Self Care Sunday ✨ Post Holiday Pause

Hello, Cadre. Happy Sunday. Hope you are having a lovely day. It's nice and snowy here in Minneapolis and I'm just gonna take a quick little pause, listen to a little music as people start to come on in. Just got done teaching a spin class today. I always like a good, hot, sweaty session on a bike that goes nowhere in a dark room. So as we come into today, I'll invite you to simply take a breath. Hello. Speak wonder. It's great to have you here. Happy holiday weekend. Did you get snow where you are?

That is the big question. So on today, intentionally talking a little slow, a little more calm, really good at fast, really good at fast. But finding that pause after the holiday. And I think sometimes it's really nice to just do a quick check in to see how we are. Good morning, Jules. Hello. Hello. Did you get a lot of snow? Curious. We got some snow. Not, not a ton, but just enough that I'll tell you. After my spin class this morning, a couple of us went outside and we did snow angels in the part of the snow that wasn't all messed up yet.

And it was very refreshing. We'll just say it that way. It was refreshing. But today on our our nice time together, it's about finding that pause. So we just got through holiday one of holiday season. We have two more to go, right? Two big ones coming up. Depending on your religion or what you choose to celebrate or how you choose to celebrate, they can look and feel different. There's no one right way for what happens in December and how we choose to show up in our celebrations. But it is important for us to allow ourselves to take time so intentionally on self care Sunday today, I kind of have to laugh at myself a little because I have a day that's filled on this beautiful Sunday.

I taught a spin class. I'm here with you right now, which is amazing. This afternoon I get to do one, maybe two sound baths and then I get to go do a breath work sessions. So I am facilitating pauses for everybody else. But I am waiting until this evening to find a pause for myself. But here's what's really important about all of this is, is as we go through our holiday season again, whatever you celebrate, there is the external world. So we've been inundated in our inboxes already with Black Friday sales and Good morning.

Hello, Ms. Hannah Paul. How are you doing? We've been inundated already and it started before Thanksgiving with email blasts about sales and deals. And then we open up our email box. If you haven't already. Hi, Ms. Shannon. If you haven't already, and we're seeing all of these emails come through that are telling us about all these great deals that are happening. First of all, let's be really clear. If you've ever worked in retail, you know that the biggest sale you're ever gonna get is gonna be the day after Christmas or New Year sales, because they just want to get rid of stuff.

So that's part one, part two. It's forcing us into a mindset that the holidays are around shopping and gift giving and all of these things. And so I find that as we work our way through Thanksgiving, whatever emotion and experience that you have, right, you might love Thanksgiving, you might dread the holidays. You may have mixed feelings about the holidays because you have mixed experiences with the different holidays. But inside of it, it's one day after the other. We have 31 days left in 2025.

We have a full moon that's right around the corner. We just left Mercury in retrograde, which had a lot of technology snafus and asked us or invited us to slow down. And then we bumped right into Thanksgiving. And again, everyone experiences it different. This Thanksgiving, I actually spent it by myself, which was not the original plan, but it was totally okay. I taught a spin class at our studio, a 75 minute class. There were so many people that didn't have a place that they were going on Thanksgiving.

And so coming to our studio was their place. There were other studio, other people that came to ride that day, that were, were riding to get more balance before they went into the crazy rest of their day. And it was beautiful to hear everybody's stories and what their experiences were shaping out to be and how people were taking care of themselves through the holiday because it can drum up a lot of emotion. And so for me, I got to teach my class, hold space for people, hung out, had a brunch spread for afterwards for anybody that wanted to hang out and talk.

And then I went home and I literally sat on the couch with my dog and I watched Christmas movies. I made salmon and homemade cookies and I ate some of them and that was it. And it was great. And then the next day I got up early, I got on a plane, I flew out to Carolina, North Carolina, did some things with family Saturday morning, woke up, had some breakfast, said goodbye to everybody and flew home. Like literally that was the holiday. And. And now today I'm holding space again for other people.

So today is really about how do you find pause for yourself in the mix of family Expectations or other expectations around you, getting all the email blasts that are telling you that you should be decorating for Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever holiday. You should be shopping and spending all this money that maybe you have or maybe you don't have. Like, all of these things are flooding at us right now. So today, my invitation to you is this. What's your pause? How do you find yourself inside the story that swirls around you, inside the expectation of holidays that swirl around you?

How do you find that space to process the loved ones that maybe you've lost? I've lost my mom and dad, so holidays are really different. And I'm two years in now, and it's still really hard. So how do you find something for you? So taking Thanksgiving afternoon and not having to deal with anyone. And I don't mean deal with anyone in a bad way, just meaning I didn't have to hold space for anyone else's emotions was beautiful because I lit a candle and I set out the pictures of my mom and dad, and I watched Christmas movies like we would do.

