Tips for Reducing Holiday Stress Through Relaxation and Meditation Available on New Holidaystress.Info Website

Most holiday stress tips offer the same cliché advice. Now leading authors and meditation experts Joel and Michelle Levey have taken several popular ways of reducing holiday stress and improved them by adding relaxation and meditation suggestions drawn from their years of practical experience assisting individuals and groups.

The Levey’s Top Ten Tips for Reducing Holiday Stress are now available on www.holidaystress.info, a new Web site created by the editors at Self-Guided.com. The Web site offers online resources for relieving stress and achieving balance during the holidays. It also includes links to other useful articles with holiday stress tips for parents, singles, divorced families, and others.

"We want to help people have a fuller and more enjoyable experience this holiday, especially during this time of increased tension due to the poor economy, terrorism, and the prospect of war," said Joel Levey. "We want to guide people to tap their natural inner resources for resilience during the holidays."

For example, a common holiday stress tip suggests that you create a hand-made gift. The Leveys take it a step further and provide insights on how to tap into your natural creativity and offer a link to an online guided imagery audio clip designed to enhance creativity.

They also provide tips that include relaxation exercises to relieve stress, suggestions for finding balance in life, mindfulness techniques, and reminders about living a purposeful life.

The Top Ten Tips for Reducing Holiday Stress (www.holidaystress.info) include:

1. Create realistic expectations -- don't try to make this the perfect holiday.
2. Learn to say "no" to extra obligations that might stress you out.
3. At least once a day practice a relaxation technique.
4. Get involved in a volunteer activity where you help others.
5. Tap into your creativity and create a hand-made gift.
6. Eat and drink sensibly, and get plenty of exercise and sleep.
7. Practice being a peacemaker if family squabbles erupt.
8. Set a holiday spending budget and then put that money aside in a separate bank account.
9. Create a new holiday tradition that doesn't cost anything.
10. Reflect on the deeper meaning and spirit of the holidays for you personally, for your family, and for humanity and the world.

Joel Levey and Michelle Levey are the authors of Living in Balance (Conari Press, 1999), Simple Meditation and Relaxation (Conari Press, 1998), and Quality of Mind (Wisdom Publications, 1991). In his Foreword to Living in Balance, the Dalai Lama of Tibet writes: "As more people achieve some degree of mental calm, insight, or the ability to transform negative emotions into positive ones, there will be a natural reinforcement of basic human values and consequently a greater chance for peace and happiness for all."

Self-Guided.com is the producer of Joel Levey’s "Self-Guided Relaxation" CD and other guided imagery audio products for stress relief and well-being. See www.self-guided.com