Find your center!

Carrie Ballas
Dec 9, 2021
4 min read

Updated: Jul 9

The holidays can mean so many things for different people. This is a time we are called to gather with friends and family and celebrate life with jubilation, yet it isn’t always bubbles and laughter for all. The holidays can also be filled with grief, sadness, loneliness, loss, and stressful social gatherings.

The holidays are also a time where people are focused on food (and sugary treats) and therefore if you are working on regaining or supporting your health, this can be disappointing and even isolating. Adding to the complexities of the holiday season, this global pandemic has fueled much fear and uncertainty, making it difficult to navigate with peace and relaxation. Wherever you land on this spectrum, my advice to you is that It will be much easier to work with all of these layers if you find your center, your place of knowing and intuition with alignment and stability. When we get pulled off our center (by our own doing or from someone else) we start to lose our alignment and we can feel imbalanced in many ways. When we are imbalanced, we can feel anxious, confused, out of control, irritable or sad and can even start to project our own imbalances onto others and become needy or clingy. These emotions can drive people away from us, which ultimately reverses our intent to connect and have intimacy with others. All of these unbalanced ways of being can develop ill health or dis-ease, and as we know, dis-ease drives dysfunction in the mind, body and spirit and it’s not a sustainable way of being or living. Finding your center may look different for different people and it can be a lifelong practice, but it is one you can start working on now.

Ideas for Centering and Grounding Energy

Get outside in nature and ground yourself (ideally without shoes)
Meditation, mindfulness and yoga practices. We can stimulate our Vagus Nerve (which runs from brainstem to abdomen) and this will increase our Parasympathetic Nervous System, which helps us respond to situations with a more calm and relaxed state of being (and this helps us digest better too-hello Holidays)! There are Vagus Nerve Exercises (see link below) that can be very helpful. It has been studied that even 5 minutes of meditation twice daily can be helpful to balance your energy and calm your mind.
Deep methodical diaphragmatic breathing. When we are anxious or angry, we breathe more quickly, more shallow and irregular compared to when we feel joy, where breathing is deep and slow. Breath work can help you learn to control impulses, tap into neural networks to regulate emotions and ultimately help us regulate how we respond to situations. Examples; Ujjayi Breath (Breath of Victory) & SKY Breath
Listening to music such as classical or spiritual music with high vibration and resonance
Exercise. Find something you love, which could be biking, jump roping, swimming or walking. Simply move your body and find the joy in what you are doing and you will feel more grounded and centered as a result.
Dancing: When was the last time you turned up your sound system and danced to your favorite songs?
Singing: You don’t have to be a professional to find your centered resonance, so simply sing in the shower, in your car, on your walk etc. Call on your spirit to ring through from your deep center and be free from judgment as well.
Chakra Alignment: Despite lacking scientific studies on the existence of chakras, it has been long believed in many traditions that they do exist and when they are not open we can have “blocked” energy, which can disrupt energetic flow and drive dis-ease. I feel it is worth exploring this practice to see if this feels true for you and your body as a way to center and feel more embodied and balanced (see links below).

There is no better time to support yourself and your loved ones so consider getting a gift of health for someone you love this holiday season as well. You can even come together and rent the private room for an additional charge where you have your own privacy together. Call if you want IV's for prevention or if you are actively sick, we are here to help you!