On the December 11, 2020 Fierce Friday Million Mom Movement Council Members, Carmela Velarde and Rebecca Johns shared how you can turn Winter blues into Winter bliss.
But let’s summarize:
Create Family Rituals
Foster creating moments and memories together during the holidays.
Family Vision Board Party Activity
Recommended for ages 5+ Cutting and gluing is necessary.
Collect magazines with a focus where images are inspirational, about food, health, and about family and fun. Intentionally infuse our young minds with positive imagery and have them choose words, maybe phrases that they want to put into a vision for the new year.
Make Time To Make a Meal a Ceremony and Eat Together.
Start with prayer over the food. We are what we eat. We are the vibration that we carry into our homes so focus on organic, whole foods, and take the time to cook together having conversations about the ingredients, recipe, and nutritional value. Clean up together. Put music on and make it enjoyable.
Emphasize the Importance of Recovery
It’s the holidays. Everyone is buzzing around with excitement but take the time to wind down 1 hour to half an hour in the home for enough time to replenish energy. Sleep is medicine. It activates cellular reproduction and repair, balances your heart rate and according to the National Sleep Foundation, children should be getting an adequate amount of sleep:
3-5 years old: 10-13 hours
6-13 years old: 9-11 hours
14-17 years old: 8-10 hours
18-25 years old: 7-9 hours
Light Therapy Box
Fights seasonal affective disorder and winter blues. There are sleep disorders due to light deprivation and your energy shifts when you have exposure to light daily. For kids homeschooling or parents working from home, put a box next to your computer screen.
Tools To Keep Active and Balanced
Kids health tracking wristwatch is great for tracking and monitoring them. Many can monitor sleep, steps taken daily, heart rate, and fitness activities.
RELIVE App for running, hiking, and biking is a great way to track your training with the family. It can be fun to make it exciting to document with photos, videos, and a 3D map of the path so that you can see how far your trip was. Create a challenge to bike 30 miles with the family within 5 rides and incrementally increase the number of miles with each ride.
Trampoline Park Memberships are a gym for the kids to frequent multiple times a week. They can sweat it out all while having fun and it’s more cost-effective than going for one-offs plus you’re making exercise a habit. Don’t forget to pack them plenty of filtered water, Coco Hydrate, Can’t Beet This, Super Amino 23, MVP Kids, and pack snacks so that they don’t eat the junk food often available at these facilities. It’s best to be prepared with your own organic whole food snacks!
Virtual Sound Healing Sessions with the family are a great way to have deep relaxation with a certified sound healing practitioner that you can source online. It’s a meditative acoustic sound concert that slows down brain waves to a deeply restorative state that activates the body’s system into self-healing. With the use of singing bowls, gongs, Tibetan bowls, tuning forks, drums, instruments, and sometimes voice, it releases tension in the body and is excellent for a way to drop in for an hour during these holiday days.
Virtual Yoga Classes are also excellent for yourself as a parent to get away and focus on yourself or you can book a family class to get the kids involved. This practice will help to increase attention span and improve concentration. It allows more oxygen to circulate and will help you and your children to deal with anxiety and stress because they will learn tools to incorporate relaxation and breathing techniques into daily life. Ask your community for recommendations or simply search online.
Have a Happy Holistic Healthy Holiday!
