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How and why to learn to love the floor…
Being on the floor has a bad reputation. People say:
- “The floor is dirty.”
- “Are you okay? Why are you lying on the floor?”
- “Grown ups don’t lie on the floor. Didn’t your mother tell you that!”
Dr. Alan Fogel a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Utah and the author of “Restorative Embodiment and Resilience” says:
Lying on the ground might help us avoid ruminating. In our Western culture, we don’t have a lot of spaces for restoration. There’s no timeouts. There’s no recess.
You may assume that a comfortable mattress would be more conducive to relaxation. But typically what happens, especially in familiar places like our bed, is our mind keeps working, Dr. Fogel said. We think about what happened during the day. We think about what we could have done or should have done.
When lying on a harder surface like the floor, however, you may become more attuned to what your body is feeling and less focused on your thoughts.
To get comfortable, it becomes necessary to sink into the floor and soften your muscles, Dr. Fogel added. The focus on letting go makes it easier to help the body and mind decompress — to “just be,” he said.
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