Ease Holiday Stress with Jin Shin Jyutsu

Enjoy these FREE tips to help you ease stress.  (Mobile device users may need to switch to desktop site to view.) Want more free tips?  Click here for our Facebook page.  

Let's be honest. Everyone knows that the joys of the holiday season are typically accompanied by a greater level of stress. The strain of our annual scramble to fit holiday season get-togethers, visitors, travel plans and gift-buying into our already busy lives can leave us with raw nerves, depleted energy and tension throughout our bodies. Wouldn't it be nice to have simple and effective stress-busting tools available to you at all times?

Fortunately, you DO have access to these tools and they exist within your own two hands! Jin Shin Jyutsu offers self-care exercises that you can use anytime, anywhere to relieve stress, re-energize, and to help you to feel happy, relaxed, and like yourself again.  Widely known more than 3,000 years ago, Jin Shin Jyutsu was dramatically revived by Japanese Master Jiro Murai in 1912 after he cleared himself of a “terminal” illness. A unique healing art, Jin Shin Jyutsu is applied to the body through gentle touch and can be received from a trained practitioner or applied to one’s self.

Here is a sampling of a few self-care energy-harmonizing exercises that are easy to execute and require little time investment:

Give yourself a Big Hug!

• Cross your arms in front of your chest and rest your thumbs under your collarbone.
• Place your hands in your underarms (right hand in left underarm, left hand in right underarm) with fingertips touching the edge your shoulder blades, if possible. (No stressing or straining. If you’re unable to reach your shoulder blades, let your fingers rest in your underarm, as close to the edge of the shoulder blade as possible.)
• Exhale. Relax into this hold. Rest your arms on your body. Drop your shoulders. Bow your head. Allow the tension and stress to melt away.
• Practice “the big hug” whenever you feel overwhelmed, stressed, or anxious. Hold for several minutes or until you feel the symptoms ease.
• As a regular practice, hold for 10 – 20 minutes a day.

Hold your fingers, one at time.

• Each finger relates to certain energy patterns in the body and to certain mental and emotional patterns.
• Holding the fingers, one at a time, for a minute or so each, harmonizes the energetic flow and restores balance.
• Simply wrap the fingers of the left hand around the right thumb. Relax. Breathe. Hold until you feel a rhythmic pulse, or until you feel tension start to ease, or for a minute or two.
• Next, wrap your left hand around your right index finger. Relax. Breathe. Hold until you feel a rhythmic pulse, or until you feel tension start to ease, or for a minute or two.
• Proceed in the same manner holding each finger on right hand and then each finger of your left hand.
• Practice as needed for stress relief and daily for maintaining balance.

36 Conscious Breaths!

• Sit or lie down in a comfortable position. Close your eyes. Tune into your breathing.
• Simply observe and begin to count your breaths: Exhale, count 1. Notice your inhalation. It’s not necessary to “take a breath;” the inhalation will come in its own natural rhythm. Exhale, count 2. Inhale. Exhale, count 3. Inhale.
• Continue until you have completed 36 exhalations and inhalations.
• Practice as needed for stress relief and daily for maintaining balance.