Dec 2019 - Holiday Equilibrium
/
PHOTO CREDIT: BRUCE MARS ON PIXEL.COM
Traversing the stretch from Thanksgiving to New Year always seems to challenge my equilibrium no matter how resolute I am. With the short days and long nights, my natural inclination to be quiet and reflective competes with the cultural expectation to be out and about. Each year, I look for body-wise ways to support my inner-outer balance so I don’t end up in deficit by the end of the year. Of course, the ultimate goal is to participate in the festivities and create time to be quiet and reflective.
The holiday season makes this a complicated calibration. Take on too much and you feel overwhelmed. Get snagged by emotional upset (yours/ theirs) and you go off on a tangent. Over-indulge and you feel sluggish. Skimp on rest and you feel depleted. If you keep pushing anyway, all you have left is autopilot. Instead of collecting negatives this year, how about letting your smart body help you find a graceful balance?
With all the added shopping, baking, wrapping, feasting, partying, and so forth, your energy expenditure increases considerably. Consciously creating more opportunities to take a break will replenish the stores. Whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert, maintaining equilibrium is essential for health and happiness. Here are some body-centered ways to make sure this happens.
Be in touch. Regardless of how much you pare it down, this is a crazy busy time of year. Being in touch means paying attention and taking measures to restore the balance.
When you feel tension or fatigue, create time for a cup of tea or a hot bath to replenish your energy.
When you feel over-stimulated, a few minutes of focused breathing can help you reboot.
When you feel distracted or out of touch, check in to the left-right, front-back grounding of your feet to return to present time.
When you feel frazzled by deadlines or endless lists, let your eyes wander to the natural world for some perspective. Or, better, yet, take a nature-focused walk.
Social resiliency. No matter how gregarious your personality is, there are times when you just want to be at home and quiet. Including some down time before and after events will help sustain your social resiliency.
When your social calendar has back to back events, intentional interludes offer a moment to shift gears.
When too much is on the agenda, take a breather. Literally, empty mental & emotional content with each exhale and fill up with renewed energy with each inhale. It works!
When you’ve committed to being out and you really feel like being in, give yourself permission to show up, be pleasant and leave early. Some people call this the Irish Good-bye; my son-in-law calls it the French Exit.
Deep rest. In this busy season, getting a good night’s sleep increases your stamina for the next day. But, to ensure deep body-mind-spirit rest, you need to know how to turn it all off. From your body’s point of view, accumulated mental & emotional impressions register as congestion. In order to let it go, you need to let it flow.
When you locate places of turmoil or tension in your body, soften, shake, or brush them off.
When you feel stuck or blocked, imagine a cleansing stream of pure light flowing through.
When the word images just won’t stop, anchor your awareness at the bottom of the exhale, pause, and let the inhale transmute the effluvia. Repeat until you cast off to sleep.
Incorporating these small practices in your daily routine will help you maintain equilibrium through the holiday season. A shift of awareness and bit of intention makes the difference between having a good time and getting strung out. This year, let’s all cruise to the new year with good energy to spare!
****************************
Give the gift of Body Wisdom to all the people on your list who’d appreciate finding out more about radiant health and increasing intimacy, intuition and spiritual awareness.
“Ann Brode gives the body its due by showing how it can function as a source of wisdom and strength in total harmony with the mind. Brode’s perspective is long overdue, offering a holistic, balanced view of what it means to be human.”
— Larry Dossey MD
Available at Chaucers and Tecolote in Santa Barbara and at Amazon online.