Practice Mindfulness to Ease Stress During the Holidays

Ada, MN — The holiday season can be a very stressful time a year, whether you’re worried about finances, have social anxiety issues, or worried about cooking. However, practicing mindfulness can help you relieve some of that stress by teaching you to live in the moment. According to Mayo Clinic, mindfulness is a type of meditation in which you focus on being intensely aware of what you’re sensing and feeling in the moment, without interpretation or judgment. Practicing mindfulness involves breathing methods, guided imagery, and other practices to relax the body and mind and help reduce stress.

Spending too much time planning, problem-solving, daydreaming, or thinking negative or random thoughts can be draining. It can also make you more likely to experience stress, anxiety and symptoms of depression. Practicing mindfulness exercises can help you direct your attention away from this kind of thinking and engage with the world around you.

Kristy Rott with Norman-Mahnomen Public Health recently shared some ways you can practice mindfulness to reduce stress this Holiday season.

Rott also strongly encourages taking a break from your electronics and taking some time reconnect with others or yourself if need be.

A more structured form of mindfulness is meditation. Meditation has been studied in many clinical trials. The overall evidence supports the effectiveness of meditation for various conditions, including Stress, Anxiety, Pain, Depression, Insomnia, and high blood pressure (hypertension)

Preliminary research indicates that meditation can also help people with asthma and fibromyalgia.

Meditation can help you experience thoughts and emotions with greater balance and acceptance. Meditation also has been shown to Improve attention, Decrease job burnout, and Improve sleep.