“Relax into fatigue, work WITH your body, rather than fighting with it to complete the task when you are tired”
Dear Integral Meditators,
This week’s article looks at how to work with fatigue & stress, rather than against it. If you want to get more done with less effort, this practice can be quite transformative!
Heads up for the Saturday, March 28th 9:00am – 12:30pm – Inner smile & energy balls meditation workshop – Build health, confidence & energetic resilience in life, which is very much focused on re-calibrating our energy-fatigue dynamic…
In the spirit of acceptance,
Toby
Tired of being tired – Relaxing into, not fighting with your fatigue
Tired of being tired
When we are tired, often without realizing it we can find ourself fighting with the fatigue. The sensation of fatigue, particularly when we are stressed is uncomfortable, dulling, even actively painful. Consequently, we unconsciously react to the pain by:
- Repressing it
- Pushing it out of our awareness
- Taking our mind away or ‘out’ of our body to avoid the discomfort
- Seeking distractions, something to take our attention away from being tired
As a short-term coping mechanism, this can work for a while, but as a method it is very inefficient because:
- We must expend effort avoiding the fatigue, and we are tired already
- It sets up an antagonistic relationship between ‘me’ and the fatigue. I am fighting it rather than working with it
- We start to dis-connect from our body, and the mainly legitimate signals that it is giving us about our energy level and what we are experiencing
If we persist with this approach, then the medium to long term effect is that I become ‘tired of being tired.’ What this means is not only am I literally tired for the first reasons that my body is signalling to me, but I am also tired of having to always fight, avoid and repress my feelings of being tired!
Accepting fatigue
The first step towards a more ergonomic and compassionate way to deal with our fatigue is to get in touch with and accept our fatigue. If we are a fatigue repressor, then this can feel pretty counter-intuitive at first, but it releases the potential for a whole new dynamic. As you are reading, get in touch with your body, and the feelings of fatigue or stress in it.
- Notice your resistance to it initially, or your antagonism
- Try and relax yourself and your body a little. In particular, soften the area of your body that contains the pain of the fatigue
- Breathe in and out of the area, breathing in extend a bit of warmth and compassion to this body part, as you breathe out, encourage it to release the fatigue so that fresh energy can come into the body-tissues
If you build competency at doing this, then temporarily the pain will lessen, and you will feel a bit more energy. If you need to keep on working or doing whatever you are doing, then you do it in a more relaxed way, working WITH your body, rather than fighting with it to complete the task. Working with the body and its fatigue means:
- You are no longer losing energy resisting and fighting your fatigue
- You and your body-mind become a much more singular energy that can move forward with purpose
- Your body responds to your encouragement and acceptance with energy, so it helps you because you help it(!)
When you need to rest, rest!
- When we fight with our fatigue, this can de-sensitize ourself to it so that sometimes/often we fail to respond in the most obvious way, which is to build in time for more rest. Instead, we just keep pushing on, we procrastinate, we ignore the signals until we are in a state of different degrees of burn out or over-fatigue. This then takes much longer to recover from that plain old tiredness.
Practice points
- Notice your resistance to fatigue
- Practice relaxing into and working with your body and feelings of fatigue
- Notice the greater enjoyment and efficiency of working with, not fighting your tiredness
- Be decisive around rest
Related reading: Mindfulness, productivity, self-regulation & the 85% rule
Stress resilience through Cauldron breathing – Keeping your belly energy soft
© Toby Ouvry 2026, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com
Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram
Integral Meditation Asia
Online Courses * 1:1 Coaching * Books * Live Workshops * Corporate Mindfulness Training *Life-Coaching * Meditation Technology
Dear Integral Meditators,
