Holiday Stress Busters

I've seen a couple of naturopaths this last year. They now send a monthly newsletter and I got the following from it. Their website is: Head to Heal

Holiday Stress Busters

The holidays: fun for some, nerve-wracking for others. Last minute shopping, wrapping gifts, cooking, socializing, eating, family get-togethers, all on top of our regular routines and responsibilities can take their toll. It's no wonder people find the holidays exhausting, to say the least. Stress is no joke. Physicians have long known that unmitigated stress lowers immune function, triggers inflammation, increases the risk for chronic health concerns such as cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases and can lead to depression.

Most people take this time to let loose and enjoy. However, it's especially important to give your body some added support to weather the demands of the season and ring in a healthy new year. Here are some simple tools that you can use to help lessen the strain that often comes with celebrating the holidays.

Sleep: sleep deprivation is a well-known contributing factor in obesity as well as other chronic health conditions. However, over-sleeping is just as unhealthy as lack of sleep. Try to make sure you get to bed at the same time every night and get up at the same time every morning, even on the weekends. This helps establish a natural sleep pattern. Sleep in a dark room to maximize melatonin production.

Delegate: remember that stress sets in when you try and do it all. Ask for help and prioritize.

Avoid 'stress eating': our brains require more energy when stressed. When you're pressed for time, it's easy to forget what your naturopathic doctor told you about reaching for convenience foods. Processed and sugary foods cause insulin levels to spike which compounds your body's perception of stress. Choose foods that lower the Glycemic Index of your meals and snacks. These are foods high in fiber, protein and good fats. They will stabilize your energy levels, your mood and support immune function.

Breathe: what's the first thing we do when we're distracted? We stop breathing! Well, not quite, but our breathing becomes significantly more shallow. When this happens, our blood is not getting fully oxygenated, compromising our body's ability to get the energy it needs to carry out its basic functions. Taking slow deep breaths is the quickest and easiest way to engage the 'rest and digest' branch of our nervous system. When you think of it or notice the signs of stress take a deep breath in while counting to six. Then slowly exhale through pursed lips, again, while counting to six, better yet, ten. At some point, during this exhalation you will notice that your shoulders drop and release their tension. Your body will thank you.

End your shower with a blast of cold water: we know it’s last thing you want to do on a cold, wintery, Saskatchewan morning. However, this simple trick can go a long way to improving the quality of your blood, your circulation and mental alertness.

Character

"Our first energies should go to our own character development, which is often invisible to others, like the roots that sustain great trees. As we cultivate the roots, we will begin to see the fruits." ~ Stephen R. Covey

Traditions

Most families have traditions, whether they are created around the holidays, birthdays, or other special events. In some ways I am not actually all that big on traditions...at least that is what I've always thought.

Now that my own children are in their 20s, I think I am singing a different tune. There is one "tradition"....having the kids home for Christmas....that I can't imagine missing.

Last Christmas, for instance, we had our first ever holdiday where we had to share our daughter with her boyfriend's family....and it seemed like they had her with them A LOT. (Although I could be biased.)

What I really want is to have my kids nearby, for at least some of the holiday. AND, that I want those who are important in their lives to join in our festivities just as much as I want my own kids to be around.

I don't seem to have a problem letting them go the other 364 days of the year...

Maybe it's because I've only had one Christmas without my own parents? Yep, I'm a big baby; unapologetically so!

(Pictures are Thomas Kinkade paintings)

Success

"You can't have success without trust. The word trust embodies almost everything you can strive for that will help you to succeed. You tell me any human relationship that works without trust, whether it is a marriage or a friendship or a social interaction; in the long run, the smae thing is true about business, especially businesses that deal with the public." ~ Jim Burke, Former Chairman and CEO, Johnson & Johnson

Room, by Emma Donoghue

"Emma Donoghue's writing is superb alchemy, changing innocence into horror and horror into tenderness. Room is a book to read in one sitting. When it's over you look up: the world looks the same but you are somehow different and that feeling lingers for days." --Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler's Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry.

Harper Collins Canada has written this about Room:
To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It’s where he was born and where he and his Ma eat and play and learn. At night, Ma puts him safely to sleep in the wardrobe, in case Old Nick comes.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it’s the prison where Old Nick has kept her for seven years, since she was nineteen. Through ingenuity and determination, Ma has created a life for herself and her son, but she knows it’s not enough for either of them. Jack’s curiosity is building alongside Ma’s desperation -- and Room can’t contain either of them for much longer...

Told entirely in the inventive, often funny voice of Jack, Room is a celebration of the resilient bond between parent and child, and a brilliantly executed novel about a journey from one world to another.

Donoghue states:

ROOM, by Emma Donoghue from era404 creative on Vimeo.

From her website:
Born in Dublin in 1969, Emma Donoghue is a writer of contemporary and historical fiction whose novels include the bestselling Slammerkin, The Sealed Letter, Landing, Life Mask, Hood, and Stirfry. Her story collections are The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits, Kissing the Witch, and Touchy Subjects. She also writes literary history, and plays for stage and radio. She lives in London, Ontario, with her partner and their two small children. For more information, go to: www.emmadonoghue.com.

Our culture is constantly telling stories about psychos who capture women. I deliberately kept my kidnapper out of the spotlight. The more I read and thought about it, the more it seemed to me that there is no comfortably fixed moral distance between a kidnapper and the rest of us. (The existence of entire slave-owning societies reminded me that humans often find it both convenient and pleasurable to own others.) It was not Old Nick’s evil that fascinated me, but the resilience of Ma and Jack: the nitty-gritties of their survival, their trick of more or less thriving under apparently unbearable conditions.

Room is the WINNER of the 2010 Rogers Writers' Trust Award for Fiction. It was also shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize and the 2010 Governor General's Award.
 
I read Room this summer. It was such a different book from any other I've ever read. Truthfully, if someone had told me what the story was all about I would never have read it. A story with the underlying premise of an abducted woman living in a tiny room with her 5 year old son is not one I'd normally pick up. However, the story of Jack, how he sees his world, and his relationship to his mother creates a compelling tale, which Donoghue has executed masterfully.


It is a story that has stayed with me, months later, one that keeps me thinking about rereading it!

Trust

"For some people, becoming a leader can be a real power trip. They relish the feeling of control over both people and information. And so they keep secrets, reveal little of their thinking about people and their performance, and hoard what they know about the business and its future. This kind of behavior certainly establishes the leader as boss, but it drains trust right out of a team." ~ Jack Welch

Quick Baked Beans with Apples

This recipe has been adapted from a recent Best Recipes show. (The show's picture is featured here)

Ingredients

1 cup apple cider
4 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 large can crushed tomatoes
1 large onion, diced
2 cloves of  crushed garlic
2 Tbsp molasses
1 Tbsp dry mustard
1 pinch of salt
1 pinch of pepper

Cook ingredients on medium in saucepan to combine the flavours and cook down the onions and garlic

Add:
2 cans Navy Beans that have been rinsed (until there are no more bubbles coming off of the beans) and drained
2 large apples cut into 1" chunks (they'll cook down)
Place in a casserole baking dish.
Place the slices of 2 large apples over the top of the beans mixture, overlap slightly.
Bake for 2 hours at 300 degrees

This recipe is called "Quick" because it uses canned beans. You can replace the canned beans with beans that have been soaked overnight.

Optional:
Some people prefer to have ham, bacon, or another type of pork in their beans. You can add chopped up meat in this dish, but there is also lots of protein in the beans.