❄️ Winter Wellness - Boosting Immunity, Mood, and Mind… with Hypnotherapy 🌿

Winter is well and truly here, and with it comes the familiar mix of chilly mornings, sniffles, and that extra sense of sluggishness. The shorter days, reduced sunlight, cozier-in-more-ways-than-one inclinations—all of this can affect your mood, your energy, and even your immune system. Sound familiar?

You’re not alone. Nearly everyone feels the mid‑winter drag. But guess what? This season can also be a time of renewal, restoration, and mindful pause—especially when we have the right tools in our toolkit.

🌥 What Winter Does to Us—and How to Fight Back

Biologically speaking, winter affects us:

• Sunlight dips, which can reduce our Vitamin D and serotonin production, often affecting mood and energy.

• Lower temperatures, leading to more indoor time and closer proximity to bugs.

• Disrupted sleep cycles, as days shorten and nights linger.

Combine those with normal life stress and it becomes a recipe for what modern researchers call psychoneuroimmunological imbalance—when your thoughts and emotions directly impact your immune function.

That means stress, poor mood, or ongoing low-grade anxiety can actually weaken your immune response, making you more susceptible to colds, flu, or even lingering low energy.

🛠️ Your Winter Toolkit - Breathwork + Hypnotherapy

Breathwork is one of the simplest yet most powerful tools for nervous system regulation and immune support:

• A recent psychology article called longer exhalations a direct way to “hack” your vagus nerve, increasing heart rate variability (HRV), reducing stress, and improving decision-making—even after just two minutes.

• Another study comparing breathwork to mindfulness found that exhale-focused sighing reduced anxiety and improved mood more effectively than meditation.

  
  

✅ Try this breath reset (4–8 technique)

• Inhale gently for 4 seconds.

• Hold briefly if it feels nice (1–2 seconds).

• Exhale slowly for 8 seconds, like you’re fogging a window.

  
  

Just 2–3 minutes of this practice daily can shift your nervous system into “rest-and-digest” mode, boosting resilience and focus.

🌀 Hypnotherapy: The Cooling Balm for Winter Stress

Hypnosis does more than calm your mind—it tangibly supports immune function:

• A review in Psychoneuroimmunology found hypnosis and guided imagery helped reduce winter viral infections and supported immune markers in medical students during exam stress.

• Research also shows relaxation techniques like hypnotherapy can decrease cortisol and improve white‑cell activities—key markers of immune health.

  
  

Hypnotherapy activates the parasympathetic nervous system, allowing both mind and body to repair, recalibrate, and restore.

😊 The Mid-Winter Reset

Let’s do a mini check-in

1. Pause south of the busyness. Close your eyes.

2. Breathe in for 4… and out for 8.

3. Picture a soft, warm light gently flowing into your chest, calming every cell.

4. Whisper to yourself: “I am safe. I am healthy. I am growing.”

Three breaths. Three affirmations. You’re more restored than before.

🌱 Ready to Thrive This Season?

Winter doesn’t have to be a slog-of-a-season. It can be a time of deep rest, self-care, and internal alignment.

With breathwork, hypnotherapy, and a little daily kindness, you’re not just surviving colder months—you’re nourishing your mind, body, and immune system in profound ways.

If you’d like help creating a winter wellness routine tailored just for you, I’m here.

➡️ Visit teresasaunders.com Your calm, resilient, vibrant self is waiting—season after season.

Stay well, stay warm—and keep breathing beautifully.