And it was just perfect because my pause was on Thursday. And so my invitation to you is to allow yourself to take that time. If you're not feeling it, go hide out in the bathroom. Or if you're with a whole bunch of people, allow yourself the opportunity to put on your jacket and go outside and be like, you know what? I'm gonna just go walk outside right now and catch some fresh air, because the snow feels great. Give yourself permission to take what you need. So I mentioned that I got on a plane and I flew to the Carolinas to spend the day with my extended family.

And even inside those moments, I took a couple moments where I just went outside or I toured around a house that I didn't know and looked at their decorations. It was kind of my buffer to be able to say, oh, I love our conversation. I'm gonna go grab a quick snack. I'll be back. So that I could just reset for a few seconds. Because being around so many people is still really hard for me at the holiday. But I gave myself permission to take little mini breaks. Agreed. Hide in our garage when you need a minute, Ms.

Shannon. I love that. So finding that pause and knowing that when you start to feel an emotion, it's a flutter in your heart. It could be a catch in your throat. You could feel your hands start to clench or your eyes start to water or your jaw starting to clench. Like, physiologically, our emotions simply show up. Jules, I love this you removed yourself from the house and went to the garage because the household noise over stimulating the other night. Speak. Wonder. You don't owe an explanation to anyone for choosing peace.

Exactly. So that pause. What I love about what you guys are all typing is that we have trained ourselves. We have given ourselves permission to take a pause. So my second layer of invitation is when we see somebody in those spaces over the holidays where it feels too much, how might we invite them to pause with us? How might we acknowledge and help someone else who maybe doesn't feel like they have permission to take a pause for themselves to take that pause? So I did that in the last couple of days.

I walked over to someone and I said, hey, do you want to come outside with me for a second? Like, I'd love to just, like, go see the outside. And. And they were like, really? And I was like, yeah. And we got outside, and they were like, thank you for doing that. And I was like, what do you mean? And they're like, oh, it was just so much. And I was in this conversation, and it just didn't feel comfortable. And I. I just needed a timeout, but I didn't know how to say it. And I was like, I got you.

And. And we just, like, hung outside, and we didn't actually even say anything. We just, like, took a few steps down a driveway. So sometimes we can recognize it in ourselves, and sometimes we can invite someone else to join us too, if that feels good. Because you never know how many people actually need a pause, but they haven't learned that it's okay yet to do that for themselves. So my invitation, as we move forward into the next 31 days, because we feel like there's a lot of pressure. Allow yourself to delete all of the emails.

Mark them as span, unsubscribe. Take a pause from all of that. The holidays get to be whatever we make it. And if shopping is fun for you, awesome. Find your strategy. Go all in if it's overwhelming for you, or this is a season where you're like, gosh, I don't know if I want to go there. I read an Instagram post that said some things about holidays and things that we could do better or different. The post was actually talking about how much waste there is. So in this. In this space, they were like, go to a thrift store and find cool grifts at a thrift store instead of buying something new.

I was like, I never thought about that. Or maybe just make something. Or instead of buying something, get a gift card. And go to dinner with somebody and celebrate that way instead. So they were offering all these different suggestions. Speak. Wonder says, in here, a good friend is someone who is comfortable in spaces of silence with you. Yeah, finding those people that we can just hold space with. So my invitation to you is to find more places to pause, especially in the next 31 days, whatever your lived experience is.

I've had some experiences that aren't great around the holidays, and so I can get activated sometimes. And I don't mean to, but there's a lot of emotion. The loss of my parents, the shifting in the dynamics of how holidays appear. It all feels so different in a way that I'm still trying to figure it out. So whatever your experience is, maybe you're the caretaker, maybe you're the baker, maybe you have certain roles in every holidays that you play. Ask yourself, is that the same role you want to play this year?

And if not, be honest about that, because maybe somebody else is looking for permission to not play the same role that they've always played. Sometimes it just takes a party of one to step up, to say, gosh, you know, this year I'd really appreciate if we could look at it differently and then voice what you need. Maybe if you're the person that always bakes everything by yourself, maybe this year you say, hey, does anyone want to bake with me? And make it a party of two or 10. There's no one right way to move forward through the holidays.

But as Eminem, his song Lose Yourself, says, if you lose yourself, you lose everything. So my invitation to you is to find that space, take that pause, give yourself permission, or tell someone, tap them on the shoulder that says, hey, in 15 minutes, come get me, because I'm going to be tapped out for energy, and I'm going to need a mental reset. They'll come, tap you on the shoulder, they'll hear you, and then you take your time out. Set the boundaries that you need as you work through this holiday season.

Give yourself the permission to be alone. If you need to be alone, take a time out, take a walk, take a breath, go to a sound bath. Do the things that help you reset so that you can feel whole, that you can feel healthy moving through the holiday. So if you have other ideas, I'd love to hear them, or dial in with Ms. Shannon or speak Wonder and listen to what their messages are through this holiday season because they're beautiful and amazing and have such great voices and things to share as well.

So I look forward to seeing all of you I'll be back here tomorrow on Monday. And until then, allow yourself to take a breath today. A simple, tiny pause.