Your 2024 Stress Management Tool

How "Banking" My Chi Helped Me Stay Energized During Stressful Times

I’m going to start with an unpopular opinion: The holidays suck. All of them.

My least favorite is the 4th of July. The noise, the obnoxiousness, the dangerous fireworks in the hands of inebriated people. But I also don’t like Thanksgiving, with the ridiculous amount of food we’re “obligated” to prepare, the disappointments of people who can’t make it (or don’t want to), the travel hassles, traffic, and weather dangers that we’ll navigate through ‘cause that’s just what you do.

And yes, call me Scrooge, but I don’t like Christmas, or any of the celebrations around it. Too many unmet expectations, too much commercialization, too much anticipation…just, too much. And too often, in my case, it leads to fights between loved ones, letdowns, and overall, just a freaking mess all over my house that, though everyone “helps,” remains largely my responsibility.

You might be able to tell have I have now crossed the Rubicon into my 50s. Which means, I get to say these things. AND, I get to act upon them.

In recent years, I’ve worked down and managed all of these holiday expectations to something simpler and more enjoyable. Holidays should be about time with friends and family, and I’ve been slowly dialing back the expectations and the amount of work and stress I’m willing to put myself through in order to meet them. I don’t care anymore about “tradition”, I just want something that makes sense for who we are and what we most enjoy. (Turkey, by the way, is one of the most awful foods. There’s a reason we don’t eat it the rest of the year.)

The only holiday I like anymore, and enjoy celebrating, is my birthday. THAT I’m here for. I love to celebrate, in fact, for the entirety of my birthday month. And I love to celebrate my loved one’s birthdays, too. It’s simple: dinner, a couple gifts maybe, a toast. Lovely. Perfect. Stress-free.

Yes, the older I get, the less willing I am to put myself through any stress that is of my own making. Because truly, there’s enough stress in life that we can’t escape. There are wars, people held hostage, genocide, and a political crisis in this country. Why create more stress for ourselves? Why set ourselves up for disappointment? Why use the holidays as a time to measure other people’s love and thoughtfulness through the gifts they give/don’t give? Why try to meet other people’s definitions of what a holiday should look like?

Christmas 2023 came with additional stress for me, as my husband and I were planning our 25th anniversary two-week trip to Europe. We were planning to leave on December 27th. Sounds blissful, I know. But I’ve traveled overseas before, and I know that while it’s exciting, and very worth it, it’s also hard on the body and the mind. Stress can come from good, exciting things, just as much as from hard, painful things.

Knowing that there would be the preparatory stress of packing, getting a pet/housesitter set up, and wrapping up other loose ends all on top of the usual stress of the holidays, I was seeking techniques and ideas so that by the time I left on this trip, I wasn’t already depleted. So, in early December, before the rush started in earnest, I said to my acupuncurist while discussing my concerns regarding my traveling energy and resilience levels: “I wish I could just bank all these extra hours of sleep for when I lose sleep in the coming weeks!”

He answered, “You might not be able to bank sleep per se, but you can bank chi.”

Bank chi?

Chi, you might know, is our body’s vital energy. It’s Prana in the yoga world. In Ayurveda, we’d call it Ojas. When it’s high, we feel vibrant, alive, connected. When it’s low, we feel exhausted and overwhelmed. When it’s high, we can manage stressful events with more skill, more presence. When it’s low, we’re likely to snap at someone, make crucial mistakes, or in some other way break down. Now, there’s nothing wrong with a good old-fashioned breakdown, as I’ve written about here. But with the holidays approaching, our trip right on the back of it, I knew I would need as much chi as I could possibly gather.

For the next few weeks, before my daughters arrived back home with their luggage, their dog, their stories, before I really had to start thinking about packing, I started actively banking my chi.

I did this in several ways:

• I slept as much as I wanted, no guilt.
• I watched enjoyable movies, read good fiction books.
• I cooked more simply, keeping the clean-up to a minimum.
• I reduced my writing time (writing requires a lot of chi!)
• I spent a lot of extra time cuddling with our pets.
• I reduced alcohol
• I exercised regularly

Well, the results are in. The holidays are over, thank goodness. Everyone is back home where they belong. And we did have a phenomenal trip to Europe. But there was stress: catching a flight, catching a train, navigating Maps, not speaking the language, not sleeping in my own bed, etc. etc. Yet, somehow, I managed to feel really good nearly every day. Even when I had insomnia, even when jet lag came crashing down, I felt my inner resilience. I felt capable, strong. Like I truly had “banked” my chi, and now, I was making withdrawals when I needed it.

Now, of course, I’m feeling the exhaustion. But the routines of my life are satisfying and nourishing. I’m making my way back, banking some chi again, getting ready to keep working on book # 2 again.

But this year, I plan on dialing back the holidays even more. I plan on living more gently than ever before, with more ease, more spaciousness, and fewer demands. I feel softer coming into this year, like I’ve whatever I’ve been trying to grasp (control), I now realize I can hold a little lighter, and it still won’t drop.

The gift of my 50s, maybe.

May you, reader, find softness and ease in your year. I’ll be in touch.

Namaste,

Keri