Today I Choose to be Relaxed – When Relaxation Looks Like Chaos

It’s 3:47 PM on a Tuesday, and there’s flour everywhere. I mean everywhere. On the counter, on my shirt, in my hair, probably in places flour has no business being. The kitchen looks like a bakery exploded. There are dishes in the sink from breakfast. The mail is scattered across the table, unopened. My phone keeps buzzing with notifications I’m ignoring.

And I realize: I’m completely relaxed.

Not the Instagram version of relaxed with yoga poses and green smoothies. Not the self-help book version with scheduled “me time” and aromatherapy candles that smell like “serenity” (which apparently smells like vanilla and lies). Just… relaxed. In the mess. In the flour. In the beautiful disaster that is my Tuesday afternoon.

The Great Relaxation Myth We’ve All Bought

For years, I thought relaxed meant still. Quiet. Controlled. Probably because that’s what it looked like in every meditation app, spa brochure, and wellness influencer’s feed. Beautiful women in white linen, sitting serenely with cups of tea, gazing thoughtfully into the distance while their perfectly clean kitchens gleam in soft morning light.

Meanwhile, my mornings look like a hostage negotiation with my bladder, a peace treaty with my creaking joints, and a desperate search for coffee before I commit murder.

But here’s what I’ve learned at 61: relaxation isn’t a pose. It’s a release. It’s the moment your shoulders drop and you didn’t even realize they were up by your ears. Again. It’s when you stop holding your breath without knowing you were holding it. It’s finding yourself humming “Total Eclipse of the Heart” while kneading bread dough and not caring that you sound like a dying cat.

The Anatomy of My Tension (A Medical Marvel)

I carry tension in very specific places. My jaw – permanently clenched like I’m auditioning for a role as a nutcracker. My shoulders – so high they’re practically earrings. My stomach – held tight since 1987, as if relaxing it would cause my entire life to unravel like a cheap sweater.

Last week, my massage therapist said, “You’re holding your breath even when you’re lying down.” She wasn’t wrong. I hold my breath when I’m concentrating. When I’m worried. When I’m trying to remember if I turned off the stove. When I’m pretending to listen to someone explain cryptocurrency. Again.

The thing about chronic tension is that it becomes your normal. Like living next to train tracks – eventually, you don’t hear the trains anymore. You don’t realize you’re tense until something or someone points it out. Like when my husband touches my shoulder and says, “Breathe,” and suddenly I realize I haven’t taken a full breath since Tuesday. Last Tuesday.

The 2020 Relaxation Experiment (Spoiler: We All Failed)

Remember lockdown? When everyone thought we’d finally slow down? “This is our chance to reset,” we said, while panic-buying toilet paper and teaching ourselves to make sourdough bread that nobody actually wanted to eat.

I scheduled my relaxation like a military operation:
7:00 AM – Meditation (fell asleep)
8:00 AM – Journaling (wrote “I don’t know what to write” seventeen times)
9:00 AM – Yoga (pulled something in my back)
10:00 AM – Mindful coffee drinking (scrolled phone while coffee got cold)
11:00 AM – Give up and eat cookies

By noon, I was exhausted from trying to relax. It was like CrossFit for my nervous system – intense, painful, and everyone on Facebook was doing it better than me.

One morning, I just… didn’t. Didn’t meditate. Didn’t journal. Didn’t yoga. I sat on my deck with coffee and watched a squirrel try to raid my bird feeder for an hour. He never succeeded, but he never gave up. I related deeply to that squirrel.

That’s when I learned the difference between performing relaxation and actually being relaxed. One requires equipment, apps, and the right pants. The other requires nothing except permission to stop trying so damn hard.

The Kitchen Therapy Discovery

Back to the flour explosion. I’m making bread. Not because I need bread – I have bread. Store-bought bread that’s perfectly fine and doesn’t require four hours of my life. I’m making bread because my hands need something to do while my brain sorts through the tangled mess of thoughts that have been building up like hair in a drain.

There’s something about kneading dough that bypasses all my mental defenses. My hands know what to do – push, fold, turn, repeat. While they work, my mind can wander. Or worry. Or work through that conversation with my son that went sideways. Or figure out why I’m still mad about something that happened in 1993.

The kitchen becomes my therapy office. The dough, my therapist. It doesn’t judge. It doesn’t offer advice. It just accepts whatever I bring – anger, sadness, that weird anxiety that shows up at 3 AM for no reason. Knead it all in. Push, fold, turn, repeat.

