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Holiday Stress? Mindfulness Can Help

Updated 11/9/2023

Here it comes – the wave of winter holidays.

Time seems to speed up now, and the season can seem a bit sugar-coated and a bit stressful. Suddenly so much to do! Decorating, attending gatherings, figuring out if you should send cards or get gifts for the people in your life, and dealing with extended family can be overwhelming. If you have a business – double the decisions!

It doesn’t have to be quite so stressful. Holiday cheer doesn’t require weight gain (here’s a study from the National Weight Control Registry (1) about what works). Mindfulness can help you enjoy the holidays a little more, and stress a little less.

If you find yourself feeling holiday-rattled and you’re not basking in a glowing sense of cheer, the practices of mindfulness might help you take a break from expectations and reconnect with the reason for the season.

Can Mindfulness Really Help?

The short answer is yes. Practicing mindfulness – both the meditation practice and taking a more mindful attitude toward the activities of the holiday – can help. Mindfulness can provide that little shift in attitude that can be the difference between feeling overwhelmed and feeling excited about the holiday.

Mindfulness practice and attitudes can help you become more aware of your own needs as you move through the season of giving. It can make you more aware of your choices and give you space to choose in a more thoughtful way. Mindfulness can also help you to be a little easier on yourself for being human should you not create holiday perfection or if you over-indulge.

How does Mindfulness Manage Stress?

A mindfulness practice can help you step away from the fire, mentally and emotionally, and practice the power of pause – of taking a breath when things get overheated or overwhelming. When we get triggered by an unkind or unintended nastiness, or feel that we are not up to the job of holiday bliss, pausing for a breath tends to help us take a step back and see things in a little less pressured light. Then, we can respond in a wiser, kinder way. This takes practice, my friends, but it is interesting how quickly the attitudes around mindfulness – kindness, compassion – can make life better and ease the tension of the holidays.

With a mindful attitude, we become more aware of the results of our choices – how our choices impact how we feel, and how our lives unfold. Eventually (with practice, self-compassion and awareness) the practice of mindfulness can be a framework within which we begin to choose to feel a bit better, then make the choices that will create that result.

As it happens, this particular time of year is excellent for cultivating quietness and a meditative mindset. It may be one reason that we can feel so overwhelmed with our over-commercialized holiday – that this season is, naturally, a time of slowing down and turning inward. The winter solstice is akin to the end of the exhale for the earth – a time of dark and quiet and reflection before the next year begins. In the Celtic wheel of the year, this is a time when the veil between worlds is thin – when you can “see” or imagine your way into your future, and “see” and appreciate your past. It is a great time of the year for honoring and integrating what has unfolded for you, and for visioning what may come. Mindfulness practice can help with that.

So, What is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is a meditation practice, and it is also the attitudes and mindsets that a meditation practice encompasses. In mindfulness, you:

Adopt a meditative mindset. We humans have the capacity to change our consciousness from our everyday distracted state to a calm, clear relaxed and open one. With this change, you focus attention inward and relax.
Pay attention to what is happening moment by moment. Mindfulness is meditation while…(whatever you are doing). So, you get curious about whatever you are doing – be it walking or eating. Slowing the process down so that you can get fascinated enough that you lose yourself – you lose track of time – is mindful meditative absorption.
There is a particular attitude of mindfulness called non-judgmental awareness. As you practice, you become aware of judgments like comparisons (this food is healthy therefore good, that food is less healthy, therefore not so good, for example). In mindfulness, while eating, for example, you aim for a direct, sensory relationship with what you are eating. Cultivate an attitude of kindness – toward yourself and others.

How can I Practice Mindfulness this Holiday?

There are limitless ways to practice through this particular season.

Here are just few ideas:

Start or re-charge your morning meditation practice. If you are just beginning, start with just 5 or 10 minutes to sit in a quiet place, with music or not, and get quiet. You can focus your attention on your breathing – on the expansion of the inhale, and letting go of the exhale. Alternatively, you can focus on your thoughts – noticing your thoughts as they arise, label them “just thoughts” and let them float away.

Practice mindfulness meditation while eating.

