3 Tips for Happy, Stress Free Holidays

“3 Tips for Happy, Stress Free Holidays” reprinted with permission from Dr. John Douillard, DC ©

The holidays are not always full of joy and good tidings!

While we all have the best intentions, often the holidays are a reminder of old emotional traumas or the loved ones who you can’t be with us.

In addition, the holidays often bring:

• a lot more work
• shopping
• financial stress
• entertaining
• and social obligations

To cope, we might be tempted to indulge or over-indulge in some holiday sweets or a few drinks, and soon you realize the pounds are back, you are not digesting right, and perhaps more stressed than ever!

If your holiday train has run away from you, let me offer three simple tips that I personally use to stay on track and create happy, stress free holidays.

(Post-holidays too; these tips are helpful anytime!)

Simply put:

1. When we are stressed out, the brain overworks.
2. Thoughts become incessant, and the circulation and oxygenation to the brain become compromised.
3. Without adequate oxygenation to the brain, we may become nervous, anxious, and feel unable to cope.

Stress Free Holidays Tip #1: The One Minute Meditation

The One Minute Meditation literally pumps oxygen into the brain, delivering quick and effective relief for your stress.

It consists of 30 seconds of fast—but deep—nasal breathing that literally pumps more oxygen into the brain, followed by 30 seconds of sitting still with the eyes closed.

You can do it every time you get in and out of your car, at the office, first thing in the morning and before bed.

Try it and see how it works for you; it just takes a minute.

How it works:

There are peptides that carry emotions that are concentrated along the respiratory tract.

The holidays are often the time when we rub up against old toxic emotional peptides that can literally lodge deep within the cells altering the function of the immune, nervous and endocrine systems.

Breathing is considered one of the ways to access and reset the emotions, which block what researchers are now calling the body’s information network (1).

How it’s done:

Sit up straight and comfortably in your chair. For 30 seconds, do bellows breathing as deep in and as deep out as you can. Follow this with 30 seconds of sitting still in silence, breathing through an ujjayi or ocean breath.

Please watch my One Minute Meditation video, below, for a demonstration of how to do the breathing correctly for maximum results.

Send it to a friend or family member to help keep them on the right track this holiday, and you can remind each other of this quick tip when you feel overwhelmed.

Stress Free Holidays Tip #2: Respect Your Digestion

I’d say the second biggest complaint I hear around the holidays goes something like,

“My eating habits are out of control! I am bloated, gaining weight, and I can’t stop eating!”

In the winter, we turn up the heat in our homes.

In the same way, the body is trying to increase the digestive fire so it can process the heavier, richer, more insulating proteins and fats of the winter harvest.

The key is to make sure you are turning on the digestive fire, rather than turning it off, with those yummy holiday foods.

Here’s how:

• Eat meals, not snacks. It is easy to skip meals this time of year. Snacks cause our blood sugar to crash and then we start pigging out on holiday junk food that is extremely hard to digest and puts the digestive fire out.

• Drink a big glass of water 15 minutes before your meal. This turns on the digestive fire.

• Give yourself permission to have that holiday sweet, just make it part of a meal!

Quick digestive fire starter:

1. Let’s say you are at a restaurant or a holiday gathering about to eat a late or heavy meal and you are concerned that it will bloat you or just not digest well.
2. Mix 1/8 tsp of salt and 1/8 tsp of black pepper in a spoon.
3. Order water with lemon (preferably without ice, keeping the water room temperature or warm).
4. Add the salt and pepper mixture and take this “digestive starter” before you order.
5. By the time your food arrives your digestive fire will be ready to cook that holiday meal!*

I recommend two digestive formulas during the holidays:

1. Warm Digest for the digestive fire, and
2. Beet Cleanse for the gallbladder (which stores bile, which is necessary for the digestion of fats) and pancreas (which produces digestive enzymes).

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Stress Free Holidays Tip #3: Stress Support

Studies have shown that 95% of the body’s serotonin is produced in the gut, with only 5% produced in the brain (2).

This proves something I think we all intuitively know: that the digestive system is where stress lands first.

In fact, the gut receives the stress message, processes it, and then manufactures and delivers the appropriate response to the rest of the body.

This is all done via its own completely independent nervous system called the Enteric Nervous System (ENS), which some call the “second brain.”

Here are some examples of the stress-digestion link:

• Why do folks get constipated when they travel?
• What is the most common cause of heartburn, ulcers, and indigestion?
• What is the most common cause of a tummy ache for kids?
• What is the cause of Irritable Bowel Syndrome?
• What chemically tells the body to store fat and gain weight?
• What causes hypoglycemia and low blood sugar?

Yep, the answer to all of these can be summed up in one word: STRESS.

Stress impacts the intestinal wall, causing the body to manufacture and secrete the appropriate stress–responding neurotransmitter (such as serotonin or dopamine) to the Central Nervous System (CNS) and, subsequently, to the appropriate organ system.

In excess, these neurotransmitters cause insomnia, anxiety, depression, irritability, and many other ailments—amazing!

For stress and nervous system support, I recommend:

Brahmi (Cantella asiatica).*

It is unique because it supports the nervous system and the gut by relaxing the stress response in the gut while boosting the resiliency of the nervous system to handle stress.*

Recent research has shown Brahmi’s ability to support the health of the intestinal mucosa and protect against premature wrinkles!

Yes, it is one herb that supports both the inner and outer skin while boosting nervous system resiliency.

If the holiday stress is waxing and your digestive strength is waning, put these three very simple but effective strategies to work for you!

MEMBER CONTENT: Related Everyday Practices

More Stress Free Holidays Support

For a potent post-holiday reset, I developed a cleanse, called our Lighten Up! New Year Cleanse.

As I mentioned in this article, the holidays can be tough times – tough on the waistline, with lots of extra stress and, for some, emotional roller-coasters.

Interestingly, we often make resolutions to change during these tough times.

Perhaps you went home for the holidays to visit your parents only to find yourself acting like a four year old again.

Frustrated emotionally, we eat, drink and emotionally check out.

Sadly, according to Time Magazine most folks don’t succeed at sticking with their resolutions – thus the Lighten Up! Cleanse.

This cleanse is as much a reset for digestion and a detox as it is an emotional cleanse.

The goal:

To make some resolutions during a proper cleanse when the toxic emotions are being released out of the fat cells.

It is now well documented, by research done at NIH (National Institute of Health), that toxic emotions are carried by small proteins called peptides and stored throughout the body (3).

This is a great time to free up these old emotions, cleanse, lose weight and stick to your desire to make transformational change and “Lighten Up” this January.

You can learn more about Lighten Up! here.

Have a safe and happy stress free holidays!

Sources

1,3. Pert, Candace. The Molecules of Emotion. Simon and Schuster. 1997
2. Gershon, Michael D. The Second Brain. Harper, 2003.

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