De-load/Emapthy

         I recently took a de-load week, something I should be doing more often than what I currently do.  A de-load week is a week of recovery from training.  It is a chance to not only give your muscles a break, but your nervous system a break too.  Intense training does put a strain or a load on your nervous system from the demand you place on it.  Although it is good to place these stressors on our body to grow, improve, and adapt, we also need time to process that information and allow our bodies and mind a chance to rest and recuperate.  It's been a few months since my last de-load, where a person should be taking one once every 6 weeks, at the amount of training volume I do personally.

        A person can still do some lighter training during this time, just not put the same amount of stress they normally would.  During this week I allowed myself to rest and to be, something that is usually very difficult for me.  Weird that we need to give ourselves permission to rest, but we are in a society that glorifies the hustle, and sees downtime as laziness.  It was a needed time to reconnect with myself and gave me opportunities to explore other facets of my personality that I normally put on the back burner.  One such thing is getting back into reading and listening to audio books.  One book in particular I started to read was "I don't want to be an empath anymore".

        Empathy can be a wonderful thing, it is great to teach about empathy and to have more empathetic people among us, but being born an empath versus someone who learns empathy as a skill is very different.  Growing up, I've always been a sensitive individual, picking up on others emotions and adopting them as my own.  This can be really confusing, especially in school when you are constantly being bombarded by everyone's emotions, including trying to figure out your own.  It's taken a lot of years, grounding work, and practice, but I can better discern between what I'm feeling and what belongs to someone else.  I still can get exhausted from it mind you, so trips to the mall, or anywhere where there is a large volume of people tend to drain me really quickly, and usually make me very hungry.  On the other side of things, being a naturally sensitive and empathetic person has really helped me in my career choice.  It helps me really connect with my patients and understand better where they're coming from and what it is they may be feeling.  I do have to be careful mind you, because I can find myself exhausted if someone comes in with some really heavy emotions surrounding their problem.

        Is being an EMPATH a bad thing?  Not by any means, but one does have to navigate things differently, and be more discerning about who's energy they choose to be around.  It also helps to know grounding techniques, and to have people or pets that can help ground you too.

Numbers:

Km's Walked/Ran- 3,043

AOK's- 1,260

PU/SU- 49,290

Lung- 650

Stick- 654

Sparring- 790 minutes