Practicing mindful eating can help you explore your sensual relationship with food as well as your hunger and satiety (fullness) indicators. When I see people eat more of their bites as a mindfulness meditation practice, they begin to recognize that their eating patterns are tied more to external signals – things like getting home from a stressful day of work or seeing one of the endless food-porn ads on TV. Over time, the practice of mindful eating tends to help people tune in more deeply to their internal guidance system with regard to hunger, fullness and how much food is enough.

Here’s my post on how that can unfold.

Mindful Eating: The Practice of Eating Better

It’s difficult to practice mindful meditation while socializing – meditation just doesn’t work that way! But, you can be mindful of your breath, mindful of something kind you would like to say to someone or practice appreciation of your friends and family. With regard to food, can you simply practice what I call the power of pause – and take in the visual beauty of the holiday food?

Another practice you might play with this year is the mindful practices of kindness and of contentment. How might you be kind to yourself and others through this season? Is there something that you do, or way you are through the holidays, that doesn’t really serve you anymore?

In yoga contentment is a practice – one of my wise teachers used to say “Try less”. What a great motto for life!

Can we practice – intentionally – being content with things as they are right now – in their perfect imperfection.

References

Olson, Kayloni et al, Strategies to manage weight during the holiday season among US adults: A descriptive study from the National Weight Control Registry. Obesity Science and Practice. 2021 Apr; 7(2): 232–238.

Quickeners Podcast Episode 4: Not Your Fault. Now What?

In psychology there the idea that “it’s not your fault that you…”. We did not personally create many of the dysfunctional parts of our life. Many of our struggles are rooted in early events and our of our control.

But that’s not the end of the conversation of change. In yoga philosophy, not your fault is only part of (half of?) the conversation. The other part is – now what? Once you realize that you didn’t create these situations, one option is to take responsibility to clean it up anyway because it will likely make your life better to do so.

This dichotomy and the tension in the dichotomy is an aspect of life – it’s the dance of action & embodiment, of being & doing, of masculine & feminine, Shakti & Shiva. In yoga philosophy we need both – we need to accept that it’s not our fault, yet we have the capacity to shift, renew, embody our own experience.

In this episode I’ll tell stories and give examples, and then a 3-step process to navigate from doing to being.

Practice Finding Peace – Begin Mindful Living Online Group

Mindfulness is the skill that seems custom-designed for modern life – so it’s popular. I can’t tell you how many books I saw (many from new graduates of mindful meditation courses) – at the most recent Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics (AND) conference. The more the merrier, really – all attempts at helping people begin mindful living are welcome!

I’m sure you’ve heard about the fascinating studies that suggest the simple (but not easy) practice of mindfulness helps with nearly any chronic condition, from stress to diabetes. True. But, you have to practice regularly, and I do think you have to practice reasonably well (not to be confused with perfectly – intention counts). For bet effect, you aim is to let go and be deeply and completely absorbed in what you are doing. I’m in the camp that thinks that mindfulness is a little more than just paying attention to what you are doing, though paying attention is a marvelous thing.

Here is a fun and easy solution to that tricky problem – each season, I hold an interactive online group called Begin Mindful Living. It’s been a hit! Because it works.

So, what is mindfulness?

Mindfulness – a meditative practice of focusing on what happens moment to moment with an attitude of non-judgmental awareness – seems like medicine for what ails us in modern life. It can begin to change us from the inside out.

In the past couple decades we’ve learned a lot more about just how this happens. There are short -term neurological mechanisms, and longer term genetics at play in the inside-out change of mindfulness. There are also mindset changes that, over time, reinforce the primary two mechanisms of neurobiology and genetics.

Why it can be so hard to start & maintain?

Mindfulness is a way of being. It’s a big shift in how you approach life. I think of the things you do in life – your habits and choices – as a flowing river. You flow along, doing what you do. When you begin to practice mindfulness, it’s like putting an oar in the water – it starts to make waves. It takes energy and skill and determination to keep it going. Practice. That means it’s easy to give up when you don’t see quick benefits. It’s easy to give up when it gets a little challenging.

Community to the rescue!

That’s why it’s great to launch mindful living in a group under the guidance of a skilled facilitator. Having the touchstone of others that will motivate you to try try again catapults the likelihood that you’ll keep it going. That you’ll press through when things get tougher.

