A break?
A long bath?
A whole day under the duvet while someone else looks after your children, and you get to binge Bridgerton for the third time all by yourself?
An unhurried orgasm?
A whole night spent dancing?
Permission to say no to every party you’ve been invited to?
Really, I want you to take a few moments right now, and slow your breathing. Feel your feet touching the floor and notice how the fabric of your clothes feel against your skin. Take four gentle breaths and focus your attention inwards by closing your eyes or lowering your gaze.
Now ask yourself: “Body, what do you want for Christmas?”
The answer might come immediately, through words or images, or a deeper knowing. You might get a more subtle answer, like a vague sensation that you don’t quite understand yet. Or you might not get any answer at all - that’s perfectly fine, sometimes it takes time for an answer to land, and it may come to you spontaneously over the next few days, or when you revisit the exercise in a day or two.
Christmas is in your body
Christmas is a very sensory time of year. By that, I mean that it’s one of the few times of the year when our whole society is actively engaged in stimulating all of our senses to create a collective experience.
We decorate our homes, shops and towns in bright colours, twinkling lights and images designed to provoke joy and comfort.
We eat richer food than normal, drink more alcohol, and indulge in regular meals with family and friends.
We choose smells associated with Christmas to burn candles, and place simmer pots on our stovetops. Often it takes just one whiff of cinnamon or candy canes to immediately whisk us to Christmas morning.
We play Christmas music and sing carols, which we’ve often heard hundreds of times before.
For a short while, we focus on our emotional connections ahead of the mundanities of day to day life. Between family reunions, office parties and meeting up with old friends, we spend more time on our relationships than usual. This usually sparks a mixture of love, laughter and after dinner arguments as the whole spectrum of our emotions intensify.
This is why, for those of us who live in countries where Christmas is a ‘big deal’, it’s so deeply etched in our consciousness.
Christmas is a full body experience.
How do you overindulge?
My mum always says “all that enjoying ourselves is hard work.”
She’s not wrong.
Of course there are aspects of Christmas which are naturally more challenging, like the grief of missing loved ones no longer there, the harsh cold of winter arriving, or old family tensions rising to the surface.
But even the more enjoyable aspects can feel taxing.
For most of us Christmas is when we overindulge. We eat lots of rich food, drink more than we usually would, we fill our calendars with social gatherings and our to do lists with a long list of tasks.
Over time we start collecting multiple traditions which encourages us to keep indulging even when our bodies are crying out for a break: A bratwurst from the Christmas market, Bailey’s hot chocolates with friends, the office Christmas lunch, Boxing Day at the in-laws, and if you’re from Ireland, like me, you might even be attempting the 12 pubs of Christmas*…
It’s no wonder that by the time we get to January many of us are signing up to detoxes and fitness plans, desperately trying to undo the hardships of enjoying ourselves.
Before we go any further I want to say that I couldn’t care less if you spend all of December eating turkey sandwiches, drinking bucks fizz every morning and visiting one pub after another as old friends trickle into town. I also couldn’t care less if you opt out of all of it and fill your days with green tea, salt baths and 8pm bed times.
Our habits hold far less inherent moral value than we place on them, and it’s my belief that what’s best for us at any point in life is completely unique to us.
Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is dance your ass off in a nightclub, and sometimes the most rebellious thing you can do is eat a hearty and healthy breakfast every day.
What I am interested in, is what your Christmas reveals about your relationship with your body. And whether some changes need to be made so that you can come into greater harmony with yourself.
Consider these questions:
Do you know what your body’s ‘too far’ signals are, when it comes to food, drink or socialising? How do you normally respond when they appear?
How do you respond when your body sends you a message that you’ve overindulged?
How do you speak to yourself when you realise that you’ve overindulged?
Do you ever force yourself to participate in a tradition when you really don’t want to because you’re afraid of disappointing someone else?
Which do you place greater focus on - how you feel during an event, or whether you perform to a certain standard? E.g. being bubbly and social ‘enough’, having a perfectly presented home, being seen as a good host.
