6 Quick and Easy Ways to Reduce Holiday Stress

The holidays can be a difficult time year, a perfect storm of traveling, shopping, cleaning, visiting, and entertaining. Yes, there’s a lot to do, but you don’t have to let the stress and anticipation put a damper on the festivities. With the help of a few simple stress management practices, you can enjoy the high points of the holidays without experiencing the lows.

This Monday, combat the blues and lift your spirit with our list of easy stress-relief techniques and practices that you can use to stay calm, cool, and relaxed during the holidays.

Deep Abdominal Breathing with GIFs

Deep abdominal breathing is a breathing technique that can help immediately reduce your stress levels. Just time your breath to the rhythm of these animated breathing graphics (GIFs) and feel the tension leave your body.

For the Deep Breathing GIFs, click here.

Snow Globe Visualization to Weather Emotional Blizzards

This simple visualization practice can help calm you down when you’re all shook up. Follow along with our animated snow globe and imagine your frustrations settling like snow on the ground.

For the Snow Globe Visualization exercise, click here.

Family Yoga Poses

Relieving tension in the body is one the best ways to relieve tension in the mind. The whole family can stretch away the stress with these easy beginner-level yoga poses.

For the Family Yoga Poses, click here.

Tackle Stress with Gratitude

Spending time to stop and appreciate what you have in your life helps put the daily frustrations into perspective. See how you can use gratitude to relieve stress and promote positivity.

To Tackle Stress with Gratitude, click here.

Feel Better with Acts of Kindness

It’s better to give than to receive. This mantra is certainly appropriate for the holiday season, but spreading kindness is also a useful way to feel better and shift your perspective all year round.

To Practice Acts of Kindness, click here.

Making Time for Self-Care

During the commotion of the holidays, it’s easy to forget to carve out a few moments for yourself. Check out the DeStress Monday self-care checklist to figure out ways to get some much-needed me time.

For the Making Time for Self-Care Checklist, click here.

For more ways to reduce stress, download our DeStress Monday Mindfulness Package.