How to Stay Calm during the Holidays

Family, friends, food, and fun! Are you ready for the holiday season? The holiday season is a time to connect and have fun with your loved ones, but it can also be a frantic frenzy. With all the planning, preparations, and visiting, there usually isn’t a lot of time to stop and rejuvenate. That can leave you depleted or, eventually, sick.

But adding a dose of meditation or mindfulness to your day could make a massive difference in feeling re-energized and ready to tackle your busy life. And these calming practices are beneficial for the whole family. I would love to share with you some ideas to bring meditation and mindfulness into your holiday season to help you to feel calm and peaceful.

Stay calm by meditating daily

In order to make daily meditation a habit, my husband and I have committed to sitting silently every morning for 15 minutes for 40 days, from November 22 to December 31, 2014. We have practiced meditation on and off for years, but we are finally ready to make it a daily ritual, just like brushing our teeth. We plan to start 2015 with a fresh habit of meditating. Meditation is as simple as:

Choosing a comfortable upright position
Committing to silence
Focusing on breathing, positive affirmation, or chakra

Join our 40-day meditation challenge by following along on our Kids Yoga Stories Facebook page!

Stay calm with these 10 meditation and mindfulness practices

Check out these ten ideas to bring calm and relaxation to your holiday season, from my fellow kid-blogger friends:

1. Reflect on what we appreciate about ourselves.

2. Make a mind jar.

3. Practice outdoor walking meditation.

4. Massage each other.

5. Follow a morning ritual.

6. Cuddle and play to get through tantrums and stressful situations.

7. Play games that encourage mindfulness.

8. Look for ways to slow down.

9. Create a visual cue to remind yourself to be present.

10. Teach your children about mindful eating.

You Might Also Like our Calming Yoga Cards for Kids

Are you looking for tools to teach your children to calm and soothe themselves?

Calming Yoga Cards provide an engaging, safe, and a creative way to help soothe your children while giving them valuable tools to do so on their own.

These 24 restorative yoga poses promote calm and help your children relax and breathe.

Help your kids manage those big emotions with these Calming Yoga Cards.

Download these 57 digital Calming Yoga Cards to learn through movement in your home, classroom, or studio. The deck includes an index card, calming and yoga tips, pose instructions, 24 yoga pose cards, and 24 matching description cards. The illustrations feature multicultural yoga kids are from seven countries. Ages 3+.

Purchase Calming Yoga Cards for Kids here.

Calming Yoga Cards for Kids

Stay calm with these meditation and mindfulness resources

Check out our meditation and mindfulness gift guide. I share mindfulness and meditation for kids resources that I have collected to help my family to be more calm, mindful, and peaceful parents so that my husband and I can share the gift of mindfulness with our daughter:

Mindfulness and Meditation for Kids: Gift Ideas

Stay calm with this bedtime yoga story

Check out our bedtime yoga story for toddlers and preschoolers, Good Night, Animal World, and the matching Good Night, Animal World yoga cards:

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