Mindful Holidays

Damla plays in double boat/barco doble/navasana with variation.

by Damla Eytemiz

While holiday events may encourage us to eat, drink, and be merry, we can be mindful about how we participate. Moderation in all things is necessary. Here are some of my reflections on how to have a great healthy holiday. 

Exercise regularly. Eat well. Holiday doesn’t mean you have to cut your exercise time, change your schedule or eating habits. Instead, try adding more activity in your life to cope with holiday stress. Exercise helps you to relax and reduce your stress. Plus, if you do attend more gatherings with delicious foods, the added activity will help prevent possible seasonal weight gain.

Connect the season to your activities: dance to your favorite carols, walk around the neighborhood and marvel at the decorations, make snowballs, work with your kids to make healthy holiday snacks and teach them how to make OHMazing choices no matter the season.

Oranges are examples of "candy from the Earth."

At a recent class in La Palmera mall for the TideTurner's event, Yogiños: Yoga for Youth® founder and CEO, Beth Reese, and I passed out clementine oranges reminding kids to eat "candy form the earth." Fruit has sugar in it, too! The difference is the sugar is natural and the pulp and fiber in fruit forces our body to digest the sugar more slowly than in foods with added sugar.



Damla Eytemiz is from Turkey and she is trilingual in Turkish, English and German. She started Yoga in 2010, and she has been doing Pilates since 2007. She loves sports and thinks kids should put “Yoga” in their lives so that they can readily work through life’s challenges and be happier kids.