“I should feel rested…”: when your body stays on alert after a holiday. How Kinesiology can help.

“I should feel rested…”

You’ve only been back from holiday for a few days and yet, instead of feeling rested and recharged, you already feel tired.

Getting back into your routine feels harder than expected. You may find it difficult to concentrate, feel more irritable than usual, tense, overwhelmed or even anxious.

And one thought keeps coming back:

“I don’t understand. I’ve just had a holiday. I should feel rested.”

It’s something I hear quite often in my practice.

But perhaps the question isn’t only how much time you spent resting.

Perhaps it’s also whether your body ever really managed to come out of alert mode.

Because taking time off work doesn’t necessarily mean that our nervous system has switched off too.

Resting physically doesn’t always mean switching off

We can be on holiday and still be thinking.

About what needs to be done when we get home.

About work.

The children.

The house.

Appointments that need organising.

September and the new school year.

Or simply that endless mental list that seems to follow us everywhere.

Everything may look peaceful from the outside.

You might even be lying on a beach.

But inside, your mind is still going:

“Did I remember to do that?”

“I’ll need to sort this out when I get back.”

“I mustn’t forget to call…”

“How am I going to manage everything when I return?”

Your body may be on holiday. Your vigilance isn’t necessarily taking the same break.

Stress and the nervous system: what is actually happening?

Our autonomic nervous system manages many functions in our body without us having to consciously think about them.

To keep things simple, two parts of this system play an important role in how we respond to stress.

The sympathetic nervous system helps us mobilise.

You can think of it a little like an accelerator.

When something requires our attention, it helps prepare us to act. We become more alert, reactive and ready to respond.

And this is not a bad thing.

We need this system to work, exercise, make decisions, deal with challenges and react when something requires our attention.

The parasympathetic nervous system, on the other hand, is involved in processes associated with rest, recovery and digestion.

Very simply, we could think of it as the brake.

But the goal is certainly not to spend our lives with the brake on.

A well-regulated nervous system is able to move between activation and recovery according to what we need.

I can mobilise when a situation requires it.

And when the situation is over, my body can gradually settle again.

What happens when the body stays “ready”?

This is where things become interesting.

After a prolonged period of stress, some people find it surprisingly difficult to truly let go.

There may be nothing urgent happening.

And yet, something inside continues to watch.

To anticipate.

To prepare.

To control.

This isn’t necessarily a conscious decision.

And it’s one of the reasons why telling someone who is stressed to “just relax” rarely helps.

If relaxation were simply a decision, most stressed people would probably have made that decision already.

Sometimes, the body has simply become very accustomed to staying alert.

Could the need for control be keeping you on alert?

Control is something I come across regularly in my work.

Wanting to plan ahead.

Anticipating what might go wrong.

Finding it difficult to delegate.

Feeling responsible for everything.

Needing everything to be organised before finally allowing yourself to relax.

Control can feel reassuring.

If I anticipate everything, perhaps nothing will take me by surprise.

But maintaining that level of vigilance requires a great deal of energy.

And sometimes that moment when we will “finally be able to relax” never really arrives.

There will always be something else to organise, anticipate or take care of.

This is why I find it interesting not only to ask:

“What is stressing you?”

but also:

“What is making it so difficult for you to feel safe enough to let go?”

The answer will, of course, be different for everyone.

Why I work with the body

This is precisely why my approach to kinesiology is psycho-corporal — working with both the body and our emotional experience.

When someone comes to see me because they feel stressed or constantly on alert, I don’t simply ask them to think differently or try harder to relax.

Using muscle testing, I explore with them what may be maintaining that state of tension or vigilance.

Depending on the person, we may find an emotion, a fear, pressure they place on themselves, a need for control, a limiting belief or sometimes an earlier experience that is still resonating with what is happening today.

I then use different techniques according to what is relevant for that person and that session. These may include acupressure, breathing, movement, visualisation, Touch for Health and emotional work.

The aim isn’t to eliminate stress completely.

That would neither be realistic nor desirable. Stress also has an important function.

Instead, I work with the person to help them move away from being constantly stuck in the same state of alert and support a greater capacity to return to calm and balance.

Being calm all the time isn’t the goal

This may be the most important part.

Regulating our nervous system doesn’t mean becoming perfectly calm or reaching a state where nothing ever affects us.

We need to be able to activate.

We need to respond.

We need our sympathetic nervous system just as much as we need our parasympathetic nervous system.

Balance is more about being able to move between action and recovery.

To mobilise when we need to.

And to come back down when we no longer do.

So if you’ve returned from your holiday wondering:

“Why am I already so tired?”

perhaps the question isn’t only:

“Did I get enough rest?”

It may also be worth asking:

“Did I ever really allow myself to let go?”

🌿

I offer kinesiology sessions for adults, teenagers and children in Barcelona, using a psycho-corporal approach to work with stress, emotions and patterns that may keep the body in a state of tension or alert.