Why You Can’t Relax — And What Your Nervous System Actually Needs
- Kym Burls
- Jan 4
- 6 min read
Updated: Jan 31
As part of the initial assessment when new clients first see me, I ask about their lifestyle: sleep, diet, movement, work… and relaxation.
Almost every new client gives one of two responses.
Either: I don’t relax, I can’t relax, I don’t like to relax.
Or: I do [insert activity] to relax.
These answers point to something deeper than preference or personality. It suggests that, as humans living in the modern world, many of us have lost touch with two important things: how important genuine relaxation actually is, and what it really means.
So if your answer to the question “what do you do to relax?” sounds familiar, read on.
I often include a TL;DR in my blogs, but if someone doesn’t have five minutes to read an article on relaxation, there’s a good chance this is exactly the article they need to make time for.
What Is Relaxation?
Most people think relaxation is something you do.
An activity you add to an already full life in the hope that it counterbalances everything else. While certain activities can support relaxation, they are not the same thing as relaxation itself.
From a nervous system perspective, relaxation is a physiological state. It occurs when the brain no longer predicts threat and the body no longer needs to prioritise protection. In this state, systems responsible for digestion, repair, immune function, learning, and emotional processing are better resourced.
A common misunderstanding is that difficulty relaxing automatically means the nervous system is dysregulated. In practice, this is often not the case.
Many people are not dysregulated — they are simply overstimulated.
Overstimulation occurs when there is sustained input without sufficient opportunity for downregulation. The nervous system remains active not because it is malfunctioning, but because the environment — internal or external — has not signalled that it is safe to stand down. In these cases, reducing input and load is often more effective. Often it’s more effective than adding another technique.
This is why someone can be “doing relaxing things” and still feel wired or restless, while another person can feel genuinely relaxed during ordinary activities. The body may appear still, but the nervous system can remain vigilant and organised around protection.
Relaxation, then, is not about forcing calm. It is about creating the conditions in which the nervous system can naturally shift out of high alert.
At its core, relaxation reflects:
a reduction in perceived threat
adequate capacity to process sensory and emotional input
a felt sense of safety in the present moment
Relaxation isn’t stillness. It’s safety, capacity, and regulation aligning.
Why Is Relaxation Important?
The nervous system is designed for flexibility, not permanence.
Activation is intended to be temporary. When demands remain high — through workload, cognitive demand, emotional strain, or constant sensory input — the system adapts by staying “on.”
Over time, this has consequences.
When the nervous system spends prolonged periods outside its window of tolerance, the ability to regulate stress, emotion, and attention begins to degrade. This can show up as classic dysregulation, but just as often it presents as persistent tension, fatigue, irritability, or difficulty switching off.
Importantly, none of this requires trauma or pathology. It is a predictable outcome of insufficient recovery.
A lack of regular relaxation affects:
sleep quality and sleep depth
emotional regulation and impulse control
pain sensitivity and inflammation
stress resilience and energy availability
Relaxation is not a luxury function; it is a foundational regulatory process that allows the nervous system to reset its baseline and maintain flexibility over time.
How to Relax
Three Elements That Support the Brain to Settle
Rather than thinking about relaxation as a technique, it is more helpful to understand it as a process that the brain must feel safe enough to allow.
From the perspective of the predictive brain model, the nervous system is constantly asking one core question: Is it safe to reduce output right now? If the answer is no, relaxation will remain inaccessible, regardless of how still or quiet you try to be.
The following three elements support that shift.
1. Create Awareness
Relaxation begins with awareness, because the nervous system cannot regulate what the brain does not register.
This involves both interoception (awareness of internal sensations) and exteroception (awareness of the external environment). Together, they help the brain update its predictions about safety and threat.
When awareness is limited, the system often defaults to habitual activation. As a result, awareness itself can feel dysregulating. When awareness increases, choice becomes possible.