Do you deny yourself the treats you do want to indulge in? How would you speak to yourself if you did allow yourself to have them?
When we ask ourselves these questions it often reveals exactly why so many of us swing wildly between over-indulging, and over-restricting.
Many of us don’t know, or don’t notice, the signs from our bodies that we’re going overboard. Or even if we do, our default behaviour may be to override them so that we don’t disappoint other people or miss one of the few chances we give ourselves to let loose.
Once we have overindulged, and we’re experiencing the after effects, we pile on the guilt and criticism, calling ourselves nasty names, and making all kinds of judgements about what this means about our character.
Then, once we’ve reached our limit, we throw ourselves into heavy restriction, often approaching it as a punishment.
So here’s the final question: How relaxed and confident would you feel around someone who ignores you, criticises you and punishes you?
Embodied confidence building this Christmas
Changing the way we relate to ourselves isn’t something that happens overnight. It’s often a gradual change, which involves getting to know ourselves and developing a relationship based on trust and respect. I go into detail about how to do this in my free guide, The Embodied Confidence Workbook: Discover the Three Secrets to Self Confidence.
The first, and most important, step is learning to listen to yourself, even if you aren’t ready to act on what you hear yet.
Everyone who’s ever worked in a shitty customer service job knows this - even if you can’t do what the customer is asking, simply making them feel heard is half the battle. And if you can meet their needs even partially, that’ll go a long way in making sure they come back again.
Let’s return to the question at the beginning: “Body, what do you want for Christmas?”
Perhaps your body told you that you absolutely do not want to go to that family reunion on Christmas Eve. You’ve been ignoring this thought because it makes you feel like a bad daughter and the idea of letting down your parents is enough to make you break out in hives.
Embodied confidence building doesn’t ask you to push through these hard feelings at all costs! After all, that’s not much kinder than the part that’s calling you a “bad daughter” in the first place.
Instead it invites you to:
Accept the desire to skip the gathering as a real and present part of you, without judging it as bad or wrong.
Welcome this insight into yourself and really let yourself listen to what it’s saying (it’s easier to do this when you have complete permission to not act on any of it!). Perhaps you’ll find out that you’re craving some alone time, or that your dynamics with your family are changing at a deeper level. This is about getting very clear on your unique needs and wants.
Consider what teeny, tiny step you could take to meet the underlying want or need.
Maybe you normally get a lift to the reunion, but this year you could drive yourself so that you can leave when you’re ready.
Perhaps you could plan to spend the afternoon with a good friend before you go, so that you’re in a good mood walking in.
Maybe you focus on how you’ll care for yourself after the gathering - leaving out bath stuff, your favourite pyjamas and picking a comedy movie, so that you have something fun to look forward to.
Or maybe you just decide to drop all expectations and just allow yourself to not have the best time ever. Sometimes removing all pressure for something to go a certain way can ease a layer of tension we hold about it right away.
Becoming the most confident version of ourselves means learning to trust ourselves.
And a crucial part of that is discovering our needs and taking small gradual steps which feel sustainable and allow us to adapt and adjust as we go. Often when we go ‘all in’ we miss what our body is really trying to tell us, which is usually a lot more nuanced than our initial impression.
If your body desires rest, maybe you could take a few hours off work for an afternoon of watching movies on the sofa, rather than cancelling everything in your calendar, or chugging gingerbread lattes to get through it all.
If your body desires less rich, indulgent food maybe you could choose a light, healthy breakfast to have for the rest of the month, rather than swearing off every Christmas treat in sight, or completely tuning out that “I’m too full” feeling.
There’s a time and a place for bold moves and big action. But when it comes to building trust in ourselves, slow and steady wins the race.
Leave a comment below and let me know what your body wants this Christmas, and what teeny, tiny step you’ll be taking.
*The 12 pubs of Christmas is when a group of friends all wear Christmas jumpers and try to go to 12 different pubs in one night. Sometimes each pub has a different rule, like you have to hold hands with the person in the group you don't know while in one pub, or you have to speak in a different accent in another. I tried it once in university and made it to pub 7 or 8 before I had to call it a night.
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