Category Archives: Holiday

Unexpected holiday plans can spring anytime and for any reasons and often such last minute situations can lead to confusion and travel goof ups. Last minute traveling can be little complicated to handle especially when there is so much to do and you have no idea where to begin or what to do.

Following are some of the key pointers you should keep in mind when planning a last minute holiday or when getting ready for that last minute travel:

Choose the destination

If this is some sudden plan of going out with the family for a day or two or if it’s some random idea of spending time with friends away from the rush of your city, always decide on a destination or a city before packing those heavy bags of yours. The best way is to either come with a common favorite place or call up friends or family members who might be able to come up with great holiday spot ideas. Another way is to decide is to consider factors like budget and time.

Find the cheaper airlines or hotels

Last minute travel can also be result of emergency or difficult to avoid circumstances leaving no time to plan a budget or to search for the most affordable way to travel or stay. At such situation, the best thing that could be done is to find cheaper online deals for airlines and hotel reservations. Internet is full of such last minute deals and can prove to be a good idea at such status of your travel.

Even the last minute holiday based on urgent account of affairs can be made suitable to one’s pocket by such deals. It is advisable to discuss the matter with any friend or family member who might have idea on affordable traveling ideas or might have any such experience.

Start the holiday one day in advance

It is always a good idea to mark the beginning of a holiday a day in advance, a day when you can sit think, plan and shop. A day in advance means lots of time and less of confusion especially if its one of those last minute holiday plans.

Make a list

For everything you plan, wish to do and still have to do make a list. By penning down every little thing you get to have a clear idea on what’s been done and what’s still not done, also it saves you from asking yourself ‘am I forgetting something?’, when you board your plane or train.

List making technique also helps in checking everything twice and ensures that you have planned it all.

Reach not on time, but before time

This is one of the important tips to follow when planning or getting ready for last minute holiday. Reaching the airport or station much before the time saves you from unexpected incidents that might delay you and gives you sometime to sit and think. Often, last minute holiday or last minute traveling makes you forget things you might have wanted to take with you or things you simply forgot to pick, with early arrival at your airport or station you get enough time to drive back, in case you have to. Also, reaching before time helps to unwind the trouble and lets you begin your journey with peace.

Holiday season is often an exciting time for lovers- exchanging gifts, going to affairs and parties, and going away for a vacation. But this feel-good atmosphere can sometimes be overwhelmed by the Holiday stress- preparing and cramming for family dinners, shopping, oceans of presents to wrap and crazy schedule to abide. Amid this rumpus, its always good for you to set aside some romantic things to do with your loved ones. To have a romantic- filled holiday season, here are some few suggestions that you can do.

1. Do the twelve days of Christmas countdown. This requires a bit of imagination, but it will be more than worth it. It doesnt need to be expensive or time consuming. For instance, in the 10th day of Christmas you can give 10 hickeys or in the 9th day you can give 10 baked cupcakes there are so many things that you can do together with the twelve days of Christmas. The great thing about this is both of you have something to look forward to everyday. Make this a tradition.

2. Romantic Paper Chains on your Christmas tree. In a colorful strip of paper, write down the qualities you adore about each other. Then glue each strip until it will make a long chain and have it wrap around your tree.

3. A romantic Christmas love letter. Instead of giving an ordinary card, why not make a letter of lovely sentiments about your loved one. Make your words count this holiday season.

4. Have a slow cruise around town sight seeing the wonderful Christmas lights and decorations, take pictures of each town you have gone to.

5. This holiday season, hang a hundred of mistletoe around your house! Be sure to kiss every time you are under a mistletoe.

6. Cuddle together and watch holiday special movies.

7. In a Christmas party, take the stage, have everybodys attention and dedicate a love poem or sonnet to your partner.

8. Surprise your partner with a lovely hotel suite with candle lit dinner.

9. This holiday season, have a group of carolers sing Christmas love songs to your partner.

10. This holiday season go to places where there are beautiful lights and ornaments, take time to walk around the park hand in hand, enjoy the view and each other.

11. If you havent cook for your partner, then do it now. There is no perfect way for you to surprise your partner with your rare culinary skills than this holiday season.

Life seems to compress as the holiday’s get closer, and this shows us in no uncertain terms how “intense” our lives have become. Holidays put normal life into hyper-speed, but really our lives in general are now in hyper-speed anyway, which can make the holiday’s seem almost unmanageable. However, there is hope, if we can understand the problem.

Research indicating that change is stressful, even good change, explains why the holidays are so stressful, as we are taken out of normal routines and challenged to “perform” in new and abnormal ways during holidays. Furthermore, modern life in general is changing at a mind-numbing pace. So, how do we adapt to change more healthfully? T’ai Chi / Qigong (Chi Kung) tips for loosening your grip on the holidays, and on life in general, include “remembering to breathe.”

So, right now, place the tip of your tongue on the roof of your mouth, and then think of relaxing your torso open from the bottom abdominal area to allow the lower lungs to fill with air, observing as they fill up through the top as the upper chest inflates. Good. Now, on the sighing exhale observe your body “relaxing” the breath out from the top of your lungs all the way down to the bottom as your abdominal muscles relax back in . . . fully expending the air from the bottom of the lungs. Repeat this allowing the lungs to fill from the bottom all the way up to the top, and then relaxing the air out of the body from the top of the chest down to the upper pelvic muscles.

Although at first it seem as though the torso muscles work to expand the torso open for air, and then forcing the air out, little by little as you relax open to the breath, every atom of your being relaxes open to be breathed effortlessly. Every muscle in your head, face, shoulders, and torso . . . begins to let go, as though the breath were breathing you, and all you need to do is let go a little more with each sighing exhale.

The tip of the tongue placed on the roof of the mouth allows the breath in more gradually, rather than in one big open throated gush. Studies show this slow, gradual, inhale and exhale oxygenates the body much more effectively. As you breathe in the full breaths with the tip of the tongue on the roof of the mouth, your entire being relaxes open to the lightness of air, even the bones, organs, brain and heart. Then as you exhale every atom of your being can “let go” of everything it holds onto to release the loads and burdens of the mind, heart, and body to be exhaled into a healing lightness. You actually expand open with this lightness as an airy feeling of “effortlessness” permeates every tissue and field within and around your body.

This openness feels almost like the wind can blow right through you. Close your eyes so that you can feel internally the deep letting go as the bones themselves begin to release their grip on issues and tensions they may have unconsciously gripped. You will always find the more you let go, the more you can let go. As you approach the holidays or life beyond the holidays, allow your mind to release its expectations and obsessions as they come up. Let the world to flow to you and through you, rather than “reaching out” for outcome, and “holding on” to expectations. Often better opportunities are coming at us if we can let go of our grip on the past or illusions of the future.

By being “open” we may dream a much greater reality as it occurs, for the holidays and for our lives. By using holiday stress as a catalyst to breathe life and healing light into our clenching bodies, we can carry the promise of the holidays into our greater lives, breathing open to the goodness that waits to fill every aspect of our year and our lives.

You can experience a “Daily Dose of Bliss” by visiting www.worldtaichiday.org and clicking on Free Online Lessons then Sitting Qigong.