Canada’s Fraser Valley. In 2010 Stacey ditched her cubicle in the city to turn her attention homeward, farm and help others craft a simple life, from scratch.
Are you ready to build a life - and a living - you actually love?
I help rebellious solopreneurs and creatives build businesses rooted in Slow Values. If you’re ready to step into your own Slow Life and finally claim your calling, let’s chat!
Oh, so me. SO ME! I retired early at 60 last May from a high stress attorney job, did really well while working on a goal - getting in shape and losing 65 pounds - and collapsed after reaching it. Anxiety, depression, disassociation, ruminating about death, the WORKS. Finally found a doctor who didn't want to pump me with antidepressants. I have bad inflammation, probably had it for years from stress and lack of rest, and COVID exacerbated it. Badly. I'm off caffeine, eating whole foods, taking cold showers and loving my lemon balm and chamomile combo in the morning and afternoon. Supplementing cortisol support. It's been slow. I'm in month 10 and just now starting to mellow out more days than not. My skin no longer appears patchy red. I've also had to come off the computer - when you don't work, you doom scroll. Nobody tells you this stuff! Thanks for the info and keep writing. It helps!
Nothing continues to exist which does not achieve complete balance. You are on the right track to knowing.