how to de-stress instantly? immerse yourself in the here and now.
I was recently having dinner with new friends in the French Alps, and they were discussing how difficult it is to break away from our daily lives when traveling. The main dilemma was: “how long do you need to really unplug? A week? 10 days? 3 weeks? A month +?”
Even if you ‘leave on vacation’ - how many days does it actually take you to relax? And by the time you manage, isn’t it almost always the same story… you relax just as your vacation is about to end?
To give context: this group of people were all quite cerebral, high performers, with very active social, work and family lives.
More context: this was on Tuesday - our day of arrival in the Alps, where we would spend the next 4 days testing out a new aLIVE experience. We had literally arrived at the lodge an hour before.
As a “travel expert”, they were asking for my opinion - they wanted me to answer this question.
I answered: “How much time you need to unplug? It can be immediate. Give it a day, tops.”
They didn’t believe me.
I told them: “It depends on what you’re doing. The key is: immersive experiences.”
They said that’s impossible, that you’d still be glued to your phone the next day, that you wouldn’t be able to let go… and suggested I prepare some kind of survey before client trips so I may eventually develop a program or method that would help the ‘transition into vacation mode’ process.
I told them: “I don’t think that would be necessary because the solution is a lot simpler: once again, immersive experiences - being engaged in the present moment.”
Sure enough, our next day started with a Via Ferrata climb - something frankly none of us had done before. And this was followed by a 3h mountain bike adventure back to the lodge. Safe to say, by the end of the day we were exhausted… and, you guessed it… completely relaxed. The monkey brain had shut off. I asked everyone that evening if they’d thought about their phones today? Work? Home?
“Ioana, are you kidding? The only thing I was thinking about was surviving that climb, making sure I don’t slip!”. Done. Point proven.
The Via Ferrata Climb I mentioned above - here with my father, definitely in the present moment.
In the here & now there is no thinking - only living
The explanation is very simple: when we are immersed in the present moment, we are living in the here and now. We are not thinking. At all. We are living. Moment by moment. We are aLIVE with what IS, and receptive to our present concrete reality.
Immersive experiences do that because they inundate our senses - they TAKE OVER. We literally don’t have a choice. We are part of the experience and no matter how great of a multi-tasking / multi-thinking expert we believe ourselves to be - when we’re in the present moment, there is no multi-tasking. There is simply the NOW. And that’s when parts of the brain literally shut off. There is so much research into this - and the whole field of spirituality talks about it. Have you heard of Flow? Zen? Well this is it. This is really it.
And the beautiful thing is you can achieve it instantly. You have the power to snap out of the mundane with all of its problems, worries and anxieties, in a fraction of a second. If you make the right choice of activity.
Here's to sitting on snow in August, looking at the Mont Blanc peak. Honestly, no caption needed. My hoodie says it all.
Immersive Experiences engage all your senses & keep you in the present moment
Challenging the age-old vacation dilemma: just getting back from vacation and feeling in need of a vacation. Yes - totally possible. If you haven’t engaged your mind and body in something new. If you’re going on vacation to “do nothing” - your mind is anyways coming with you (as are all your worries, stress and intrusive thoughts), so it’ll actually be difficult to relax - no matter how long you’re gone for.
So why do immersive experiences have such a different effect?
What happens is that your level of relaxation is in direct correlation to how present you are in the moment. So the more immersed you are, the more relaxed you are. Which means, even a short 3-4 day IMMERSIVE break, can feel a lot more restful for your mind and body than a whole month of sitting on the beach doing nothing. Why? Because your mind is empty. Or better said, your mundane thoughts are replaced by new ones. You have new ‘problems’ now, like my friend in the Alps - thoughts about how to tighten your grip or how not to slip off the rock; these are NEW and unfamiliar. They take you out of your comfort zone - which of course alerts your entire being so requires your full undivided attention…. and BINGO! You’ve managed to escape your mental routine. Your neurons are literally firing and wiring differently! Which then makes space for creativity and NEW ideas thereby making you more resourceful and ultimately productive when you get back home.
Bonus: you’ll actually FEEL like it’s been a month since you left. You’ll FEEL like you’ve really disconnected for a while. So, it’s always a WIN.
It’s magic. And it’s a CHOICE. It’s a choice you can make anytime. Immersive doesn’t refer exclusively to adventures, nor does it imply “dangerous” - immersive means activities that ENGAGE YOUR ATTENTION. It can be a multi-sensorial culinary experience; it can be a physically exhausting activity; it can be learning an entirely new skill; it can be anything that requires you to be part of the experience and not a spectator. Anything that requires you to LIVE it.
And it’s not just through travel - but travel has an added benefit since you’re already changing scenery, already literally getting out of your comfort zone by default - add to that engaging, immersive experiences, and you’ve just embarked upon on a REAL vacation. In the present moment, spending time feeling aLIVE.
Life at new heights.