Practice during the holidays

When Life Disrupts Routine

The holiday season presents practitioners with a particular kind of difficulty. On one side stands the accumulated momentum of daily practice - the morning routine cultivated over months or years, the meditation sessions that have become as essential as sleep, the dietary principles that now feel intuitive. On the other side stands the legitimate pull of relationship, celebration, and rest - family arriving from distant cities, meals prepared with love if not Ayurvedic precision, schedules governed by collective rhythm rather than personal discipline.

Between these two stands the practitioner, often carrying an unexamined burden of guilt whatever choice is made. Skip the practice, and failure looms. Maintain the practice rigidly, and relationship suffers. The very tools meant to reduce suffering become another source of it.

This tension deserves examination rather than quick resolution, because how one holds it reveals much about the nature of practice itself.

The trap of rigidity

For some practitioners, the holiday disruption triggers a clutching response. The routine, having proven helpful, becomes precious - and then it becomes identity. “I am someone who practices at 5am” carries different weight than “I practice at 5am when conditions allow.” The first statement binds; the second describes.

When practice becomes identity, disruption feels like threat. Missing the morning session is not simply missing the session; it feels like betrayal of who one has become. The rigidity that was once discipline hardens into something closer to compulsion. Practice, meant to serve freedom, becomes another binding.

The Yoga Sutras address this directly. The fifth niyama, ishvara pranidhana, asks for the release of outcomes - even the outcomes of practice. The practitioner who cannot tolerate disruption has made practice into another attachment, another klesha dressed in spiritual clothing. Surrender would mean holding practice lightly enough to set it down when life asks.

There is also the question of what the practice actually is. If the formal practice - the cushion, the asana sequence, the breathing techniques - constitutes the whole of practice, then its interruption interrupts everything. But if formal practice is preparation for the more fundamental practice of presence, then the holiday gathering becomes the actual ground of practice. The patience required with difficult relatives, the attention brought to conversation, the quality of presence at the table - these may be precisely what the cushion was preparing.

The trap of dissolution

The opposite danger is equally real. Some practitioners, having found practice helpful, nonetheless greet holiday disruption with a kind of relief. Finally, a legitimate excuse. The discipline that was never quite internalized can be set aside; the dietary principles that were always slightly resented can be abandoned; the meditation practice that was endured more than embraced can wait until January.

This is not the skillful flexibility that responds to changed conditions. It is the dissolution of a practice that was never quite established. The difference lies in whether practice is restored when conditions return, or whether the holidays simply exposed what was already failing.

The traditions speak of sankalpa - intention, resolve, the determination that underlies action. When formal practice becomes impossible, sankalpa remains available. One can hold the intention of practice even when action is blocked. The parent who cannot meditate because children wake before dawn can nonetheless hold the intention through the day, returning to practice when the gap allows. The traveler sleeping in unfamiliar spaces can hold the intention of routine even as routine eludes them.

Sankalpa without action eventually weakens. But action without sankalpa was never really practice - it was mechanical repetition. The holiday disruption tests which has been established.

What the traditions actually expect

There is a common misconception that classical practices were designed for monks and ascetics with unlimited time and no worldly obligations. The dinacharya literature, however, addresses the householder - the person with family, occupation, and social duties. The classical practitioner was not someone who had withdrawn from life but someone navigating life’s demands while maintaining spiritual practice.

This context matters. The traditions expect interruption. They expect competing obligations. They expect that the practitioner will sometimes face irreconcilable demands and will have to choose. What they also expect is the capacity to begin again - to return to practice after the gap without dramatizing the lapse or using it as evidence of fundamental failure.

The Charaka Samhita, when describing seasonal routines, acknowledges that rigid adherence is neither possible nor desirable. The skilled practitioner adjusts - not abandoning principles but adapting their expression to changed conditions. Winter calls for different practices than summer; travel calls for different practices than home; celebration calls for different practices than ordinary days.

This is not weakness or compromise. It is the intelligence that keeps practice alive across decades rather than burning bright for months before exhaustion.

The minimal viable practice

When full practice is impossible, something remains possible. Identifying this irreducible core - the minimal viable practice - before disruption arrives prevents the all-or-nothing thinking that abandons everything when everything cannot be maintained.

For some, the minimum is the breath. A few conscious breaths upon waking, taken before feet touch the floor, maintains connection to practice even when the full morning routine cannot happen. The breath is always available, requires no equipment, and takes no time that must be explained to others.

For some, the minimum is the pause before eating. A moment of presence, of gratitude, of recognition that this food will become body - this can be maintained anywhere, at any table, without announcement or performance.

For some, the minimum is evening. A moment before sleep to release the day, to offer whatever practice was or was not done, to return to the intention even if the action fell short.

The specific minimum matters less than its identification. What cannot be sacrificed? What, if lost, would mean practice has genuinely stopped? Everything else is negotiable.

How the doshas struggle

Each constitution tends to struggle differently with holiday disruption.

Vata, the dosha of movement and change, often scatters during the holidays. Too many stimuli, too much travel, too many people, too little sleep - the system becomes ungrounded and agitated. The vata response to disruption is often to spin faster, trying to maintain everything while maintaining nothing well. The corrective is simplification: fewer commitments, more rest, accepting that some things will not happen and that this is acceptable.

