The glorious summer season is upon us, but you may well have noticed that in these holiday times, other people can be a huge source of stress for us.

Now that schools are closed, there may be full responsibilities for childcare and constant feeding times. If your house is anything like mine, it’s breakfast at 8am, a snack at 9am and then there’s a cry for lunch around 10am!

Summer holidays can go on in that vein until there’s talk of back to school – and very shortly after that, Christmas!

With this much hustle and bustle in our everyday life, it can be difficult some days to stay rooted to this moment, in this day, in this life. To take a pause.

Even if this isn’t the case during your summer season, I’m sure we can probably all think of a person or people who cause us stress. In an ideal world, we would like to avoid having to deal with these people, but quite often the biggest stressors are people we love and/or live with, so there’s no real way of avoiding them.

feet first

The best thing we can do for ourselves is to find ways to cope with the stress involved in everyday family life in summer and all year round. In order to transform that hot and bothered feeling to one of cool and calm, we’re going to lead with our feet – don’t run away now!

How can our feet help us? Well, bringing our attention to where our feet are, how our feet are, how they feel, what’s going on with them at certain non-stressful points in your day – maybe as you get out of bed and place them on the floor for the first time each morning, when you’re sitting at traffic lights or in a queue this harvest time – you can try to just shift your attention from the constant stream of thoughts in your head down to your feet. That’s it.

We need to practice this action many times in a day. What this simple exercise of paying attention to your body in the present moment does is get you in the habit of being more aware of what is going on in your body.

Then, when you begin to feel stressed by people or situations, your mindfulness practice will have created a little space between you feeling your urge to act and your regular reaction.

This space allows you to choose how to respond, rather than simply reacting. This is a transformative practice. It actually will change your life if you remember the three Ps: practice, be patient and say pleasant things to yourself.

As you are trying to change what is possibly a habit of a lifetime, it will take time for your brain to bed in that new way of responding to stress. We are hardwired to fight, fly or freeze – so be patient.

In your mindfulness practice, you are creating a new neural pathway in your brain, so do not expect immediate results. But trust in the process, it does work.

Physical Exercise

Our physical exercise this month is a cooling breathing technique, great for helping us to physically and emotionally cool down by drawing air across the tongue. This act alone is said to have a cooling and calming effect on the nervous system. It can improve focus and reduce agitation, anger and anxiety, as well as helping to manage excess heat in the body. Try it twice a day or as needed in a stressful situation.

Sit comfortably with your shoulders relaxed and your spine as straight as can be. As my friend Kathleen says: “Imagine you’re a king or a queen.”

Slightly lower the chin. Open the mouth slightly with your tongue just behind the teeth. Inhale slowly through the space between the upper and lower teeth, letting the air wash over your tongue as you raise your chin toward the ceiling.

At the end of the inhalation, close the mouth and exhale through the nostrils as you slowly lower your chin back to neutral. Repeat for eight to 12 breaths.

Mindfulness Exercise

As we’re focusing on our feet this month, make time to take yourself on a mindful walk. Mindful walking does not have to be done really slowly, but it does entail placing your full attention on how your feet feel throughout the walk.

The mind will try to wander off on you – to other things you have to do, other places you have been or have yet to travel to – so when this happens, please remember the three Ps and continue your walk.

Being fully present with yourself is a really lovely way to spend a few minutes of your day and a helpful way to manage the intensity of having our nearest and dearest in very close proximity to us during holiday time.

Something To Ponder

One mindful person in a household can make the entire household more peaceful, calm and pleasant. As with almost everything, mindful actions speak louder than mindful words.

If you give yourself a few minutes each day to begin to tune into how your feet feel, in your shoes, on the ground and sit in silence with this feeling, you may well find that in a relatively short length of time, you will begin to feel more natural, more yourself and begin to experience that lovely sensation of coming home to yourself.

That will infiltrate all other aspects of your life and open the door to happiness and contentment for you and those you surround yourself with.

It is important to note though that mindfulness will not work without the three Ps – practice, patience and an attitude of pleasantness towards yourself, which, over time, will transfer to others.

We start where we are, we use what we have and we do what we can. As Jon Kabat Zinn so succinctly puts it: “We cannot stop the waves, but we can learn to surf.” CL