4 Ways yoga can help you to balance your emotions at Christmas time

Living our everyday life feeling balanced emotionally requires effort and awareness. Although Christmas can be a time of fun and frivolities it may also be stressful and full of anxiety. Yoga can help you steer yourself through this time in a calm and collected way. Learn 4 ways Yoga can help you balance your emotions at Christmas time.

People often ask me how yoga helps you to balance emotionally so I decided to write this blog to show you how to stay emotionally balanced using yoga, relaxation, and meditation. Often it can be one thing that ‘triggers’ us during the day and it stays with us and as we think about it more and give it the energy it grows into something else. This then seems to affect other areas of our day and before you know it you’re in a place that feels uncomfortable but you are not sure why.

Here are 4 tips on how yoga can help balance your emotions and thoughts during the festive season.

1. Recognising the feelings and behaviours you feel when you have stopped taking enough care of yourself such as becoming too busy, doing many things but none of them well, feeling an inner agitation or anxiety and resisting relaxing or your usual self-care practices. All of these feelings are fairly common over Christmas. A yoga class can help you to shift unhealthy, unsupportive emotions into constructive and helpful ones.

Practical Yoga Tip No. 1:

Initially, we need to work out why we move from being emotionally balanced to unbalanced. Can you identify something that has sent you into a downward spiral? The good news is it’s a perfectly normal human behaviour and there is definitely something we can do about it.

Catch the initial ‘trigger’ as it happens or recognise as close to the time as you can. This is a skill and comes with practice. From my experience of practicing yoga and meditation regularly, I find I am able to step back from situations and become an observer as it happens and remain self-aware in the moment.

From this space I can choose my response instead of simply reacting from an unconscious space (as in you just blurt something out and wish you hadn’t – we’ve all done it!). practicing mindfulness in your yoga practice enables you to transfer this skill into your everyday life so you can ‘catch’ the emotional upset as it happens.

2. Turn your path back towards self-care with some easy to implement 10-minute lessons to begin to build your self-care momentum. Work up to longer gentle yoga for emotional balance, relaxation and guided meditations once this momentum builds. 

Practical Yoga Tip No.2:

How to respond instead of react. When you notice you are annoyed or upset by someone I invite you to simply notice the feeling, in the same way as you would notice feelings in your body and mind in your yoga, relaxation or meditation practice. This really is a skill. Whenever you do manage to notice it, allow yourself to tune into your breath.

If this is a work situation or a family gathering, you may want to go to a quiet place for a couple of minutes. There’s a wonderful technique called Emotional Freedom Technique which works with specific acupressure points. I always go the tapping the edge of my hand a cm or two up from the little finger. 

It’s like a little bit of magic. In Yoga we practice breath awareness. As you begin to tap this point on the side of your hand use statements such as “Even though, I feel…/think…./believe….at this time I deeply and completely love and accept myself”. Keep tapping until you feel a lovely sense of calm wash through your body. Take your time, let go of expectation. Accept the feelings you find knowing it is ok to feel this way. Let the feelings have space to be there and breath. 

3. Follow a process to rebalance your nervous system, release fear and resistance and begin to create more time, space and perspective in your daily experience. Balance the ups and downs of your emotions & bring you back to your energised and positive self, connect to your relationships in a fulfilling way and feel clear and confident in your day to day life.

Practical Yoga Tip No.3:

Specific yoga postures to balance your nervous system.In our yoga classes I take you through various postures which specifically work with the nervous system. In all yoga practices, there are postures which are used to energise, cleanse, calm and uplift you emotionally.

In my yoga Classes, there is a specific process within each class to gently start to engage with your parasympathetic nervous system (the part of our autonomic nervous system which helps us relax and restore our energy and vitality – and many other benefits). I have put these together in a ‘Yoga for Emotional Balance and Self-Care E-Workshop which is perfect for use over the coming weeks as we move into the holiday period.

If you need some tips and a push to get onto your yoga mat over this time watch our video How to stop the Cycle of Busyness.  

How to stop the cycle of busyness
How to stop the cycle of busyness

4. Find resources which support and nourish you. I’m a big fan of using other people’s resources that help me with ease rather than me having to do all the work myself. If I’m tired I’m much less likely to do something for myself whereas if I can just play something, listen to follow then I’m much more likely to nourish myself.

Practical Yoga Tip No.4

Get a digital copy of our Yoga for Emotional Balance and Self-Care Course

What’s included in the online workshop?

The online workshop includes 9 online lessons in total including: A 20-minute Presentation on the Rebalancing your Emotions and Upgrading your Self Care, 4 Gentle online Yoga lessons for emotional balance ranging from 20 minutes to one-hour classes, a breathing exercise (pranayama), 2 online guided relaxations, an online meditation and bonus videos and resources. 

Each lesson covers a specific aspect of how your yoga practice supports your emotional health from:

* Yoga postures to balance your emotions & balance your nervous system Yoga to address common emotional states such as irritability, restlessness, depression, anxiety, sadness, and stress

* Letting go of emotions and resistance to letting go

* Using your yoga practice as a deep self-care process and learn how to process your emotions through yoga, relaxation, and meditation

* Developing your confidence

* Specific pranayama, meditation, and relaxations

* Develop your own personalised self-care plan

* Bonus resources and tools for creating emotional balance ensuring you maintain your self-care in an easy and manageable way.

* This resource is sent as an electronic PDF file and all courses are yours forever more once purchased. 

Additional benefits my students have experienced from this workshop:

 

* “I feel put back together again physically from the yoga sessions. My whole body feels better”

* “Time, space and prompts to take better care of me & those around me”

* “Relaxation, time to breath and think, time to be just me”

* “A sense of well-being, clarity & motivation to self-care”

* “Space for nourishment for my soul”

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