8 Natural ways to lift your spirits
As much as I love the holiday season, the part of my brain that struggles to stay present knows that it will inevitably be followed by an extremely long winter.
And that knowledge always threatens to dampen my spirits a little.
I know I’m not alone and having reasons to struggle at this time of year.
There could be physical, mental or emotional aspects impacting your moods and energy levels.
For some people, I want to honor that the holidays are never easy. Maybe you’re one of those people or maybe it’s a particular year that has brought about something that is making this specific holiday season hard for you. If so, I’m sorry and I’m holding space for you.
This time of year also tends to bring a lot of additional social events, parties and commitments asking us to expend energy and give lots of energy outward, which can be depleting for anyone and potentially especially depleting for someone who is more of an introvert or doesn’t thrive in larger social gatherings.
In addition to the extra social requests on our time and energy, we’re also wrapping up the calendar year, which tends to bring with it a lot of end of year deadlines and more demands on our time personally and through work related to our goals or projects we’ve committed to completing before year end.
All of these added asks on our energy and reserves goes in complete opposition to the natural energy of where we are in the current cycle of the year, which gives us the shortest days and least amount of light. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve spoken to in the last couple of weeks who are generally just feeling really tired and exhausted all the time. Or somewhat apathetic and unmotivated.
Instead of letting all of the above be reasons to get me down this year, I’ve decided to go about it a little differently.
Every morning before I meditate I do a check in on the app I use. It asks me how I’m feeling for the day with the options of great, good, ok, bad and awful. After a few weeks of check-ins I decided that I wanted to live into what I wanted for the day, so if I was feeling okay I would put good and if I was feeling good I would put great. And within 1 week I found that I was putting great everyday and truly believing that that was true.
I’ve chosen to lean in to the lack of light and have temporarily released my boundaries around bedtime and wake up time, allowed myself to incorporate naps and I am focused on prioritizing extra self-care above anything else on my to do list.
So far, it’s allowed me to move through this holiday season with a lot of energy, joy and excitement.
Here are 8 Natural Ways to Lift Your Spirits:
Ha smiling + Breathing: Shrug your shoulders up to your ears and take an inhale as you smile. Exhale and drop your shoulders letting out a ha sound, like you're laughing.
Shaking: Put on a song and shake through each part of your body one part at a time: right leg, left leg, hips, abdomen, heart, arms and shoulders. End by shaking everything all at once
Make Time For Fun: Allow time to do something that you would describe as truly fun (not just enjoyable). If you're struggling to define what would be fun, ask your inner child what it would like to do.
Ask, “What’s Going Well Right Now?”: Rewire the brain away from its natural tendency to focus on what's NOT working and instead focus on the things that ARE working in your life.
Hold Lung 7 Point: Place your fingers of one hand on the inner wrist on the thumb side of the opposite wrist. Opens up the chest and helps you breathe out negativity as well as supporting the energy of loving more deeply.
Massage Liver 3 Point: Rub the top of your foot between your big toe and your second toe. Helps with letting go of stress or any kind of tension that’s settled in the body.
Kidney Point Tapping: Tap fingers underneath the collarbones to help stimulate kidneys and support processing food, drink, hormones and emotions.
Adrenal Gland Point Tapping: Tap fingers one inch up from your navel and two inches out to either side to help stimulate adrenal glands and regulate energy levels.
