by Amy Johnson, MSW
Diligent Joy Training, Coaching, Education
I talked to a parent recently who told me it was a challenge for her and her husband to allow their teenager/young adult to lie around for a few days between the end of school and the beginning of his summer job. While we both agreed that relaxing should include the cleaning of any dishes dirtied and clothes worn, our comfort levels around the allowing of “doing nothing” were different.
I have become a big fan of letting normally active children and teens “do nothing” every now and then. Many children and teens today have packed schedules, some causing so much stress that youth lose sleep or get ill.
I’m not saying we should let our youth sit around all summer and play video games, watch TV and surf the net. However, if they are normally active and have activities or a job pending this summer, go ahead and allow some down time. You still need parameters around safety—what is and isn’t allowed, what supervision is required (varies with age), when check-ins are required. You can till have rules that need to be followed—leave the house in as good or better shape than it was when you awakened, etc. But resist the urge to micro manage their time.
In yoga, we spend the last few minutes in chavasana, or corpse pose. We lay quietly on our backs in total relaxation. There is a purpose to every pose in yoga, and the purpose of chavasana is to take time to integrate the work one has done for one’s body during the previous 65-70 minutes of class.
I like to think of down time in the summer, on vacations, on the weekends, as a kind of chavasana—a time to integrate that which we’ve done the previous year, the previous week, etc Rather than a luxury or an indulgence, it’s a necessary part of the process of living and growing. And, like all things, it, too, must come to an end so we can move on to the next thing.
Allow your children, teens, and yourself some mental, physical and emotional chavasana this summer. Relax, renew, and ready yourself for what lies ahead.
