The holiday is over, calendars are filling up again and the kids are almost back at school. You’d expect to start this period well rested, but for many of the women who come to me, it’s the opposite: they feel more tense now than they did at the start of summer.

Why coming back is harder than being away

During the holiday, structure fell away, but so did some of the pressure. Now everything has to happen at once: picking work back up, sorting out schedules, shopping lists getting longer again. Your body has to switch from a slower pace to a full load in a short space of time, and that switch itself costs energy, on top of the busyness that follows.

Many women notice that tension concentrates exactly in these weeks: a tight neck, worse sleep, getting irritated more easily than usual, even though the holiday only just ended.

Why this often gets underestimated

Because you’ve just had a holiday, you expect to start this period feeling fresh. When that’s not how it feels, the tendency is to push through and assume it will sort itself out. Tension often builds up exactly in these transition weeks, while little attention goes to it.

What helps make that switch

In my practice in Hoofddorp I see many women going through exactly this in the weeks around the end of summer. A targeted massage doesn’t take the busyness away, but it does give your body the space to actually make the transition, instead of carrying on tense.

Are you at the start of this transition? Read more about massage for tension pain or make an appointment.