Using Your Yoga Practice to Manage Stress During the Holidays

December 1, 2018

The holiday season is a time where people experience even more stress than ever. And that’s a lot of stress given that people today are experiencing unprecedented levels of chronic stress.  Here’s a quick summary about what happens when people are stressed:  The body gets flooded with a hormone called cortisol and the sympathetic (stress) nervous system is turned on.  Over time, it can lead to a cascade of physical and emotional health problems, impact relationships and create dysfunctions in the brain as it essentially ages the brain. The pre-frontal cortex is the part of the brain responsible for executive functioning including making good decisions, creativity, clarity and problem solving.  It naturally shrinks with age.  When under chronic stress over a period of time, it shows similar shrinking patterns. In essence, the brain ages faster and the implications for work, relationships and personal health is significant.  Often, if work or school is the cause of stress, the part of the brain responsible for work success now becomes compromised due to the stress of the work/school, reducing the probability of success. Now, add on the stresses that come with the Holiday season: Increased busy-ness, financial strain, having to get that “right” gift and forced family gatherings that may be unpleasant, and the outcome can be catastrophic to your emotional, physical and mental wellbeing.

Fortunately, yoga is great for building stress resilience and has the potential to teach you so much about your life, both on and off the mat and help you navigate the holiday season.  You see, yoga teaches you how to be resilient and how to show up, not only when the poses are easy but how do you show up when they are challenging? It is essentially a metaphor for life. What happens when you fall out of a pose, when you feel tension in a pose, when your mind is racing, when you have judgement? What happens when you turn to your breath, when you soften, when you quiet your mind, when you find the pause, when you turn to self-love?  Yoga is a teacher for it all.  And the more you practice, the greater the positive imprints in your life.  Here are a few teachings that come from Yoga:

1)     Resilience and strength:  Holding poses allows you to recognize and build a relationship with your strength and resilience and can even change your limiting beliefs about yourself and your life (so you can get that Christmas shopping done). Falling out of poses teaches you how to get up when life (or a shopper accidentally) knocks you down.  Can you smile and get up, and maybe even hold the door open for another?  

2)     Surrendering and letting go: Softening into the expansiveness of the pose while holding your strength is the key to the practice and becomes a practice to fully and soften into the experience of life and let go of those things you cannot control (like the busy-ness in mall parking lots this month).  

3)     Breathing: Breathing  in your practice helps to activate the parasympathetic nervous system response which is the calming nervous system.  When this happens a series of “good” feeling hormones flood the body and make you feel connected to others and a sense of bliss. This is what we call the “yoga high”.  At the same time, you begin to build new neural connections (a passive outcome of breathing, moving and being mindful) and you get to practice sitting in the “space” in your practice to become skillful at adding a pause before reacting when the next car cuts you off or the next person steps in front of you in line, or your relative brings up a negative memory.

4)     Flexibility and Acceptance: Yoga allows you to lean into the unpredictability that comes with the practice and life. There is a flexibility that develops with the brain (as well as greater strength and flexibility in the body) as an outcome of doing a different yoga practice every day.  So the next time you have an expectation about the holiday traditions and how they “should” be, you know the ideal “It’s a Wonderful Life” type of Christmas (ok, maybe that  is not the best example), and the reality of the event does not meet your presumptions,  you will be able to better manage the unpredictability and even, perhaps, accept and welcome  the change rather than try to fight against change.

5)     Self-compassion and self-love: As you relax into your true nature and take time to get really quiet, you begin to reconnect with your higher self and turn to self-love and self-compassion no matter what your pose looks like.  So, you can let yourself off the hook when you need to shop within your budget or can’t find that “perfect” gift. Perhaps, giving an experience will be more fulfilling or donating to a cause on behalf of your receiver.  And, when you practice self-compassion and self-love, it naturally spreads to others so that relative that usually makes you feel triggered may offer you a lovely opportunity to practice compassion and see them in a different light.

So, this holiday season, use your mat as an opportunity to practise building resilience, flowing with what is, loving yourself, accepting others, and breathing into acceptance.  When challenges arise, remember how you would manage these on your mat and recognize that you can handle anything that comes up, even if the tofurkey is overcooked. This is the key to building stress resilience and increasing your health and happiness during the holiday season. 

Wishing you all a peaceful and stress-managed holiday season.

Love,

Diana

Diana Lockett is the founder of Anjeli Yoga Teaching Academy, Re-Alignment Life Coach, Leadership Coach and co-founder of the Elephant P-O-O Project, Writer, Teacher and Life Adventurer.   www.Dianalockett.com