Why Motion Can Be Relaxation (Despite What They Tell You)

Every relaxation guide starts the same way: “Find a quiet space. Sit comfortably. Be still.”

But what if stillness makes you more anxious? What if quiet amplifies the noise in your head? What if comfortable doesn’t exist in your body anymore?

I’m most relaxed when I’m moving. Not exercising – God, no. Moving with purpose but without urgency. Folding laundry. Washing dishes by hand. Pulling weeds. Walking the dog who stops to sniff every blade of grass like he’s conducting a scientific study.

Motion gives my anxiety somewhere to go. It’s like opening a valve and letting the pressure out slowly instead of waiting for the explosion. My therapist calls it “productive self-soothing.” I call it “doing stuff so my brain doesn’t eat itself.”

The Permission Slips I Write Myself

Every morning, I give myself permission slips. Not literally – I’m not that organized. But mentally, I tell myself:

• Permission to leave dishes in the sink
• Permission to ignore texts until I’m ready
• Permission to eat lunch at 10:30 if I’m hungry
• Permission to say “no” without explaining why
• Permission to be relaxed in my own weird way
• → Today I Choose to be Calm

That last one’s the hardest. We’re so trained to think relaxation looks a certain way that we feel guilty when ours doesn’t match the manual. Like we’re failing at something that’s supposed to be natural.

But maybe natural is making bread while your kitchen explodes. Maybe it’s talking to yourself while pulling weeds. Maybe it’s sitting in your car in the garage for five minutes before going into the house because you need that transition time.

The Wednesday Morning Ritual That Saved My Sanity

Every Wednesday morning, I have a standing appointment. Not with a therapist or a trainer or any other -ist or -er. With myself. At this little café downtown that makes lavender lattes that taste like soap but I drink them anyway because the ritual matters more than the taste.

For one hour, I do absolutely nothing productive. I don’t bring a book. I don’t check my phone. I don’t make lists. I just sit by the window and watch people rush by, all of them looking as tense as I used to feel.

The barista knows my order now. She doesn’t ask what I’m working on anymore. She understands that I’m there to not work. To just be. To practice the radical act of taking up space without earning it.

Sometimes I think about things. Sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I make up stories about the people walking by. Sometimes I just watch the steam rise from my soapy latte and feel grateful that I’m not rushing anywhere.

The Tools That Actually Work (Not Sold in Stores)

The Five-Minute Floor Lie
When everything’s too much, I lie on the floor. Not the bed, not the couch – the floor. Something about the hardness helps my body remember how to release. Five minutes. That’s it. The dog usually joins me. He gets it.

The Strategic Mess Allowance
I’m allowed one room of chaos. Currently, it’s my craft room, which looks like Hobby Lobby threw up. But knowing I have one space where I don’t have to be perfect makes all the other spaces feel less pressured.

The Background Noise Menu
Silence makes me anxious. I need sound. But not music – that requires emotional involvement. I listen to coffee shop noise, rain, or British people discussing murder. Don’t judge.

The Fuck-It List
Like a to-do list, but opposite. Things I’m actively choosing NOT to do. Today’s includes: matching socks, answering that email from 2019, and pretending to understand NFTs.

What I Know Now That I Wish I’d Known Then

Relaxation isn’t something you achieve. It’s something you allow. You can’t force it, schedule it, or perfect it. You can only create conditions where it might show up – like leaving the door open for a cat that may or may not come in.

Sometimes relaxation looks like lying in a hammock. Sometimes it looks like making bread while your kitchen explodes. Sometimes it looks like crying in your car after a hard day, then feeling your shoulders finally drop.

The goal isn’t to be relaxed all the time. That’s not human. That’s probably a medical condition. The goal is to notice when you’re tense and have some ways to soften. To recognize that relaxation doesn’t require perfect conditions – it just requires permission.

Permission to be imperfect. Permission to let things go. Permission to choose ease over effort, just for today. Permission to make bread in a messy kitchen on a Tuesday afternoon and call it meditation.

Your Turn (No Pressure)

What does relaxation actually look like in your life? Not the magazine version – the real, messy, Tuesday afternoon version? What helps your shoulders drop? What makes you forget to check your phone?

Maybe it’s not what you think it should be. Maybe it’s something weird or wrong or completely unInstagrammable. Maybe that’s exactly right.

Today I choose to be relaxed. In my messy kitchen, with flour in my hair and dishes in the sink. With my shoulders creeping up again and my jaw starting to clench. But noticing. Softening. Breathing.

And making really good bread.

That’s enough. More than enough.

That’s everything.