After a hard day a woman comes home and reaches for the familiar set: a glass of wine, the news, something sweet with tea, the feed on her phone. The heaviness does lift, and by morning the tiredness is still there and sitting deeper. What happens to the body during those hours was explained by Peruquois, a top World Music performer in Australia, musician, composer, author and facilitator of self-development trainings for women.
Hard stress traded for soft stress
“Coming home, many people try to replace that hard stress with a soft one,” says Peruquois.
Fighting fire with fire is not always the most effective technique, and the evening is exactly that case. A woman picks activities that feel like rest, and each of them hands the body a new load.
She separates two different situations. Situational stress from a given day happens to everyone and passes. If hard days have become the pattern, the question moves off the evening routine and onto how the life is built: where she works, what she does, and why she keeps a relationship whose only effect is to wear her down.
Alcohol
A glass in the evening reads as permission to relax. For the body it is stress on the liver, arriving exactly when the system was preparing to recover.
The relaxation alcohol brings is short and gives way to a heavier state. The flat, blurred morning after a single glass is familiar to many women, and this is the explanation.
News
“News on television or the internet is a colossal stress for the hormonal system,” says Peruquois. The response to negative news is always a release of cortisol, the stress hormone, and adrenaline, the hormone behind the fight or flight response.
There is almost no good news in the feed, so in the evening the body receives the same hormonal mix it ran on all day. The body does not distinguish whether the event concerns it personally. The reaction fires either way.
Tea and coffee
The evening cup looks harmless and produces the same reaction, pushing the body into adrenaline overload. A woman who drinks coffee after dinner usually complains about how long it takes her to fall asleep and does not connect the two.
Sugar
Sugar in all its forms, from sweetened tea to pastries and candy, Peruquois calls stress on the pancreas.
Then the emotional swing starts: a short sugar high gives way to self-pity. An evening that began as a reward for a hard day ends in a slump and in thoughts about everything going wrong.
Social feeds
“Social feeds are only an illusion of escape,” says Peruquois. They produce emotional stress, because everyone in the feed appears to be living a fairy tale while your own life in that moment feels like a swamp.
Half an hour of that leaves a woman with the sense of falling behind. One more weight is added to the tiredness of the day, and that is what she carries to bed.
What actually clears stress
“So in the evening, instead of only adding stress to your life, try starting to clear it out,” says Peruquois. What follows is her own evening set.
A contrast shower. “A contrast shower refreshes you, wakes you up, releases tension, and makes you breathe actively and deeply, which also has a positive effect,” she says.
Deep breathing. It fills the blood and muscles with oxygen, and beyond that, through the movement of the diaphragm it massages the adrenal glands, which gradually calms them and lowers the production of cortisol and adrenaline.
A herbal tea in place of a stimulant. Something fermented and caffeine free, pleasant and settling. Honey with it is far better than sugar.
A journal. “Instead of going to bed with the problems of the day and making your subconscious process them, it is better to bring them into conscious awareness and write them down in a journal,” says Peruquois. And then look for the causes and the forces behind the events, leaving aside a simple listing of what happened.
A bath with sea salt or magnesium salt. If the day was especially emotional, that bath helps release the whole emotional overload.
A serious book. It is better company than a news feed and it slows the mind down, settling thoughts and putting them in order.
Meditation. Fifteen minutes is enough for the body to step out of the readiness it has held all day.
What makes the evening different from the rest of the day
“The evening is a time of softness and tenderness toward yourself and the people close to you,” says Peruquois.
That is what makes it valuable. The day takes composure and speed, and the evening is the only stretch of the day when a woman has to hold nothing. If those hours go to news and feeds as well, there is nowhere left to put herself back together, and the tiredness carries into tomorrow with interest.
The change here shows up fast. A week of evenings without screens and sugar changes the quality of sleep, and sleep changes the morning that everything else starts from.
If you want a short daily way out of anxiety and tension, take the Peruquois course From Stress and Anxiety to Inner Harmony in 15 Minutes, available on her website under Courses.
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