Practically, this means noticing:
breathing patterns, muscle tone, and internal sensations
signs of effort, bracing, or holding
environmental cues such as sound, light, temperature, and space
Awareness is not about monitoring or analysing. It is about allowing accurate information to reach the brain so it can make better regulatory decisions.
Awareness creates the conditions for regulation, but does not guarantee it.
2. Reduce Load and Identify State
Not every activated nervous system needs regulating. Sometimes it simply needs less.
Reducing load is often the most overlooked aspect of relaxation. Before attempting to change state, it is worth asking whether the system is receiving more input than it can reasonably process.
Mistaking overstimulation for dysregulation often leads people to apply the wrong tools.
Load commonly includes:
cognitive demand (problem-solving, planning, decision fatigue)
sensory input (screens, noise, visual clutter, constant information)
emotional or social effort without recovery
time pressure or lack of transition between tasks
Once load is reduced, state identification becomes clearer.
Without getting lost in theory, most people can recognise three broad patterns:
Mobilised / activated: alert, driven, restless, wired-but-tired, difficulty switching off
Collapsed / withdrawn: low energy, heavy, flat, unmotivated, foggy
Settled / regulated: present, responsive, emotionally available, able to rest and re-engage
The goal is not to label or judge these states, but to recognise them accurately. A mobilised system does not need the same input as a collapsed one, and neither necessarily indicates dysfunction.
Often, the nervous system is responding appropriately to sustained demand — it just hasn’t been given the conditions required to settle.
3. Regulate State Through Safety
Relaxation is ultimately governed by the brain’s predictions.
From the perspective of the predictive brain model, the nervous system is continuously forecasting what is likely to happen next and allocating resources accordingly. Relaxation becomes possible only when the brain predicts that demand is low enough, and safety is high enough, to reduce vigilance.
This is why willpower alone rarely works. If the brain continues to predict threat, pressure, or the need for readiness, relaxation will be blocked — even in quiet environments.
Biologically relaxation requires safety.
Internal vs External Safety
Ideally, relaxation is supported by internal safety — a felt sense that the body can downshift without consequence. However, for many people, internal safety is not immediately accessible, particularly under stress, fatigue, or overload.
In these cases, external safety cues become essential as the nervous system relies heavily on sensory input to update its predictions.
Internal Safety Techniques
Slow, gentle breathing with longer exhales
Release tension through subtle body scanning
Ground attention in present-moment sensations
External Safety Cues
Reduce lights, noise, and clutter
Follow predictable rhythms or clear guidance
Use physical support, gentle contact or grounding
These cues tell the brain: nothing needs to be done right now.
Why Breath and Somatic Practices Help
Breathwork and somatic practices are effective not because they “activate relaxation,” but because they provide clear, interpretable safety signals to the nervous system.
Breathing patterns directly influence autonomic tone, carbon dioxide tolerance, and sensory feedback to the brainstem. When breathing becomes slower, softer, and less effortful — particularly with longer exhalations — the brain receives evidence that metabolic demand is decreasing.
Similarly, somatic practices work through sensation rather than cognition, shifting the nervous system via felt experience rather than explanation.
Simple examples include:
slowing the breath while reducing volume rather than taking deep inhalations
lengthening the exhale to signal reduced urgency
allowing the body to be supported by the floor, chair, or wall
gentle movements that emphasise ease and completion rather than stretch or effort
These practices are not about forcing calm. They are about giving the nervous system enough consistent data to update its predictions and allow relaxation to emerge naturally.
Summary
Relaxation is not something you achieve by trying harder.
It is neither a personality trait nor a reward for productivity. It is a state that emerges when the nervous system has sufficient capacity, reduced load, and enough cues of safety to stand down.
In a culture that normalises constant stimulation, many people are attempting to regulate systems that are simply exhausted from never being allowed to settle.
So the question isn’t just ‘How do I relax?’
It might be:
What would need to change in my environment, my pace, or my expectations for relaxation to make it possible in the first place?
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