Feeling tired in winter is a perfectly natural phenomenon: the first part of our series on winter fatigue, devoted to relaxation — sunbathing, napping, and doing nothing at all, three simple allies for nurturing your well-being and taking it easy when the cold sets in.
There's no better time to improve your lifestyle habits, put new, healthier routines in place, reorganize your days, and take up activities that let you recharge.
Relaxation
You can't talk about relaxation without talking about idleness, napping, or sunshine. There's even a word for it, heliotherapy, based on the idea that using sunlight wisely improves both mental and physical health.
Soak Up the Sun, Often
The sun has many positive effects on us when we know how to engage with it properly. It stimulates vitamin D synthesis, which helps the body absorb calcium. It also helps effectively fight stress, minor low moods, or seasonal depression.
It strengthens our immune system, gives us a healthier glow, helps us sleep better, and, as a result, leaves us feeling less tired and in a better mood.
Even so, be careful not to expose yourself carelessly, and avoid turning this ally into a formidable enemy. Prolonged exposure causes sunburn, faintness, dehydration, sunstroke, heatstroke, loss of consciousness, and so on. Over the long term, it can lead to skin problems, from premature wrinkles to, more seriously, melanoma.
To make the most of the sun's positive effects, ease into exposure gradually (avoiding the 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. window) and protect yourself properly from UVA and UVB rays: high-SPF sunscreen, a T-shirt, sunglasses, and a hat. Don't forget to drink water regularly, never stay in the sun if you're about to fall asleep, and see a dermatologist once a year to check your moles.
Take a Nap
Ah, that little moment of recovery that lets you recharge your batteries during the day! You could almost call napping a sacred practice. And yet, more and more of us try to skip this small ritual, seeing it as nothing but a waste of time.
Yet napping has many benefits for our physical and mental health: it provides an extra boost of energy, improves concentration and memory, lifts our mood, reduces stress, and eases fatigue.
In Asian countries, napping has now become a daily ritual: dedicated spaces have been set up inside companies so employees can take advantage of it, making them more efficient and productive. In some Mediterranean countries, when temperatures rise, office hours are also adjusted to make room for a nap, with work resuming during the cooler hours.
Its devotees generally take their nap in the early afternoon: shutting out noise and the outside world, dimming the light (blinds or curtains closed), and lying down — on a bed or in a recliner — phone on silent and an alarm set.
Doing Nothing
The term farniente evokes a touch of the dolce vita: it comes from the Italian and poetically sums up the art of doing nothing, namely "fare niente." In our increasingly competitive societies, we tend to criticize people for their inactivity, which is admittedly sometimes taken to an unhealthy extreme. Yet it's worth knowing how to stop for half an hour or an hour: this pause lets the body rest (muscles, bones, heart rate) and the mind gradually shed the stress, mental fatigue, and resulting tension.
Written by: B. Zine El Zine