Now, a word about online groups. I’ve given a number of interactive webinars for national health organizations, and conducted several of my own online groups. I love the magic that happens in groups and it’s the center of the work I do. There have been some recent advances in online interactivity that – while there is nothing like face-to-face – do the trick to connect you with others. You can see them, you can speak to them. It is an online kula – an online gathering. Overall, for the cost and time, it’s awesome.

Begin Mindful Living Online Group

I love this group!

Here is an easy way to launch mindful living that focuses on your self-care. Self-care is anything you do to do well by your whole being. It’s everything from making a balanced choice for breakfast – then enjoying every sensory bite of it; to taking a slow mindful walk in nature as you breath and receive the beauty of your surroundings.

I’ve begun to do a 4-week session every season, and our summer offering goes off between July 18- Aug 8th, Thursday evenings at 6:30 pm EST.

Join us!

Each session will have a theme and your learning will progress over the month. One week before each session, you will receive a tip sheet with an introduction of the topic, an easy suggested practice and a journaling question.

Week 1: Intention & Mindful Practice

Get clear on why, and begin the experiment with easeful practice.

Week 2: Mindful Self-care

Health care IS Self-care. It’s for everyone, even you.

Week 3: Mindful Relationships

Others in our lives give us our greatest opportunity to practice!

Week 4: Take it Forward into Life

Clarify what you’ve received, and set intention for moving forward.

Each week, we’ll discuss overcoming challenges!

I so look forward to seeing you in our mindful living kula! Here’s more information.

Ready to sign up? Sign up now.

Have questions? Ask away.

Begin a Yoga Practice: Tips for a Happy Launch

Thinking of adding yoga practice to your lifestyle? Lucky you! The first exposure of yoga is a profound experience (but for those who have a poor first match, a decidedly not-so-profound).
Here are some tips for what you can do to increase your odds of having an enjoyable and beneficial first experience as you begin a yoga practice.

1. Know yourself.

Your age, fitness level, and relative interest in physical or spiritual development will all influence your best class choice. If you are 50 and not in great shape, a level 2 Ashtanga class may be stressful and painful enough to turn you away from yoga forever. A gentle Kripalu class, however, may start you on the path to actually enjoying the Ashtanga class once you have some experience under your belt.

2. Start slow.

Choose a class that seems easy and doable first, and then progress to more strenuous styles or more advanced classes after you have learned a few basics. Learning the basics of how the body works in yoga, and how to do postures safely as you move deeper, is essential to being able to sustain a long-term practice. Please don’t skip that step! Many studios offer a series of basic classes.

3. Learn a little yoga lingo.

If you are young and fit, more active styles of yoga may be a great introduction to the practice. These include Ashtanga, Bikram, Vinyasa, and Power styles. If you are older or less physically active, begin with Kripalu, gentle Hatha (usually a blend of styles ), Viniyoga, or another gentler style. Yin yoga and Slow-flow yoga tend to be deep and meditative with longer holdings. If you enjoy an intellectual approach, you may enjoy the Iyengar style with its precise alignment and detail. Kundalini yoga features chanting and song, lots of fiery breathing, and postures which can be scaled up or down to match your physical ability. Ananda, Shivananda, and Integral yoga tend to feature spiritual development more than postures. You will, however, likely hear some yoga philosophy in any style of yoga, depending on the background and preferences of your teacher.

4. Chat with your teacher.

Here is a list of questions, excerpted from my book Every Bite Is Divine, (p 140), that will help you get to know your teacher better:

What type of yoga do you teach?
Do you work with individuals with medical issues or special needs?
How long have you been studying yoga?
How long have you been teaching?
Do you have students like me (e.g., unfit, overweight, disabled, or with other issues) in your classes?
Do you do individual instruction?
How much does that cost and what would I get out of that?

5. If the first match doesn’t work, try try again.

Don’t be discouraged if you do not enjoy your first class. Try several before giving up your quest.
Here is an excerpt from Every Bite Is Divine (p 58) on beginning a yoga practice:

