Definitely having a busy call week over here, but I’ve also been trying to be very . . . gentle with myself, and I have to say overall it has gone well.
I have to say the patients (especially inpatients, who are invariably stressed out and for VERY good reason!) seem to respond well to Incredibly Measured and Calm SHU. So, everyone wins!
(Whether I can maintain these vibes with my children remains to be seen. It is absolutely harder than in the hospital, but I do try!)
Question for those of you who do YouTube yoga: Do you have a go-to favorite session that is a balm for stressful times? If so can you share (preferably like ASAP so I can do it tonight, though I am sure I can scrounge up something on my own). I let my Peloton sub lapse and I am thinking that yoga and a super-busy call week go well together.
Other things that go well with call:
- light comedies
- Starbucks (yesterday was a Cafe Mocha day and today I managed to abstain, but tomorrow I’ll probably be back.)
- NOT driving the kids to camp if possible. I would have been so stressed doing that this morning knowing what I was headed into (it adds a minimum 30 minutes to my drive in)
- having an awesome (hopefully!) vacation to look forward to
- emo-leaning music in lieu of panic-inducing news (today was Mitski)
10 Comments
When life is stressful, I do Yoga With Adriene’s bedtime yoga (she has 7, 10, and 20 min versions). They tend to regulate breathing and be a good stretch without being difficult.
That is such the prettiest color cover!! If the paper is anything like the Campus binder paper I got in my order, it is incredible and like nothing else I’ve tried! My Hobonichi Techo Cousin Avec has arrived and I’ve been having fun filling in a few pages in anticipation of July starting.
I loved Yoga by Adrienne during covid, she has a routine for all sorts of situation, including calmness. I’m sure you’ve come across her before though.
OOh I ordered the Faded Chronicle and am eagerly awaiting its arrival. I ended up making paper copies of the dashboard and taping them into my Cousin to see how it would work for me. I plan to use the vertical weeklies for the day job and the horizontal/dashboard for tracking workouts, etc. Looking forward to your review.
Reading this in the early hours following multiple calls myself (and writing this during 2 more XD) much on-call solidarity.
Those notebooks are gorgeous and 2nd the recommendation Yoga with Adrienne, there’s just something about how she chats during the videos that makes it feel like you’re with a good friend.
My favorite de-stresser is music that I can sing (loudly) to. When I’m sad, I particularly like Everybody Hurts by REM. It’s like so over the top you kind of have to smile.
Definitely Yoga with Adriene, she has a session for every emotion, need and situation.
Yin yoga or restorative yoga would be great for a restorative/relaxing session…especially before bed! They use longer holds with stillness being encouraged so that both the body and mind can rest.
This is too late (west coast) but if the need arises again, I love doyogawithme.com – any class with Fiji McAlpine is wonderful! Easy to filter class length and body focus. As an aside, I just finished your book (sooo good! thank you!!), and am sending good call week vibes to the both of us. xo from a fellow former a cappella singing Williams alumna!
When I was in residency, every time I had a 24 hour call, I would go and get a caramel macchiato at the coffee shop at around 5 or 6 PM when I had my dinner break. It was something I got to look forward to all day, and the caffeine carried me through about 12 or 1 AM. Doing an *easy* yoga workout is nice too.
Lately I’ve been trying to figure out how to make my early mornings on my clinical days feel less (for lack of a better term) completely wretched with all the (mostly totally non-urgent) interruptions while I am actively caring for patients. It makes me want to quit my job tbh.
I am looking forward to your Faded Chronicle review.