Inna Shukshina

I have always been very interested in the subject of how what goes on inside us, in our soul and our head, affects the physical state of the body and what is around us. And today I want to talk about one of the connections of that kind that I have noticed — one of the causes of headaches, tiredness and poor sleep.

Everything in life is arranged in a balanced way: we take the rubbish out regularly, we go to the toilet, we throw out food that has gone off. We cannot simply eat anything at all or drag everything into the house — we choose our food carefully and do not eat anything that tastes bad, is not fresh or is bitter, because we know we might get a stomach ache and that dirt in the house breeds cockroaches. But when it comes to our head and what we put into it, things are different.

Without noticing it, we fill our head with anything and everything and forget to unload the rubbish from it. Alarming news, work problems, lists of unfinished tasks, plans and dreams, fears and goals — all of it gets mixed up and lies there in a heap. In the end our head starts to resemble a wardrobe stuffed with things that has not been sorted out for a long time: clean and dirty, new and outdated. And all these scraps of information turn into thoughts and constantly run in the background.

You have probably noticed that if you open too many programs and do not clean up your computer for a long time, it starts to hang (especially if you remember the older models). The same thing happens to us. We forget to “close” the unnecessary windows and keep many programs running in the background, and then we are surprised that our head is heavy, that we forget everything, get nothing done and cannot fall asleep for the pile of thoughts.

By the way, the state of our home is a very good diagnostic of what is going on in our head. From my own experience I know for certain that if little piles of things start appearing everywhere, clutter on the table and in the cupboard, it means it is urgently time to put my head in order and deal with whatever needs attention. If your goal is to defeat the mess at home, it helps a great deal to tidy up with the thought that right now I am putting my head in order, clearing out what is unnecessary, making my world inside and outside cleaner and more beautiful.

– Do you have no time to work on yourself? If you wash the dishes every day, make that your time for clearing your thoughts: imagine that, just as the plates and spoons are becoming cleaner now, your mind is being cleared of what is unnecessary and unpleasant.

I recently had an episode where I went about for several days with a heavy head, and it even ached, although I am not prone to headaches. I sat down and thought about what the cause might be. It turned out that the whole thing was that we had moved to a new house and a lot of renovation work needed doing and things needed buying. And I was keeping all those tasks in my head and thinking about them often. When I simply took a few sheets of paper and wrote out everything that came to mind as a list, with prices and deadlines, I felt relief and the headache went away! Rather different from what we are used to — something hurts, just take a pill, isn’t it? It is far more interesting to think and get to the bottom of it: what if there is a cause!

– So: keep your to-do lists, plans and goals on paper, not in your head!

Poor sleep also comes from simply having no time for yourself during the day, no time to think or to make sense of yourself, or from not managing it. And the body then has to take “its due” in this way, trying again and again to return to balance.

And if you have questions about what to do with your tiredness, your emotional burnout at work or your despondency, write to me at inly@list.ru or on Skype at desnly!

Inna Shukshina