Is It Time To Banish The Winter Blues? Here’s A 7 Step Strategy To Get You Started.

How To Beat The Winter Blues – 7 Step Strategy

1. Make Positive Choices
   It’s a cold, hard fact that over 90% of our experience of the winter blues is down to how we choose to feel about it. It’s not the cold that makes us miserable, it’s our response to it.
   In each moment, if you catch yourself telling yourself stories about the winter blues, you can press ‘pause’ and choose to tell a different story. Even if it feels tough, you can always choose.
2. Get Moving
   Winter tends to make us want to curl up in a ball and hibernate like a hedgehog, but that causes all sorts of problems. It makes us feel sluggish, tired and grumpy. Although hibernation is an important part of winter, it’s important to keep your body moving, so that the lymph and other circulation systems keep running, processing and clearing toxins from your system. Find healthy, winter-friendly ways to get moving again and wake yourself up a bit! You’ll love the difference it makes.
3. Letting Go
   Cold weather (and thinking about the cold!) causes us to tense up our bodies, leading to aches, pains and more, lasting long beyond the winter months. There are some simple exercises you can do, to release that tension, to help you feel more awake and energised, throughout the winter months. So it’s really important to make the most of chances to relax, to let go of tension and to make sure you’re not tensing yourself into the winter blues. It’s tough to feel happy when your jaw is clenched and you’re wearing your shoulders as earrings!
4. How’s Your Breathing?
   Winter posture tends to make us breathe badly – which has a knock-on affect for our physical health and emotional and mental states. Just two minutes a day of special breathing techniques can help bring more sunshine into your day. Start with belly breathing (if that’s comfortable for you) and enjoy the feeling of your breath lifting your mood and re-energising your body.
5. Seeing The Light
   Forget about expensive S.A.D. lights, there’s a really cheap (and incredibly effective) way of boosting your light levels this winter in just a couple of minutes a day. It’s called Tratak – or candle gazing. If you meditate whilst gently letting your gaze rest on the flame of a candle for a few minutes, it activates your pineal gland and floods your body with summer-sunshine-feel-good hormones, helping you to feel better, fast.
6. Winter Food Traps
   In winter, not only do we tend to gravitate towards comfort food, but we tend to eat more often because we’re feeling cold, tired and miserable. There are common food traps that are all-too-easy to fall into over winter – and these could be wrecking your mood. Make sure you’re not over-indulging on sugar, caffeine or any of the other winter-blues-nasties – focussing instead on winter-season vegetables (locally-sourced, if possible) and warming herbal and spiced teas.
7. Winter-To-Summer Action Plan
   Create your own, practical action plan, to move gently from winter, through spring and into summer. Tailor it so it will work for you, however busy your life is. You know what works for you. Plan ahead. Spot the traps you usually fall into. Take action to do something about them. Create your very own action pland and you need never feel the winter blues again!