Before launching a new health regimen, talk it over with your physician. If you have an existing medical condition, work with your health team to adapt this work to honor your medical needs.
Professional yoga instruction is recommended for beginners. Wear loose, comfortable clothing that does not inhibit movement for practice. Find a quiet space large enough to stand with wide legs and to move your arms in all directions. A towel or yoga mat and a cushion or blanket can help make you more comfortable.
Principles for safe yoga practice include moving slowly and with awareness, maintaining smooth, easy breathing through the nose unless otherwise instructed, and not straining to achieve a position. Your yoga practice is a time to pay attention to your physical abilities and limitations and to make compassionate adjustments accordingly.
Please note that there are several types of yoga postures not recommended for an overweight body just beginning to practice. For example, inversions (going upside-down) facilitate the cleansing processes of the body, which is of particular benefit to those with hypo-digestion (slow digestion in relation to appetite) and the resulting buildup of body mass, toxins, and so forth. But the primary inversions of yoga—headstand and shoulder stand—can be injury-inducing for beginners with excess body weight and low muscle strength. So, if you are overweight, especially if you are not regularly physically active, you may need to adjust postures in order for them to be safe and beneficial. But, no matter who you are, each asana (posture) may be done safely with skillful adjustments. Working with a skilled instructor will help you learn how to make inversions and every other yoga posture safe and beneficial. Enjoy! It requires awareness and an attitude of taking your time to cultivate a beneficial practice.
If you are not regularly physically active, begin slowly so that you prevent injuries related to overdoing it. One yoga principle says that practicing for 10 minutes every day is preferable to practicing for 3 hours once a week. It’s showing up for regular daily practice that holds the magic.
A yoga practice usually contains a period of centering or settling down and turning your awareness inward, warming up or preparing the body for practice, a period of asana (physical postures) with pranayama (awareness to breath and energy movement), and relaxation/integration. There is, however, no “recipe” for a practice, and the elements listed often blend together. A period of meditation often follows a yoga practice.

May you have a life-long yoga practice that leads to happiness, health and your own true self.

Namaste.

Subtle Body Nourishment: Benefits of Learning the Art & Science of Energy

Getting the balance of eating and yoga practice down is a challenge for anyone. We overdo it, we under-do it, we practice when we’re full. We under-eat and don’t have the energy to perform. Sigh. Our energy, as well as our hunger peaks and valleys – getting it right is a dynamic dance.
Understanding and experiencing your own subtle body (in yoga, that includes your thoughts, intuition and energy bodies) takes practice. When you practice skillful navigation of your subtle body, particularly balanced with the knowledge of your nutritional needs, it can help prevent you from falling off a nutritional cliff of over- or under- doing it. This is especially handy once you begin the esoteric energy practices and learn that you have greater control over hunger and satiety that you’d realized. Then, having the wisdom of science to anchor you in adequacy is even more important to maintaining physical health.
That’s subtle body nourishment.

Why Bother? Benefits of Energy Practice

When you learn eating meditation techniques you are learning how to turn inward and participate in your body’s guidance systems – you have the option of taking more control – be it breath or eating or even thinking. That’s what all the hoopla is about. If we don’t understand that we are taking the steering wheel of hunger and satiety, it’s easy to under-eat once prana (life force, or energy as in your breath) starts expanding and getting excited. Then, it’s easy to overeat through your inevitable energy contraction.
Many a yogini seems to get into eating trouble when learning these more esoteric practices. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Life is an energy experience. Meditative practices are energy practices, and require that you spend time within your inner landscape – the more time you spend there exploring and curious, the better you will know and be able to navigate that landscape.
By learning how to operate your own subtle body, you can ultimately better navigate the chaos without getting overwhelmed by static. You can operate in a more intentional way.
This sort of practice brings consciousness to your personal energy ecology; the conditions under which you shine, for example.
Energy practice, meditation, mindfulness can help you learn how to improve your digestion – how to basically give your bodies what it needs (time and calm, primarily) to digest properly.

What is the Subtle Body?

In yoga philosophy, the subtle body is the aspect of you that is unseen by the human eye. It includes your thoughts and emotions, the wisdom aspect of you – your intuition, and your energy body.
The subtle body profoundly determines how you feel, react and respond to the world around us. When you learn how to guide your own thoughts, for example, you can literally change your perception of your own life. When you learn to ground your energy body, you can handle the spiral of chaos that the world at times seems to be, rooting in the real rather than swirling away in yet another frenzied tweet.

