Mindfulness & Yoga Tips To Get You Through The Season!
What a year it’s been!! Christmas may look a little different this year for many of us, it certainly does for me and this will be my first year to not spend Christmas with my family.
It can be a time of great joy, or for some a time of anxiety, stress, overwhelm and depression.
I wanted to share some tips that I hope you will find useful, that will help you to move through this time with a little more ease:
Yoga can help us to embrace this ‘different’ Christmas through practicing acceptance.
– Can we let go of our expectations?
– Can we let go of what’s out of our control?
– Can we find gratitude in what we do have?
I invite you to find a quiet space, to sit or lay down and simply connect in with your body and breath. Notice how your body moves when you breathe. Notice how the breath feels. How it’s cold as it comes in through the nose and then how its warm as it comes out. Then take a deep inhale and release a long sigh – do this 3 times. Once you are feeling settled just ask yourself the three questions above. Notice what comes up, without any judgment. Welcome in the feelings and allow them to flow through you.
Practice gratitude every day.
Research has shown that practicing gratitude every day improves mood and depression and creates a happier and more positive outlook.
There are several ways to practice gratitude:
– Keep a gratitude journal – write down 3 things a day or 3 things a week that you feel grateful for. However big or small. It could be as simple as the warmth of your bed at night or a hot shower – sometimes we forgot how lucky we are to have these things. My boiler broke three times last winter and it has made me VERY grateful for the warmth of my home!
– Write a thank you note – this can really help to build relationships. It could be as simple as writing ‘thank you for my cup of tea’ or something else that your partner, child, friend or work colleague had done. It will make them feel appreciated too 🙂
– I have a little ritual of getting into bed and then thinking of three things that I have been grateful for that day – I love to share my thoughts with my partner and to hear their three things that they are grateful for too.
– You can also weave this into your children’s bedtime routine and ask them what their favourite thing was from their day (it’s great to teach them mindfulness from an early age).
Pausing to reflect can really help us to appreciate the little things that we may have missed whilst rushing around and ticking off our to-do lists.
Exercise
Cardio exercise, such as jogging, swimming, cycling, walking and dancing have been proved to reduce anxiety and depression. These improvements in mood are proposed to be caused by exercise-induced increase in blood circulation to the brain and by an influence on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and, thus, on the physiologic reactivity to stress.
Sometimes when we have low mood we don’t want to move. But sometimes, moving is what we really need.
Plan just 5 minutes of exercises a day – yes just 5 minutes!!! What you may find it that you will do 5 minutes and you will feel great and day by day you will start doing a little longer, not because you have to but because you want to.
You could start off by putting on your favourite song and dancing like crazy! Shake every part of your body as fast as you can! This will help to release any cortisol (stress hormone) in your body and give you a lovely energy boost and (oxytocin and endorphins) to make you feel good. We sometimes do this as a family and it’s so much fun!
You could also plan a walk/jog with a friend as this can really help with motivation.
Even a walk outside will boost your mood. Wrap up warm and look forward to drinking a nice hot cup of cocoa when you get home.
Use your breath to calm your body and mind
We use the breath a lot during a yoga practice. We call this Pranayama – life force energy. The breath is what keeps us alive and energised and the way we breathe can drastically affect our body and mind through the nervous system.
If we take short, panting breaths high up in the chest then this will activate the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight). When this happens our body releases adrenaline and cortisol – which is a natural and positive survival mechanism to enable us to run away from danger (extremely helpful back in the Caveman days).
Stress can become negative when we face continuous challenges without relief or relaxation in between. As a result, we become overworked and stress-related tension starts to build.
Through the breath we can tap into the parasympathetic nervous system (to encourage rest and digest). We need to take big deep inhales and long exhales. This is called diaphragmatic breathing (a very important technique that I teach in my pregnancy and postnatal yoga classes). This breathing technique helps to slow down the heart rate, lowering blood pressure and respiratory rate and diverting blood supply towards the digestive and reproductive systems. It helps us to feel calm within our body and mind.
Simply sit down with legs crossed or in kneeling and place one hand on your belly and one hand on your side (on your ribs). Take a big inhale, relax the belly so you can feel it expanding, feel the ribs expand and the heart center lift. On the exhale feel the belly drawing back in towards the spine and the ribs drawing inwards. Take a full inhale and as you exhale sigh the breath out to lengthen the exhale. Repeat for a few minutes. Notice how calm we become when we watch the breath and tune into the movement of our body.
I teach lots of different breathing techniques in my classes to relieve stress, anxiety, to boost energy or for postnatal pelvic floor recovery so please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
Secret Santa
As lovely as it is, sometimes buying presents at Christmas can be stressful and a strain on the bank balance! If like me you have a big family, opt for secret santa for the adults. Honestly, it has removed so much stress and we just buy for the Children and have more energy to put into the time spent together. We use ‘Elfster’ which is a free and online Secret Santa generator & Christmas list app!
You could also make some gifts which can help you get into the christmas spirit too 🙂 the benefits of this is that it can be a lovely mindful activity as you are concentrating on what you are making and brings you into the present moment.
Technology & Christmas Quiz!
Try to limit your use of technology this Christmas and resist the urge to look on facebook or instagram (or Twitter, Tik Tok – I still don’t understand either of those!). Social media can actually trigger our stress (fight or flight) response, releasing adrenaline and cortisol into the body.
However, technology can also be used as a lovely way to connect with family during the Christmas period.
Schedule in your video calls with the family over Christmas so you know when and who you’ll be speaking with. You can also organise a family quiz to provide more structure to the call. You could nominate a ‘quizz host’ and ask all of your family members to send them ‘3 facts about themselves’ – the more amusing the better! Then everyone has to try and guess who each one is about. This can be very funny and a great way to get to know your family better – you may also find out some very interesting facts about your family!
When you’re not video calling friends and family, try to leave your phone in another room because….
….the best present you can give to yourself and your family this Christmas is to be present.
Be kind to yourself
This is probably the most important tip of them all. Please be kind to yourself. It’s been an extremely tough year and I think we are all feeling the strain and fatigue of it all. You can only do your best and you are perfect just as you are.