Pitta, the dosha of intensity and accomplishment, often feels guilty about disruption. The voice of achievement does not pause for celebration; it demands that practice continue at full intensity while also meeting every social obligation perfectly. The pitta response is to push harder in both directions, burning reserves that will be needed in January. The corrective is releasing the scorecard: some days will be full practice, some days will be family, some days will be neither, and none of this determines worth.

Kapha, the dosha of stability and inertia, often uses disruption as permission to stop. The natural resistance to change, which normally supports steady practice, now supports steady avoidance. “I’ll start again in January” becomes the kapha mantra, and January arrives with accumulated heaviness that makes restarting harder than continuing would have been. The corrective is maintaining movement: not the full routine, but enough activity to prevent complete stagnation.

Understanding one’s pattern allows preparation. The vata practitioner might schedule extra rest. The pitta practitioner might explicitly release the need to practice perfectly during the holidays. The kapha practitioner might commit to a minimal daily action that prevents total inertia.

Family as practice field

There is another possibility, one that reframes rather than resolves the tension: the family gathering itself as practice ground.

The patience developed in meditation finds application when conversation becomes difficult. The non-reactivity cultivated on the cushion gets tested at the dinner table. The capacity to witness thoughts without being swept away serves directly when old family dynamics resurface.

This is not consolation prize - “well, at least I can practice mindfulness while tolerating my relatives.” It is recognition that formal practice exists to develop capacities that then express in life. If those capacities cannot express during the holidays, what exactly have they been developed for?

The person who can maintain equanimity during meditation but cannot maintain it during Christmas dinner has not failed at the holidays. They have discovered where the actual work lies. The formal practice created the possibility; the family gathering reveals how fully that possibility has been realized.

This perspective does not eliminate the value of formal practice. The cushion remains necessary; the morning routine still matters. But it places them in right relationship: preparation for life rather than escape from it.

Returning without shame

Eventually the holiday ends. The guests leave or one returns home; the celebrations conclude; ordinary time resumes. The question becomes how to return to practice.

The most common error is compensatory intensity. The practitioner, feeling guilty about the gap, pushes twice as hard - longer sessions, stricter diet, earlier rising. This approach typically produces exhaustion and another abandonment, confirming the belief that gaps in practice are catastrophic.

The more skillful approach is simple resumption. Take up the practice again as if no drama had occurred. The gap happened; now practice continues. The Yoga Sutras speak of abhyasa - continuous effort over long time without attachment to results. Continuity does not require unbroken sequence. It requires returning after every departure.

Imperfect practice is still practice. The gaps do not erase what came before or prevent what comes after. A lifetime of imperfect practice, interrupted by holidays and illness and exhaustion and life, accomplishes more than perfect practice abandoned after the first disruption.

The practitioner who has weathered many holidays knows this. The gap is expected; the return is expected; both are part of what practice actually looks like across decades. The idealized image of unbroken daily practice is just that - an image, useful perhaps for inspiration but harmful when used as standard for judgment.

Permission and its limits

Sometimes the most skillful response to the holidays is permission - permission to rest, to celebrate, to set down the practices that serve ordinary time and allow a different rhythm. This is not failure. It is recognition that life includes seasons, and not every season is for the same activities.

Rest is itself a practice. The body that has been maintaining discipline may genuinely need release. The mind that has been effortfully attending may need the permission to wander. The practitioner who has been building ojas through careful diet may need the pleasure of holiday food shared with loved ones, even if that food does not optimize anything.

The permission has limits, of course. Rest that extends indefinitely is not rest but avoidance. Celebration that never ends is not celebration but escape. The skill is knowing when permission has served its purpose and when it has become its own trap.

This judgment cannot be made in advance or by rules. It requires honesty - the capacity to observe one’s own patterns without the distortions of either guilt or justification. Is this rest genuine restoration, or is it hiding? Is this celebration nourishment, or is it numbing? Only the practitioner can answer, and only if willing to see clearly.

What remains

When the wrapping paper has been cleared and the guests have departed, when ordinary routine beckons and the question of practice reasserts itself, something has been revealed that formal practice alone does not show.

The holidays test what has actually been integrated versus what was merely performed. The practitioner who maintained peace amid chaos has demonstrated something about the depth of their practice. The practitioner who fell into old patterns has discovered where work remains. Both outcomes provide information that steady, undisrupted practice cannot.

This is not to recommend disruption - stability and routine genuinely support development in ways that chaos cannot. But disruption will come regardless, and when it comes in the predictable form of annual celebration, it offers a kind of recurrent examination. How does practice fare when conditions are not ideal? What emerges when the supports are removed?

The answer, whatever it is, is useful. It points toward what needs attention. It reveals where identification has crept in, where rigidity has replaced discipline, where dissolution hides behind flexibility. It shows the practitioner to themselves, which is finally what all practice aims to do.

The holidays, seen this way, are not interruption of practice but extension of it. The svadhyaya - self-study - that happens on the cushion continues at the dinner table. The tapas - discipline - that shapes the morning routine gets tested when that routine cannot happen. The surrender that completes the niyamas applies precisely when control is not possible.

Practice during the holidays is still practice. It is just practice under different conditions, revealing different facets of the work. When the holidays end and ordinary time returns, the practitioner returns too - not despite the disruption but informed by it, humbled perhaps, and ready to begin again.

To understand how your constitution affects your relationship with routine and disruption, take the free Prakriti Quiz. For support in building sustainable practice that can weather life’s interruptions, explore our Free Guide on the foundations of Ayurvedic living.