Holidays, Stress, and Metabolism

We are in the middle of the holiday season, and for most of us it is also a wonderful and stressful season at the same time. We travel, host friends and relatives, throw big parties, attend big parties, eat delicious meals, indulge in entertainment venues, and so on. Sometimes our plans don’t work out quite as we expect and we get stressed and anxious.

As you already know, stress impacts metabolic functions in your body. It happens for a good reason of survival, as our nature to survive activates body’s basic ability to run for your life when stressful events happen. You will digest food and absorb your nutrients later when you are safe and out of danger. This is the basic survival mechanism. It is often not how much and what you eat and drink during these few holiday weeks, but how you eat, in what mood, and for what reason. Of course, if you already have issues with your metabolism, you should watch your diet however stress amplifies the damage while it doesn’t have to.

Holidays is a good time to apply any stress reduction techniques you already know – meditation, self-hypnosis, Epsom salt baths, aromatherapy, massage, and anything else you know. I would like to share with you two stress reduction techniques you can apply instantaneously so you will be able to dissipate the upcoming negative emotion.

1. www.emofree.com – Emotional Freedom Technique – EFT. Easy to practice it helps you to relax within seconds and neutralizes emotion, pain, or negative thought. Being so easy to learn and practice, it became one of the most widespread practices. You can do it anywhere – in the airplane, in your car, at your house, at the restaurant bathroom, etc. EFT process can be briefly described as tapping on specific face and body points while speaking out loud the affirmation of your choice. At first it looks unusual, but soon you will get used to it and enjoy the results it brings.
It is absolutely FREE to learn, and you can get materials and watch videos online. We can thank Gary Craig, EFT founder and wonderful person, for creating the system and making it so available.

2. Practice dissociating yourself from negative memories. For example, you are expecting visitors you associate some negative memories with. Even thought of seeing them makes your heart beat faster, and you get irritated. You can do the following to free yourself of this feeling. While sitting comfortably, close your eyes and vividly remember last time you had a confrontation with them. Do you see yourself in that memory as it is a movie, or you see everything around you from your own eyes? If you see everything around you in that memory, the chances are you are fully associated with it and reliving these emotions all over again. It is possible to change your emotional charge by simply changing the perception of this memory. Close your eyes again and watch this event as a movie with you playing one of the roles. See yourself in this movie. Now move it farther away from you on a TV distance and make it black and white – just like an old movie. Play with the distance, color, and/or quality, and move it farther or closer. Notice how your emotions are changing. Now, in your imagination, install a glass door between you and that movie. Notice how your emotions dissipate. This way you can override negative emotions associated with old memories. You can repeat this exercise a few more times with other memories associated with your upcoming visitors. After a while, you will be surprised to find yourself much calmer when your visitors arrive.