How are you feeling this holiday season? Although this time of year can bring joy and celebration, there can also be stress. How is your nervous system handling the extra activity, the pressure of shopping for the “right” gift, or preparing to see family or old friends?
A resilient system is one that can adapt and handle stress and change. We are inherently resilient until the number of stressors overwhelms our natural adaptive response and we surpass the threshold beyond what our nervous system is prepared to manage effectively.
When our nervous system is overwhelmed, we can feel:
- reactive at mild triggers
- frozen and unable to act, or feel our wheels are spinning out of control
- overall discontent, not seeing the joy in life
- heart palpitations or other physical sensation of anxiety
- illness
How to build resilience this holiday:
- Pause in the spaces. Many of us are working with the story that there is not enough time, which causes stress. Life creates space, we just have to be aware of it and savor it, like waiting for the light to turn or waiting in line. In as little as one minute, we can help reset our nervous system.
- Try it now: Place your attention on your body, notice your feet touching the earth, and take a few intentional breaths. Imagine your nervous system is a fiddlehead fern, visualize your body relaxing and unfurling like the fronds of the fern. Start with your head and work down. This is a powerful way of creating space in 30 seconds.
- Don’t reinforce the old stories. These old repetitive stories we play in our head actually result in a biochemical response that can negatively affect our nervous system. Have you notice these changes when you think of a certain old story: posture slackens, your breath becomes shallow, tightness in various places in your body. When a story arises, if we can let go of the mental chatter and stick to the feelings behind the story, it no longer has power. As we feel what is coming up, it is important to use our breath as an anchor for what is coming up. If you can stick with the feeling, even though it’s uncomfortable, the energy behind it can move through us and the charge begins to dissipate. Over time, that old story has less effect on us and can no longer wreak havoc on our nervous system. Through this process, you have rewired your nervous system and have become more resilient!
- REST! It helps to heal our body and resets our nervous system. It can be hard to slow down this time of year, but claim it when you can! Winter is the season to rest, restore, and nourish so we can create beauty in the spring.
WHY commit to this? Once we have resilience in body, mind, and spirit, we can create the life we are excited to wake up to each day. We move from surviving to thriving, enabling us to create beauty in this world and be at peace.
