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Hey Reader,

'Tis the season to feel a combination of extreme joy and extreme overwhelm, am I right?

Hanukkah begins tonight, the solstice is next weekend, and Christmas, Kwanzaa, and Boxing Day follow immediately after.

Not to mention New Year's....(holy smokes, we're just over 2 weeks out from 2026. Anyone else feel like this is totally bananas?)

During this time of year, I anchor into my movement practice with even more persistence because moving my body every day helps keep me grounded and feeling good when everything else is busier and my typical routines are uprooted.

But I also recognize that my behavior is not "the norm." I have a consistent daily movement practice that I worked really hard to create and is now absolutely non-negotiable.

I also teach yoga and strength training as my job. It's built into who I am at a foundational level.

If movement doesn't function in the same way for you, it's often the first thing to go when life gets busier and brighter and more stressful than usual -- hello, holiday season!

The problem is threefold:

First, movement is one of those practices that can offer enormous stress relief, so we tend to need it especially during the holiday season.

Second, consistent movement is an essential part of a healthy lifestyle.

And third is that once you get out of the habit of doing something, it's really hard to restart it when the chaos dies down.

(This leads me to my Movement Snack this week)

Movement Snack this week:

There are a few ways that you can help ensure that you maintain a movement practice during the holiday season.

The first thing that helps is to adjust expectations. If you're traveling, you might not have access to the same equipment you're used to using or you might have less space to move. This means you have to reconsider how you move your body. Instead of using hand weights or barbells, you need to focus on bodyweight strength. Instead of going for a run, you might need to do a cardio circuit indoors. Instead of doing a complex yoga flow, you might need to only do standing poses.

And probably you're going to aim for less time moving.

The second thing that helps is making a plan. For one of my top tier students in MOVE, I'm offering both accountability and personalized emails everyday. She's out of town at the end of the month and can't access the calendar of classes I post for MOVE members, nor will she have access to hand weights. So I am sending her an email every day she's away with the practice of the day, adjusting the classes to something she can do -- bodyweight strength, quick flows...and she texts me to let me know when she's completed a practice, adding in some bonus accountability.

Once you've adjusted expectations and made a plan, there are a few simple options for ensuring you keep moving your body during the chaos of the holidays:

Keep it simple. Aim for a pose a day or just 2 minutes of movement. This might feel like the bare minimum, but it keeps you consistent which will help you get back to longer practices when you have more time again and are back in a more familiar routine.
If you need a little support in doing a single pose/exercise per day, sign up for my Power of One challenge. Makes it super easy.

Alternatively, you can aim for 5 minutes of movement per day. The easiest way to do this is to set a timer and just go until it beeps at you. You could do cat/cow for 5 minutes, 10 squats every minute on the minute, or do 5 standing yoga poses for 30 seconds on each side.
If you need a little more support in doing 5 minutes of movement per day, you can sign up for The Daily 5 and I'll send you a 5 minute movement practice every day for a month -- which will carry you through the new year!

You can also join me in my Countdown to 2026 daily movement over on Bluesky. I'll share a short movement practice everyday (less than 12 minutes long). If I remember, I'll try and do it in posts on YouTube, too (not new videos, but a post). I'll start posting tomorrow, December 15th.

Lastly, you can get a jumpstart on de-stressing with my latest video on YouTube:

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This is a building flow (start with one pose and in each round of the flow, you add another pose), to help get you in your body and out of your head, even for just 18 minutes.

Question of the week -- what do you love most about the holiday season?

I'd love to hear from you and will share my favorite thing about the holiday season, too!

Warmly,

Naomi

Want to stay in touch during the week? Here are a 2 easy ways:

​Follow me on Bluesky, where I try to share daily movement practices as acts of resistance, connection, and strength.

​Follow me on substack, where I write about the intersection of movement, motherhood, and the culture that we are all moving through. Or better yet, subscribe so you have immediate access to regular essays, including my most recent substack, about the 3 reasons why I was able to start dancing again in my 40's without wrecking my body. I talked briefly about this last week but went deeper in my substack. You can read it for free here.

There are many ways to support my writing on substack, which focuses on women's health and motherhood during perimenopause through an anti-diet and pro-science lens:

😍 Become a free subscriber
🤩 Become a paid subscriber
❤️ Like the post in substack
💬 Leave a comment (if it’s thoughtful and not insulting I’ll respond!)
➡️ Share or restack within the app

Also published this week an article about continuous glucose monitors over on Fit Bottomed Girls, my favorite anti-diet, pro-science fitness platform on the internet.