5 tips for gaining real rest over the holidays, according to an expert

Implementing a regular meditation practice can provide year-round benefits in managing stress, improving mood, and boosting energy. Photo / 123rf

You’re likely to be coming to the end of a long, busy and stressful year. You may be hanging on by a thread for the holidays. If you want to return to work or to start the year truly rejuvenated and refreshed, here are my top tips:

Don’t overschedule the holiday break

It can be tempting, on any holiday, to try to see as many friends/whānau as possible, to fill the days with activities and ensure the kids are kept busy. But throughout the year, what so often creates stress (and fatigue) is all the rushing around and the number of demands. Allow yourself and your tamariki some downtime in between events, to simply be and to let go of that stress chemistry from rushing. It’s very restorative and you don’t have to be on the go all the time.

Create space for play

Play is joyful and it can also trigger the opposite biochemistry to that of stress – ‘fight and flight’ chemistry vs ‘stay and play’ chemistry. It’s when our body feels safe to slow down, that we can access play. When we can do that, it can likewise let our body know it’s safe to let go of stress. When our body’s habituated to stress it can be harder to allow ourselves to play – we might still feel we need to do something that equals productivity – running, exercising, ‘getting things done.’ Play doesn’t have an outcome, it doesn’t produce, but it is joyful, light and restores our inner vibrancy.

Meditate

Meditation is hugely restorative and the holiday break can be a great time to catch up on rest and to prepare for another busy year. Vedic Meditation for example (the style I practise and teach), has a rest state deeper than sleep. This allows the body to release fatigue and gain a boost in energy, but also to release stress at an accelerated rate. Amid the social and family occasions, make some time to restore your nervous system in a deep way. If you’ve found meditation difficult (hard to sit still, busy mind, ineffective), then it might be worthwhile investing in learning with a qualified teacher so you can embed an effortless, effective method to release stress.

Prioritise sleep

As elusive as sleep often is when we’re stressed, it is the primary way our nervous systems restore and release stress, not to mention the important essential biological processes that take place during the key hours of sleep – such as removing toxins from the brain, cellular repair, storing of new information, releasing proteins and hormones and reorganising the nervous system. Sleep is our easiest pathway to boost mood, energy, our capacity to adapt, concentrate and focus. If sleep has been patchy, the holidays are a good time to prioritise it. Given that there will no doubt be some summer celebrating (and that will likely impact or impair sleep), it’s worth ensuring there are some days in between when we allow the body to reset. Or at the very least, take some time before returning to work to allow the system to reset. The key hours of sleep where the bulk of our restorative biological processes take place and we reset our circadian rhythm are 10pm-2am, so it’s a good idea to ensure there are some nights where you’re asleep during those times. It’s also easier for us to get to sleep before 10pm than it is afterwards, so some early nights are key.

Implement an ongoing meditation practice to take that rest into the year outside of the holidays

Whilst it’s great to use the holidays to catch up on sleep and allow the nervous system to reset, the reality is that the few holidays we take a year aren’t enough for us to completely restore and offset the incoming stress from the day-to-day demands and pressures we face outside of those times. I recommend finding a practice or technique that you can do easily and embedding it into your daily routine so you have a means for offsetting incoming stress, releasing fatigue and boosting mood, energy and the immune system year-round. We can have more access to our ‘holiday self’, or the more relaxed and adaptable version of ourselves year-round. We deserve to feel good, not just during the holidays. Make 2024 the year you take some time to prioritise your health, your energy, your mood and your nervous system.

Georgia is a Vedic Meditation teacher and consciousness mentor. gvmeditation.com