Do the holidays have you tired and stressed out? An expert says a five-minute daily routine can help you cope. Gary Crawford has more. 

PARTICIPANTS: Gary Crawford. Bradley Dirks and Elizabeth Kiss, both with Kansas State University Extension.

Transcript

Ah, many people believe the holidays should be very nice and comfy cozy like this music here, relaxing, but for many of us it turns out more like this.

The blistering pace, the strain, the stress.

Yes, this is an extremely stressful time.

That's Brad Dirks.

He's a Kansas State University Extension behavioral expert.

And what got me talking with him about holiday stress was an earlier interview I did with another Kansas State Extension educator, family finance expert, Elizabeth Kish.

In the midst of our conversation, she made a very profound statement that many of us may have expressed.

This is a holiday.

It's supposed to be fun.

What are we panicking about?

You know, and if we are working ourselves up into a panic, to me that just doesn't seem enjoyable.

Yes, it produces more stress than joy in some cases, and sometimes the scale tips and the stressors become overwhelming.

So to avoid that, Brad Dirks says two things.

One, we maybe should sit out and take an inventory of things that we do every year.

Maybe there are some things we can reduce or eliminate.

Secondly, Brad says we can be physically affected by holiday stress with all kinds of symptoms, and we might not even realize it until we stop and take an inventory and we ask ourselves, what is your experience of this stress?

Is it in your shoulders?

Is it in your back?

Are you getting headaches?

Are you tired?

Are you depressed?

Are we having insomnia?

Brad says there are things we can do to alleviate some of those problems, eating the right types and quantities of food, exercising a little bit, not depending on pills or alcohol to relax.

And one more thing.

We used to call it biofeedback, and now we call it mindfulness.

It's just a little routine that Brad Dirks says really can work for us.

First, we need to find a quiet place or use noise canceling headphones and drop your shoulders, take three or four cleansing breaths, focus on something that's positive.

Some people think of go to their happy place, whatever you want to call it.

If we relax our shoulders, do some deep breathing exercises, close our eyes, focus on our breathing for three to five minutes, learn to discipline your mind.

Those times of mindfulness that take, again, three to five minutes can be very effective in reducing that in the here and now stress.

Of which there can be a lot during the holiday.

So he says every night, Spend 10 minutes relaxing, relaxing your body, deep breathing.

And those things are very effective.

I mean, it sounds kind of weird.

Sounds touchy feely.

It does.

It does sound touchy feely, but it kind of resets your computer back to kind of closer to baseline.

And it can really help make the holidays much more enjoyable.

Stop it!

Ah, that's better.

Harry Crawford reporting for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.