5 Hacks for Holiday Overwhelm
By Renna Fir
Are you starting to feeling the pressure of the holidays building? You are not alone. Most of us are feeling overwhelmed with all of the parties, family gatherings, shopping lists, house guests and decorations that cheerfully adorn our busy lives.
With everything happening around us of course it is common to overeat, over spend and nearly have a breakdown by New Year's day. Amidst all the excitement, our routines are thrown off kilter and there is so much to do in a short amount of time. Luckily, these 5 holiday hacks can help you stay out of overwhelm and step into flow as we enter a new year.
1. Wim Hof BreathWork
Whether you’ve been doing breath work for a long time or you’ve never heard of it before, Wim Hof’s breathwork techniques will be a game changer for you this year. Wim Hof (AKA the Iceman) is an athletic guru who uses a breathwork technique of sharp inhales without any forced exhale to remain in complete control in the most extreme conditions, like running a half marathon in the Arctic Circle barefoot.
I know you’re likely not going to be running through ice and snow in bare feet and shorts this holiday season (or maybe you will), but with the Wim Hof method you might surprise yourself with your ability to stay level and centered amidst the holiday chaos. Wim Hof recommends practicing this style of breathwork right after waking or on an empty stomach. If you’d like to learn more about the Wim Hof method, click here.
2. Seated Meditation
If you don’t have a meditation practice, now is the perfect time to start. Even a five minute daily seated meditation practice can greatly improve your ability to stay centered when you are juggling the kids on winter break or the lists of presents. Meditation has been growing in popularity in modern psychology as research has confirmed its ability to reduce stress, anxiety, depression, pain (both physical and psychological), as well as improve memory and efficiency (Sharma 2015).
To be honest, I don’t always meditate consistently, but every time I re-engage my daily meditation practice, I become so effective at everything I do, I feel like I have super powers! Suddenly the million things that I had to do seems more like one clean little package of fun! If you want to start a practice and are not sure where to start or maybe you feel overwhelmed from previous attempts at meditating, check out the 6 weeks to flow course at the Fit Body Wellness online studio. In this course, Summer Huntington distills her decades of flow state psychology research into a six week program which includes a myriad of practices including detailed guidance through seated meditation.
Using the official RAD roller with myofascial release techniques releases shoulder tension better than any holiday magic I’ve ever experienced.
3. Myofascial Release
Does your upper back feel similar to the leather bag you got for a special someone this holiday season? Don't worry you aren’t alone. While so many people’s backs are rigid and tense, this is not your bodies most optimum condition. Through repetitive motion and stress in our daily occupations, we bind the tissues in our bodies into rigid knots. The tension and compensation patterns we accumulate through this process puts our bodies into misalignment resulting in injury.
With all the loading and unloading, cooking and cleaning and psychological stress of the holidays, the tension we’ve built into our fascia is destined to get worse. I’m so grateful for therapists who can work through the bound fascia in my body, but in times like these, we need real solutions to tensions regardless of our flexibility. That’s why I recommend the R.A.D. roller system, a tool kit and professional guide to self release of bound fascia, entering into a life of total mobility. I will definitely be using my R.A.D. kit a lot this season to keep my body feeling ready to party!
4. Stability Training
When we are being rushed around through shopping malls and parties it is so easy to feel ungrounded as our bodies start to pick up the stressors of choosing the right gifts, making sure the family gets picked up from the airport on time, taxiing the kids around through winter break, etc... All of this on top of the everyday responsibilities of balancing the bank accounts and keeping the house in order is simply overwhelming. When we start to feel destabilized from the holiday stress it is more important than ever to anchor to the present moment with stability and mobility training. Kinesthesiology Yoga is an intro course that offers mobility, body weight training exercises and mindset practices that are designed to be accessible to all body types and strength levels. Better yet, this course amongst so many more are available wherever you are. Whether you are halfway across the country or your house is filled with friends and family, you can still take an hour away from the madness to settle into your inner stability and stay in flow.
5. Create a Self Care Routine (and actually stick to it!)
The level of overwhelm we endure during the holidays can sometimes feel like we are losing our minds. We have all experimented with different self care routines and have probably found a lot of security in them. Research has shown that consistent daily routines in adults and children correlates with more regulated behavior and better mental health overall (Plata, 2018).
It is so easy to lose track of our routines when there are so many pressures showing up this time of year. Make a commitment to yourself this year to make your routine sacred, maybe it will be your gift to yourself. Maybe your routine includes some of the practices mentioned earlier in this post, or maybe it’s something completely different. Remember, consistent practice makes consistent results.
Most people, myself included have a hard time staying in routines and forming new habits but I have gone from scattered chaos with no direction to feeling grounded and focused in my practice and career. Where things really shifted for me was when I explored mindset training and coaching at Flow Shala. Summer Huntington, MS offers free consultations for mindset and physical training at Flow Shala which you can access here.
Happy holidays and may you flow with ease into the new year!
Renna Fir is a writer, mover and healing artist living at a small eco-village with her family and community just south of Bellingham Washington. Renna loves to write for local non-profits, educational organizations, environmental movements, dancers, musicians and artists to help them make a difference in the world.
Resources
Sharma H. (2015). Meditation: Process and effects. Ayu, 36(3), 233–237. doi:10.4103/0974-8520.182756
Plata, M. (2018, October 4). The Power of Routines in Your Mental Health. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-gen-y-psy/201810/the-power-routines-in-your-mental-health.