Patrick Mosher describes how deliberately breaking your daily rhythm can ease emotional exhaustion. He took a ballet class as a stressed engineering student and found immediate relief in the sensory shift. He also spends three weeks yearly on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota living in a tent and doing ceremony, which resets him from corporate pressure.
Chapters
When I was a chemical engineer in my bachelor's degree, I wasn't a great student. So I would get Cs and Ds on quizzes and tests, and physics was tough, and calculus, advanced calculus was tough, and my chemical engineering classes were tough, and they were all like, ugh. And so I'd get beat on by those things, emotionally exhausted. And somebody suggested— well, there's a whole story of how I got into this, but I took a ballet class. And I remember going into ballet class and, you know, I don't know if you've ever tried to golf and had a golf pro tell you how to do a swing. So you get up there and you're trying to do the golf swing and, you know, head down, head back, do this, hips out, do this, then, you know, and then you're so caught up with what's going on with your body. The same thing was true for me to do a plié. So I'd go up there, I'd— for one thing, going from a chem E class and getting a D on a quiz I'd go into the dressing room and I would shed my clothes and then I would put on my dance clothes, usually tights or sweatpants or something. So I was kind of shedding what was there before, putting on a new set of armor, a new set of clothes, and I could feel it that way. And I'd go out there and it'd be a whole different environment. There'd be a wood floor, a big mirror, and then the big bar there. And I'd go in and as soon as I put my hand on that bar, it was like this calming shock went through my body. And it'd be, "There I am." And then it'd be like, "Okay, and plié, and plié." So each one of those pliés, and all of a sudden that was a break of my rhythm. Going from camis to plié was a break of rhythm. In my world. So what are some of your rhythm breaks that you have? A bigger one that I used to have is early in my career, I started going out to Pine Ridge Reservation to do ceremony. And for every year, I went out there for 3 weeks. Now, if you work in corporate, you should know that taking 3 weeks off, especially as an executive, as I started going up the ranks, is impossible. But it wasn't for me because this was so important to me, I was willing to give up anything to do this 3 weeks of ceremony. But think about, you know, I'm out there, I'm traveling all over the world, going into these executive meetings. There's all the stress and pressure and all these difficulties and everything like that. And then I'd have this 3 weeks in South Dakota where it was primitive camping. And all of a sudden I'm packing up my car, I'm driving out there I set up my tent that I'm going to live in for the next 3 weeks. And then every day it's like get up in the morning when the sun wakes you up. And today we're just going to— "Hey, Patrick. Can you help us move this pile of rocks from over here to over there?" I'm like, "Yes, I can." You know? And that was the hard work for the day. But what a break that was for me. So, what kind of breaking of rhythm do you have? Vacations are are break— you're vacating from your place. So what are your, your brain breaks when you break rhythm? What are some of those for you? It could be a daily thing, it could be a moment thing, or it could be an annual thing that you do.
