How to Manage Holiday Stressors With a Yoga Practice
If it’s the most wonderful time of the year, then why do we often feel so anxious and overwhelmed?
The simple reason… Christmas stress! Holiday stressors take a toll on our health and prevent us from fully enjoying the sweetness of the season.
Learning healthy ways to cope with these stressors boosts immunity and improves your health mentally, emotionally, and physically. There are many strategies for managing stress like a healthy diet, proper rest, supportive community, and exercise.
Yoga for wellbeing is a cheap, simple, accessible, and effective way to manage Christmas stress and promote relaxation. Keep reading to learn how to manage holiday stress with simple yoga practices.
Identifying Holiday Stressors: Why is the Most Wonderful Time of Year More Stressful?
Stressor (noun): a stimulus that causes stress. Merriam Webster Dictionary
What is a holiday stressor?
Stress can be a psychological and/or physiological response to a perceived threat, challenge, or demand. A holiday stressor, then, is a stimulus or event related to the holiday season that triggers a stress response.
These triggers can be internal (thoughts or feelings) or external (people or events). The holiday season can hold many stressors for us. Even too many “good things” can often lead to stress.
Some examples of holiday stressors include:
- Holiday planning… pressure to meet expectations (yours and others)
- Celebrations… over-booked schedules
- Family gatherings… challenging relational dynamics
- Gift giving… financial stress & need to find the perfect gift
- Travel… interrupted routines
- Community… or lack of authentic community (which leads to loneliness)
Identifying your specific holiday stressors is the first step in managing Christmas stress. Once you can identify your triggers, you can implement coping strategies to manage stress such as setting good boundaries, simplifying plans, seeking support, and implementing self-care practices like healthy eating, adequate rest, and yoga for wellbeing.
The Impact of Stress on Your Health
Stress can have a devastating effect on your health. Chronic stress is linked to the six leading causes of death including heart disease, cancer, lung ailments, accidents, cirrhosis of the liver and suicide. Unmanaged stress affects almost every system in your body and contributes to a wide range of physical and mental health issues including but not limited to:
- Cardiovascular problems
- Weakened immune system
- Digestive issues
- Mental health issues (including anxiety, depression, and insomnia)
- Weight Gain
- Muscle tension & chronic pain conditions
- Skin problems
- Impaired cognitive function
While holiday stressors themselves can’t hurt us, the way that we respond to these stressors can affect our bodies and minds positively or negatively. Learning to manage Christmas stress not only protects our long-term health but can help us to focus on the deeper and true meaning of the season.
How to Use Yoga to Manage Christmas Stress
How can yoga help us to navigate holiday stressors?
Yoga is a holistic practice that combines embodiment, postures, breathwork, and meditation which has been scientifically proven to reduce the effects of stress and tension while at the same time creating an overall sense of calm and peace. Yoga for wellbeing helps to manage Christmas stress through:
Embodiment & postures: Physical yoga practices strengthen and stretch the muscles, tone the nervous system, stabilize the mind, and produce an overall state of relaxation.
Breathwork: The slow and deliberate breath practices of yoga trigger the body’s relaxation response, calming the nervous system, reducing stress hormones and promoting the production of “feel good” hormones like serotonin.
Meditation: Yoga grounds us in the present moment, and anxiety associated with thoughts of the future or the past begins to fade away. Research shows that a yoga routine before bed can help prepare our bodies to fall asleep and stay asleep.
In previous blog posts, I have written about the effects of yoga on mental and physical health including my favorite postures of yoga for wellbeing, and 3 breathwork techniques to help you manage stress.
Effects of Yoga on Mental and Physical Health
The combination of embodiment practices, breathwork, and meditation has a synergistic effect on our health. Many studies have found the positive effects of yoga on mental and physical health to include:
- Promoting relaxation response
- Reducing & regulating stress hormones
- Regulating the nervous system
- Strengthening the Mind-Body Connection
- Improving Sleep
- Enhancing mental clarity
Yoga helps to manage the negative effects of stress. Regular practice leads to increased resilience, better coping strategies, and an overall sense of relaxation and well-being. Yoga is a holistic practice, addressing the health of our whole person—body, mind, AND our often overlooked spiritual nature.
Reclaim the Sacredness of the Season
The Christmas season is filled with holiday stressors… gifts to buy, trees to decorate, family gatherings to attend, travels to plan, and parties to enjoy.
For Christians, the season of Advent, a time in the Church calendar dedicated to the preparation and hopeful anticipation of the coming of Jesus, is often overshadowed by consumerism and overwhelmed by Christmas stress.
Sadly, the time of year that should be the easiest for Christians to focus on Jesus is now sometimes the hardest…
During the holiday season, many Christians long to shift their focus from superficial and commercial distractions to the deeper meanings of Christmas found in Jesus Christ.
The practice of yoga can help Christians navigate Christmas stress while also reorienting their hearts and minds toward Jesus!
Yoga is more than just physical postures or a mental exercise. It is a spiritual practice that is meant to help us cultivate an awareness of our spiritual nature. Yoga helps us to gather all aspects of ourselves together in order to connect and commune with our Creator.
Christ-centered yoga can help Christians reclaim the sacredness of the season.
During Advent and the Christmas season, Christians meditate on the coming of Jesus and celebrate His birth; God in the flesh…
During the holiday season, yoga can help Christians to draw near to God the way that He drew near to us in Christ… through the flesh. The practice teaches us to awaken to the very real presence of God right here, right now. Emmanuel, God with us…
As we step off of our mats, we are invited to walk through the holidays with Jesus, remembering his birth and preparing room for the birth of Christ even now, in our hearts and in our minds.
Yoga for Holidays Stressors and Beyond: FREE Resources
Wanna learn more about how yoga can help you to draw near to God and reclaim the sacredness of the holiday season? Check out more free yoga resources here.
