As the holiday season kicks in, the stress levels tend to rise. Here are some ways you can stop stress in its tracks and keep calm even through long lines at the supermarket.

Sleep keeps us healthy. By getting a full nights sleep, you’ll be able to shut your fight or flight mechanism off and maneuver smoothly through your day. For women, sleep is entirely important as its vital for hormone balance. Without sleep, we experience symptoms such as brain fog and mood swings. Anyone can be short tempered if they do not get enough sleep.

A lack of sleep causes irritability, weight gain, depression, and can even increase the risk for heart disease. What if you cannot get as much sleep as you are supposed to? Take a nap. Naps are a great way to catch up on sleep and are proven to be effective giving us that added boost to finish our day strong. Short naps throughout the day also help improve memory, this may come in handy when you forgot your shopping list at home.

Studies also show that naps can help us focus more and improve our creativity and responsiveness. This means an increase in our performance, be that at work or on the road when we’re driving.

Those expensive green cocktails! Not everyone's a fan but fresh pressed juices will help you bulldoze your way through the holidays with not a single worry in sight. Raw foods and juices are high in enzymes. What are enzymes? An enzyme is a substance produced by a living organism that acts as a catalyst to bring about a specific biochemical reaction. Enzymes help break down the foods you eat as well as increase nutrition delivery in your body. Lets say you ate a heavy meal and you didn’t have a lot of vegetables to accompany it or you didn’t eat this meal with a salad.

What happens? Your body might need more time to break down these foods and you might lack amounts of enzymes to correctly break down lets say for example the carbohydrates you ate. This action might cause your cells to stress. If your cells are stressed, chances are you too are stressed. Enzymes also help purify your blood, rebuild and regenerate tissue, effective detoxification and strengthen your immune system. Without enzymes, our cells die off. It’s really important to include enzymes in our meals. A plant based diet or regular consumption of raw vegetables and fresh pressed juices will ensure less cortisol is released and keep the stress levels down.

The best way I found is to start your day with a delicious green juice. If you have a Juicer at home, wipe the dust off of it and try making Apple, Celery, Lemon. This is one of my favorites. Cilantro, Lemon, Ginger, Cucumber, Parsley is another great one. You can also add to the mix romaine salad or arugula.

These two calming plants are the key to relaxing. After a long day, you might experience trouble shutting your brain off. In an overstimulated environment such as the one we live in, shutting off is difficult. Try incorporating taking baths or showers with these essential oils. We have a blend called RELAX.

It will help you shut off and send signals to calm your nervous system. You can mix our RELAX essential oil blend with olive oil and massage your feet at night. This will help get you to sleep faster as well as experiencing a more peaceful sleep. You can also use this blend and rub a little on your neck or wrist as I find this helps when I am shopping to remind me stay present so I avoid making multiple trips to the supermarket.

With that said, we wish you a lovely holiday season and please remember to not let Stress take over your life.