Keep It Simple (And Breeze Through The Holidays)

In general, we overdo it. Most of American culture believes more is better: work harder, get a bigger television, a nicer car… On the outside this may look successful and happy, but inside our giant houses, we feel isolated and alone. True happiness in this model is unsustainable.

As Blake Spalding, co-owner of Hell’s Backbone Grill states, “In order to have real sustainability you have to start with relationships.” (See more about her and her amazing restaurant, where I was blessed to eat and teach yoga this summer, in the video below).

Yoga —always about relationship— at its essence is deep union with our most intimate self.

As we become established in pure connection with ourselves, the important things in life become easier to reach and more obvious to feel.

Before yoga, we may have known the value of sharing time with people we love and visiting our favorite, inspiring locations, but we may not have had the courage to act upon it.

After yoga, we do the difficult, and often painful, work of healing old wounds that skew our ability to be authentic and present in our current life.

Through yoga, we learn to love ourselves, thereby filling the deep holes where other relationships may have left us unfulfilled.

With wounds healed we stop needing to be busy to keep from feeling pain. With a deep sense of love for ourselves we resist the urge to pacify ourselves through buying things we probably don’t need. We feel fulfilled, and eliminate the need to overeat.

We simplify. And we breeze much more easily through the holidays…

This holiday season, instead of falling victim to the consumer-based “purpose” of Christmas, I urge that we make a priority of what’s really important.

I challenge you to buy less and give the gift of yourself; most people would rather have more of you anyhow.

Instead of buying endless gifts because you feel you’re supposed to, assign more value to meaningful things that also happen to be free: your time, your love, the people who matter to you…

Distill it down to the basics.

Be in yoga with yourself. Make space for the simple, sweet and important things in life.

What makes you happy? Are you doing it?

Who do you really want to spend time with, and what’s keeping you from doing it? If that person has passed on, can you make peace with the relationship, even if it means accepting that they’re gone?

Where do you need to go to bring yourself to a place of peace? Can you remove the fluff and get to the heart of it?

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post “Strip Down Your Yoga Practice For A Stress-Free Holiday,” a perfect yoga sequence to go in parallel to this article.