The Joy Edit #8
- Chloe Markham
- Apr 2
- 2 min read
A regular edit for your joy.
Nervous system regulation tool
Shaking it off
HOW: Stand up, shake your hands, your arms, your legs, your whole body for 60 seconds like a dog after a bath.
Bonus points for doing this to this week's playlist (below).
WHY: Animals do this naturally after stress to discharge cortisol. Humans stopped doing it, and we definitely shouldn't have.
Listen: The Morning Wiggle
This is my get-up-and-move playlist, and it works every time.I defy you to stay seated and listen to this one. Upbeat and properly joyful.
Read: Why Rest Isn’t a Reward
How to stop hustling your self-care and start feeling joy again.
A book I'm loving: The Island of Missing Trees
A brilliant novel that'll make you love more and want to go to Cyprus immediately.
This is proper, large-scale progress for marine life (hurrah!).
Behind the scenes:
I've been in late luteal phase this week — the bit of your cycle where your body essentially files a formal complaint against life itself — and my energy has been on the floor.
Old me would have pushed through. Made lists. Felt guilty for not doing work. Tried to do work.
Instead, I took time off and watched true crime in bed.
Instead of catastrophising or berating myself, I just listened to what my body was asking for, and gave it that.
The takeaway: we’ve been trained to override our signals so well, that responding to them feels like failure.
But it’s bloody not, it’s a damn skill.
A learned skill.
That’s what I’m here for — for myself, and for you, my friend — to help us match our energy to our day instead of forcing it all the fucking time.
It’s not laziness to take a few days off.
It’s nervous system literacy.
And when you get good at this stuff, life stops feeling like you’re dragging a fridge up Snowdon.
Where are you forcing productivity right now when your body is clearly asking for something else?
Permission to watch weird telly in bed and not feel guilty about it.
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