Healing Space | Why and how to mindfully regress

Disengage from the rut and allow your mind and path to wander. (Illustration by Suneesh K.)

Note to readers:Healing Space is a weekly series that helps you dive into your mental health and take charge of your wellbeing through practical DIY self-care methods.

How many times do you jog past a playground and think you should go in and have a go on the swing? If you swim, have you stopped in the middle of your laps to float on your back and gaze at the clouds? Or just dive to touch the floor of the pool? On the beach, have you covered your legs in sand and waited for the waves to come and free you?

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We may frequent beaches and parks and pools, but we have largely forgotten how to use them in ways that free our repressed impulses. We use what are essentially instruments of joy and freedom, whether it is exercise, yoga, running, meditation, or sport, leisure, even travel and food, often in punishing ways. We set goals of optimum weights, body fat percentage, or certification and monetize skills and learnings. We want to know ‘what will I gain from this?’, before we venture out to do it. A walk in the park must contribute a specific number of steps to our daily total, and a swim must burn calories, and a meditation course or workshop must make us teachers. Therapy must make us more efficient, or functionally equipped to handle a stated life problem. It must be closing, ending, sorting, or solving something concrete.

While it’s good to have goals, having them in specific set ways deprives us of the joy of living and we forget in this quest for meaning that life isn’t a solution to a problem. It is a living in itself. Sometimes a walk is aimless. Sometimes you don’t know why that friend and you drifted away, and it doesn’t actually have a deep-rooted lesson about who you are. Sometimes, you are not being punished or rewarded, you just got unlucky or lucky. Sometimes vacations aren’t about seeing every tourist spot and clocking it with a selfie, but a wandering through the streets and finding an unexpected dive bar or a local restaurant. In the set schedule, logged by dedicated apps and smart watches and fitness trackers that will record your pulse and heart rate and steps, every movement is imputed with purpose.

However, it is in play, exploration, and experimentation that we stumble into the things that can then acquire meaning and purpose. The apple falling on Newton’s head needed him to spend some time underneath the tree. Research shows us that leisure is essential to bridge neuropsychological deficits, for example, after a traumatic brain injury. This is because the pre-frontal cortex which is located in the front lobe of the brain and which controls our concentration and makes connections for us, thus helping us to problem-solve or make decisions, choices, needs some free time to go rummage in the information from the past and find what is useful or that matches. You know that you know the answer, but it just won’t come to mind right away? You’re too focused on finding it. Stepping away helps free up the space to discover and make meaningful connections. This does not mean that every time you step away from your desk or work you may discover gravity, but that your brain has the time to play with unconventional combinations of informational.

Regression in itself is a term that refers to resorting to childhood or childlike habits in order to avoid confronting reality, an example might be sulking in an argument instead of adopting more mature forms of communication and conflict resolution. However, when one mindfully employs regression in specific situations, such as in the stepping-away process, one is able to loosen up, let go and experience through these childhood habits and processes, sport or play, a freewheeling re-association of concepts and images in our minds.

Often, we are too embarrassed to play, or run as we choose. We have become prisoners of our own images. When we are able to step outside that framework and re-engage, we free ourselves a little bit, and break the pattern. This allows the mind fresh air and new perspective. It’s what we claim we take vacations for. You don’t have to wait that long, to see your life or a problem in a new way; all you need to do is disengage from the rut and allow your mind and path to wander.

- Colour outside the lines. Use crayons, paints, sketch free hand, doodle, finger paint.

- Use your hands and get into the dirt. Whether gardening or clay modelling.

- Run, not to break records or meet steps, but to feel the ground beneath your feet. It releases endorphins and serotonin, boosts mood, and clears the mind.

- Wander, loiter, explore. Take a new path and see with new eyes.

- Re-learn what you feel you already know. Taking the same class with different teachers exposes you to new ways of thinking and doing. Be open to new learning.