Shake it, shake it, shake it, oh-oh

A handy trick when you're feeling stressed

A view from a non-rainy dog walk.

My book, The 1% Wellness Experiment, is available to pre-order now.

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You never quite know when inspiration is going to strike. Today it was on our morning dog walk in the rain.

Our pup, Bailey, had just encountered a bigger dog who was pulling on the lead and snapping at him. Bailey, understandably, didn’t like this very much and once we were a few metres away he stopped and shook his entire body from head to tail. It was in that moment that inspiration struck me.

Because I’ve seen my dog do this a lot. I used to think there was no particular reason for it apart from to perhaps shake out a wet coat. However, I learned that it’s a stress response – after a dog has had an experience they found stressful they move through it by shaking their whole bodies, as if to disperse and dispel the cortisol and adrenaline. Once he’s finished shaking he happily trots off, the moment has passed, he’s moved on.

When you watch wildlife documentaries you see the same thing. A gazelle runs from a chasing lion and once it’s escaped far enough away it stops, shakes its whole body out, and then continues walking on. That’s how animals instinctively know to deal with something that has provoked a stress response.

What they don’t do is keep thinking about it, replaying it in their heads, wondering if they could or should have said or done something different, wondering what the other animal thinks about them or what they’re telling the rest of their pack or herd about them, wondering what this says about who they are, their qualities and abilities, they don’t continue going over the experience as if it’s still happening.

They shake it out and move on.

We would do well to follow suit.

Emily and Amelia Nagoski write about this in their book, Burnout: The secret to solving the stress cycle, as they describe the importance of moving through your stress rather than getting stuck in it. We may not find ourselves chased by lions (although we might meet a snappy dog) but we encounter stressors all the time, from a driver cutting us up on the road to a snarky boss to arguing children to a social media post to a story in the news… the list goes on.

If we stay in the stressful response this stressor provokes, experiencing a racing heart, tense muscles, short and shallow breathing, raised blood pressure, we’re going to continue to feel stressed long after we’ve parked the car, we’ve left work, the kids have gone quiet, we’ve put down our phone, switched off the news or whatever it was has passed.

And one way to do this is to make like a dog (or gazelle) and shake it out. Literally, shake your body out.

In fact, if you’re feeling a bit tense, a bit stressed right now do this right now.

Stand up, and shake your hands like you’re flicking water off your fingers. Expand that to your arms so you’re shaking them too. Stand on one leg and kick out the other one, swapping from one leg to another. Jump up and down on the spot, lift and drop your shoulders, hop from side to side, swivel your hips around, shake your head – whatever feels like moving your whole body. You don’t have to do it for long, you don’t have to be super vigorous, just shake out your limbs and shake off the stress. Channel your inner Taylor Swift if it helps.

Now, how do you feel?

Doing this little trick doesn’t change the annoyances of life, it doesn’t change what other people do or say. What it does do is allow you to move through the stress and come out the other side rather than stay stuck in it, trapped in the annoyance, upset, frustration, anxiety, fear.

Try it for yourself the next time you realise you’re still feeling stressed after the initial stressor has gone. I’d love to hear how you get on.

Write…

Have you heard of a commonplace book? My understanding is that it’s a notebook (usually physical rather than digital) where you make a note of quotes, sayings, lyrics, anecdotes, passages of text – observations you want to keep.

I’ve sort of been doing this by taking screenshots or photos and making notes on my phone but it’s all felt rather scattered and disjointed. Knowing that I have something I wanted to remember somewhere on my phone but not knowing where can be quite frustrating. The idea of putting them all in one place and, importantly, that place being a notebook where I can flick through the pages, really appeals to me.

But I wasn’t sure how practical it would be so I asked about commonplace books on Substack Notes and received lovely comments including this from

Kaitlyn Rightmyer

“…it’s like a haven for my heart”, and from

S.E. Reid

“…seeing your random thoughts juxtaposed against each other invites all kinds of unexpected connections”.

So I’m giving it a go! This notebook was a present a while ago and I’d been keeping it for something in particular (I just didn’t know what). It can easily fit in a bag plus it has a spine big enough to slot a pen in so it seems like a good choice for my first commonplace book. Sometimes I write directly into it and other times I transcribe what I’ve snapped on my phone. I’m curious to see if this is something I stick with or if it falls by the wayside!

Do you keep a commonplace book, or something similar?

PS The next Gentle Pause for paying subscribers will be on Thursday 28 September, 7.30-8pm. I’d love you to join us.

PPS Book links in my posts are affiliate links to my Bookshop.org online store.

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