Pause postgres process already in progress
If you have access to the OS account under which postgres runs, you can identify the PID of your process (using top, or ps, or pg_stat_activity), and then do a kill -SIGSTOP &lt;pid&gt;.  Later you would then do a kill -SIGCONT &lt;pid&gt; to get it to run again.  

This is not a risk-free thing to do.  If you stop the process while it is holding a spinlock (pretty unlikely, but certainly possible), you could freeze up the entire database, until eventually it would realize something was wrong and then crash itself (terminating your colleague's job).  If you stop the process while it is holding a lightweight lock, it would also freeze the database (or parts of it) and it remain frozen until you continue the process and it releases the lock.

Also, the memory of the stopped process will not be released.  The system will be able to swap that memory out without it constantly fighting to swap back in, and maybe that is good enough.  But it would be better if it were actually released.

All in all, it is probably a better idea to cancel your update and repeat it later.