Recovering Your Spirit: Three Tips for Healing After the Holidays
The excitement, the bustle, the countdown to your big celebration—the holidays arrive like a mighty wind and can leave you wondering what hit you. Even if your days were blessed with abundance and overflowing with good will and good cheer, they can make you feel like a deflated balloon as the confetti settles. It isn’t your imagination and there’s nothing to feel guilty about. You may be running on empty after the holidays. You rose to the occasion and burned your spiritual candle at both ends. Now it’s time to refuel and refresh!
When you consider how much there is to process at year-end holiday time, it’s no wonder you are left feeling dazed and confused. You may have over-indulged in food and drink, eaten too many sweets, gotten too little sleep, and done too little exercise. You may have skipped a few steps in your spiritual practice. You may feel ashamed that all your hard won spiritual progress didn’t keep you from crumbling when confronted by critical, quarrelsome family members. Fortunately, you have survived and can now call on the resources you need to heal and refresh your spirit. You can rely on the unconditional love that is your birthright to bring you back to a set point of peace and joy.
Try these three tips for healing after the holidays have drained your spiritual well and it’s time to replenish and refill:
Nurture yourself with gratitude and love. Your physical self is a miracle of healing Even if you haven’t taken the best care of yourself during the holidays, you can recover with a gentle and loving approach. Forgive yourself for falling off the self-care wagon briefly and give thanks for the wonderful gift of healing and rebuilding. Create your own spiritual spa where you focus on tapping in to the energy that surrounds you. Eat right, rest well, move your body, and surround yourself as best you can with fresh air, sunlight, and the sights, sounds, and scents of nature. Reviving your good self-care is the first step to restoring your spiritual energy.
Take time for solitude and contemplation. The holidays can draw you into far more social interaction, family contact, and public interface than you are used to or even comfortable with. There is so much to take in and process that you may have fallen behind in keeping up with all the people, places, events, thoughts, and feelings that have touched your psychic space. Emotional overload can result and leave you feeling spent. Alone time, quiet time, creative activity, and meditation will help you catch up and rebuild your spiritual energy reserve. Negative thoughts and feelings may have emerged along with the family reunion and the memory of holidays gone by that may have been happier than your present experience. Take time to examine this negative energy and release it with forgiveness and love. With some quiet time, you can sort your experiences and surround them with healing energy.
Use positive self-talk to affirm and strengthen your spirit. Give yourself a loving post-holiday pep talk. Consider how much you have to be thankful for as you approach the dawn of a new year. Write the story of your holidays in your journal and look for all the good things that happened and reflect on how much you enjoyed them. Any negative events can be analyzed, too, with an eye to understanding and learning from them. Create some affirmations for the new year that will empower you to follow your dreams. Where do you want to go and how will you grow in spirit as you move in that direction? Shine the light of your love on the child of the divine that is you!
As the holiday season fades into history and you begin your bright new year, think about all the ways that you have grown in spirit. You have such amazing strength and understanding, so much power to grow in awareness and to heal yourself and others. The connection you feel with the loving universe that makes your life possible has now been renewed and recharged. No more running on empty as you move toward your future goals and dreams!