Food & Yoga Practice

The truth of the matter is that everyone is different – physically but also nutritionally. How well you can perform right after you eat, and the ideal makeup of a meal to fuel your practice is individual. There are, however, guidelines – rules of the road. Ayurveda practitioners say that certain foods create certain energies. Western science has their own version of the same idea – in a very different language. The language of macro and micro nutrition, and meal timing.
Ultimately, the way to figure out what works for you is to do the experiment. Notice how it works for you.
I’ve been thinking about subtle body nourishment and how food and practice interact in preparation for a gathering of souls at Kripalu July 8-11, Sunday through Wednesday morning. If these topics get interest you, consider joining me to practice, explore and learn about what the yogis and Western nutrition has to say about it.
Be well, practice on.

Yoga's East-West Moderation

What (and where) Is Moderation?

In order to lead a reasonably happy, healthful and productive life you need to practice a certain amount of moderation. We all know when we don’t have it. Just what is moderation, and how can you be moderate in our anything-but-moderate world? Moderation seems both out of style – sort of quaint – and our lack of it the reason for so much that ails so many.
Many of us can reel off the basics of a moderate lifestyle: generally sticking to a way of eating rich in fruit, vegetables, whole grains, and lean proteins, things like maintaining a healthy weight, avoiding too much sugar and salt, and working with a nutrition professional if your medical condition necessitates lifestyle change.

Physical activity is another anchor of a moderate lifestyle. National fitness organizations recommend we get at least 30 minutes of moderate (there’s that word again) activity on most if not all days of the week. Yet most Americans are not moving this much.
Definitions and examples of a moderate lifestyle are clear and widely available, but the majority of Americans can’t seem to incorporate it into our daily lives. Cultural norms present moderation as passive, a little boring, and even undesirable, as Oscar Wilde’s famously observes: “Moderation is a fatal thing” and “Nothing succeeds like excess.”
Something one of my agents said, a gal who works with big writers, haunts me to this day. She said not to say that word – moderation. No one wants to talk about that, she insisted. We’re not working together anymore, though she’s an amazing agent, but I am so very clear that I’ll gladly leave some worldly success on the table to insist that we need to relax, mellow out and cultivate the middle path between too much and too little.

Yogic Moderation: Standing in the Fire

Yoga’s philosophical framework of the yamas and niyamas richly and clearly describe the mental framework of a moderate approach to lifestyle. While national health recommendations provide general outlines as to what a moderate lifestyle is, the actual how-to is much harder to find. Yoga gets into the nitty-gritty.
In yoga, moderation is not a passive state easily achieved.
The moderate yoga practitioner is a spiritual warrior constantly challenged by his or her own attachments (things he or she is drawn to, appetites) and aversions (things he or she pushes away from, dislikes). If the practitioner can begin to attenuate his or her appetites and dislikes through following the yamas and niyamas, and direct his or her passion (tapas) toward self-study(svadhyaya) or self-care, a more moderate lifestyle may be achieved, and his or her spiritual journey will proceed unencumbered. This cognitive restructuring, the re-weaving of your thinking process, is a difficult undertaking. In yoga it is sometimes referred to as “standing in the fire” between the two poles of attachment and aversion. Or, standing in the middle ground between too much and too little.

Modern yoga culture itself, unfortunately, is not immune to duplicity. With the tremendous gain in popularity of the practice and resultant explosion of commercial yoga endeavors, there is a booming yoga media culture that implies that if you purchase certain yoga products you will easily find unending bliss, happiness, and a perfect yoga butt.
In these image-pitches there is no hint of the hours of sadhana (practice) or the years of self-development necessary for the average practitioner to reach the states of bliss and physical perfection being peddled. This body-ism of getting overly attached to our physical appearance is prevalent in the yoga world (and is one reason we are seeing a jump in eating disorders in some yoga communities), but it is simply another distraction blocking your path to becoming a fully aware human. Look for teachers and practices that focus more on feeling great in the body you have right now, as opposed to practices and teachers encouraging you to aim for something you are not.

Enjoy your fit (or imperfectly fit) body, your vibrant (or somewhat less than vibrant) energy, but remember not to take it too seriously. The journey is the practice, and there is no goal or destination other than being in the present moment in practice and in life.

You are already there, perfect in your imperfections, regardless of your brand of yoga pants.
Dive into the experience of yogic moderation and how that ties into nutrition at my upcoming Kripalu weekend, Every Bite Is Divine.
Here are a couple other articles on similar topics you may enjoy:
How Mindful Presence Transforms
What Is Yoga Therapy?

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