Managing Holiday Stress

Allow Lou to guide you through a peaceful, insightful, and effective meditation to help relieve holiday stress and find a place of calm. This short practice will help you create a new relationship with your stress, enabling you to be able to handle challenging times, more skillfully.

Transcript

Let's go ahead and get started and find a comfortable seat.

If you're newer to the practice,

I'd recommend sitting upright on a chair with the feet flat on the ground,

Hands resting on your thighs,

And seeing if you can keep an erect spine,

Lifting your chest towards the ceiling,

And relaxing your shoulder blades down the back.

Relaxing the belly,

Allowing the lower jaw to release from the upper jaw,

And bringing the eyes to close if they aren't already.

We're going to begin by just noticing our breathing.

Begin by noticing the feeling of the breath as it passes in through the nose,

And feeling the breath move back out.

On each inhale,

It's almost as if your body rises,

And on each exhale,

It falls.

Take a few moments to find that rhythm of your breath.

Nothing else to do.

Simply see if we can note our breath in and breath out.

On each inhale,

You might feel the belly and the ribs and the chest.

You might feel everything expand.

On each exhale,

I'd like you to see if you can release a little bit more.

Feel your tailbone rooting a little bit further down into your chair or to your cushion.

Allow your hands to rest a little bit more gently.

On each exhale,

Allowing the weight of your body to surrender.

If this is a beginning practice for you,

Or if it's a more evolved practice for you,

Thoughts are always going to pop in.

It's the nature of our minds.

We're not trying to stop them.

We're not trying to control our minds in meditation.

We're just allowing everything to be there.

All we're working on doing is seeing if we can just catch ourselves,

Become mindful that we have been thinking,

And just come back to our breath.

We're going to work on,

Through this meditation,

To manage the stress that can come up during this holiday season.

Now,

If you've listened to any of my other meditations,

The format is going to be similar to my practice on calming anxiety,

In that we're going to understand what stress is trying to do for us.

The stress that we feel just wants us to be safe.

It maybe triggers stress so we can pull back.

We feel stressful or worried because we care about our performance or how we do for anything in our future,

Or how we do when we meet certain family members or we prepare dinner.

We're going to work with that.

First,

I'd like you to bring to mind something that is stressing you out,

Something you feel that you might be stressed out.

We can almost get anxiety about future stress.

If you can imagine that situation,

Maybe it's meeting a certain relative,

Maybe it's the endless list of shopping and planning and preparing.

See if you can notice where in your body you feel this the most.

Is it in your head,

Your neck,

Your belly,

Maybe it's in your hips?

Maybe it's a part of your body where you actually can feel the stressful situation.

It may just be an emotion as well,

It might just be the emotion of stress.

See if we can just again use our breath to not feel like we need to change it.

Again,

Let's see if we can just follow the breath in and the breath out and just relax into it.

Often we create more stress when we're stressed because we feel like we shouldn't be stressed.

We need to run away from it,

Need to fix it.

But a different way to approach it would be to allow it to be there and just sit with it.

Breathe into it.

And often that is what may change our relationship to it.

It might just ease our stress a little bit.

See if you can take a few more breaths,

Just relaxing and allowing it to be.

Let's take a nice deep breath in and let it out.

We've worked with the stress in our body.

Let's now see if we can move the stress out of our body.

I'd like you to visualize a cloud of energy that you're moving the stress just outside of your body.

It's almost like you're taking all the things and the emotions,

The stories,

And seeing if you can take that from in your mind or in your chest and just move it right in front of you.

Maybe you can imagine a dark cloud that's holding all of these feelings or thoughts.

Once you have that,

I'd like you to take another good breath in.

I'd like you to thank all of these stressors for what they're really trying to do,

What their intention is.

They want to keep you safe,

Free from harm.

They want you to do a good job.

They want you to live up to certain expectations that you feel you need to live up to.

We're going to send our stress gratitude for what it really intends for us.

Once we've said thank you,

We're going to let our stress know that it is no longer needed.

We're going to thank and we're going to let go,

Saying thank you,

But you know it's time that you go on your way.

With each breath out,

I'd like you to imagine that cloud of smoke starting to dissipate.

Maybe you can see it as rain falling down to the ground.

Maybe repeating in your mind's eye or repeating to yourself silently,

Everything is going to work out just fine.

I'm going to be okay and I know that I'm going to get through any challenges that these holidays bring my way.

Follow your breath,

Allowing all of those worries or stresses to just melt away.

Repeating,

I know that everything is going to be just fine.

Because deep down,

You do know that.

It always is.

Let's take one more clearing,

Deep breath in and we're going to let that all out.

Really nice.

We're going to come back into our bodies.

Feel the connection of your hands and your thighs.

Start to come back to feel the connection of your tailbone on your cushion or your chair.

Then sitting here for another moment.

Whenever you feel ready to come back,

You can start to open your eyes and come back into your room.

Thank you for allowing me to guide you.

May you find ease,

Peace,

And joy as you move through this holiday season.

Much love.

Reviews

Excellent… the pain and tightness left my body…I will be listening every day…throughout the holidays🎄💕🎄

Great! Thanks for sharing. I felt so relaxed after participating.

Great technique, this one resonated with me and helped set down some of the stress I feel over holiday obligations.

Just what i needed. Christmas time always stresses me out and meditating helps. This was a great one

Wow
Totally helpful!!!

Perfect calm in the middle of the beautiful chaos.

Helpful thank you

just perfect. Really resonated with me. Thank you! 🌿🍁🌈

Well paced, peaceful, and helpful. Thank you 🙏🏻

Thank you! A very grounding meditation for the festive seaaon.

This was a very helpful guided meditation, for the holiday season & all year through.

Thank you 🙏🏼 happy holidays 🎄

Perfect to quickly ease a stressful mind in these busy days

So perfect, exactly what the ego & spirit both needed. Thank you 💚🕉

I need this on a bumper sticker, coffee cup,
Thank for reminding me🙏🏻Namaste❤️🎄

Lou’s meditations for anxiety have been a great help for me. I always feel blessed and centered after listening. Thanks so much.

Thank you! This was very helpful. Bookmarked to listen again. Namasté! 🙏😊💕