Observations on a week of heatwave

Too hot, Too Cold
When I got home last night, I was absolutely spent.

Sitting down to draft my Friday newsletter, I thought to myself... 'Sack it, I'm way too hot to write this email.' Only that's not what I was thinking at all. What I was really thinking was, 'I'm too cold to write this email.'

Not joking. Yesterday I spent ten hours shivering in an air-conditioned, temperature-controlled office, feeling frankly unwell, unhappy and chilled to the bone. When I left work and felt the oven-like blast of evening air on my face as I cycled home through the city, I breathed a hot sigh of relief.

Which do you prefer? The heat or the cold?

More interestingly:

How have you adapted this week?

Homeostasis

37 degrees.

The temperature, give or take, our bodies maintain in the exquisite balance of homeostasis.

Most of the time, we barely notice it, let alone appreciate it.

Until conditions become extreme enough that we are forced to notice. Maybe even forced to... adapt.

This week's heatwave has got me thinking about adaptation:

a) How much we adapt the environment to suit our lives.

b) How much we adapt ourselves to the environment.

Humans appear to be remarkably good at the first. We manipulate temperature, light, noise, day and night to suit our plans. So we can continue to do whatever we had planned to do.

The second kind is what happens when reality doesn't quite cooperate.

When nature, life - or the weather - doesn't care a jot about our plans.

Invitations to Adapt

Here's one form of adaptation I enjoyed this week (and if I do say so myself, an excellent use of yoga belts!)

Attempting to meet a deadline in a greenhouse of a flat, strapping ice packs to my torso was surprisingly effective for productivity.

Yoga Belts are the Bomb! 😁

The Air-Con at work was meant to be an upgrade, offering a quicker route to comfort. But, for me, a day in Air-Con was easily the worst part of my week.

The rest of the time, with neither ice-packs nor Aircon, I accepted the heat - leaning into it almost.

I enjoyed the slower pace and feeling of acclimatisation to something different. I sat in shade, felt the sweat drip down my face, moved languidly, lay quietly, spoke less, switched off devices, and even had a siesta or two. It felt great.

Overall, this week was a perfect 'excuse' to do less.

Or, perhaps, more generously, an invitation to adapt.

After a week of heat (or in my case, freezing cold!) and exhaustion, a reminder that I have an additional offering this week:

👉 SUNDAY Restorative Online 7.30 - 9.00 PM is back this weekend.

An extension of what I've been doing all week - adapting to the extremes - by balancing out with less.

Because it's not just extreme heat that exerts pressure on our lives.

The body is constantly adjusting to find equilibrium.

What a gift to know that we can sometimes choose - rather than be forced - to do the same.

Let's practice.