The world of dining and drinking is an obstacle course wrapped in a labyrinth wrapped in a logic puzzle — it’s full of pitfalls, gray areas, and bewildering questions that really shouldn’t even be questions (How do I find the bathroom?) and yet, somehow, are. Fortunately, your friends at Eater are here to help: Life Coach is a series of simple guides to the arcane rituals of modern dining. Have a question or a quandary you’d like us to tackle? Drop Life Coach a line.
The cult of brunch is one that nearly everyone can agree on: Decidedly less dangerous (and arguably more fun) than Scientology, the lazy, midday repast of endless eggs Benedict variations and overpriced pancakes is mainly an excuse to narrow that pesky time window between getting out of bed and getting tipsy — in other words, to facilitate day drinking.
Boozing it up while the sun’s still high in the sky can make for a memorable adventure with friends, but it can also turn into a shitshow quickly — like when your BFF’s had five bloody marys and starts crying in the bathroom, or someone passes out face down at the table after too many picklebacks, rendering you forever banned from your favorite dive bar.
”Day drinking often — though not always — takes place on weekends between the hours of noon and 6 p.m.,” former Eater editor Kat Odell explains in her book Day Drinking: 50 Cocktails for a Mellow Buzz. On holidays — especially those that fall on Mondays and the days after Thanksgiving and Christmas, when the living is particularly lazy — many of us tend to expand that definition to include weekdays, but regardless of when your day drinking takes place, adhering to a few simple rules is essential to the success of your daytime revelry.
Obvious, yes, but padding your stomach with something of actual nutritious value before you starting pouring in the alcohol is essential, as it will slow the absorption of booze into your bloodstream; pounding mimosas when you’ve only had an Americano for breakfast will undoubtedly cut your day drinking endeavor short. In my unscientific opinion, a mixture of protein, carbs, and fat makes an ideal base: Think the aforementioned eggs Benedict, for example, or fried chicken and waffles, or avocado toast with a fried egg.
(See? Brunch truly is tailor-made for drinking.)
Downing dirty martinis or other stout cocktails like Old Fashioneds is not a good day-drinking strategy. As Odell advises in her book, “in an effort not to get full-blown wasted, and instead maintain a mellow buzz, the answer here is: low-alcohol libations.” Most beers or ciders will fit the bill; if you really want to keep it mellow, try a beer cocktail like a shandy or a radler, which dials down the ABV with the addition of lemonade, orange or grapefruit juice, or soda. (A tasty and widely available premixed version is Stiegl Radler, which is a very mellow 2.5 percent ABV.) There are also plenty of lower-proof cocktails that are delicious: Think micheladas, Aperol spritzes, and yes, that old day-drinking favorite the mimosa.
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Switching it up a little is fine, but going from beer to wine to cocktails is a one-way ticket to Hangover Town.
Though science doesn’t support the theory that mixing drinks makes hangovers worse, the drunker you get, the faster you’re likely to drink — so switching from beer to, say, tequila is a good way to get overly intoxicated. The safest bet is to pick one type of alcohol and stick with it — and on a related note, just say no to shots. There’s always one overeager day drinker in the group who wants to buy a round of Jagerbombs, and that is unequivocally not the path to successful day drinking.
It truly cannot be said enough: DRINK WATER. Even if you consider yourself a veteran day drinker impervious to the effects of a full day of imbibing, your body still needs hydration. One glass of water between every drink is ideal, but realistically, just remembering to take frequent sips will go a long way toward preventing a hangover (and keeping you standing).
On a related note, al fresco drinking may be one of life’s great pleasures, but be sure to snag a patio seat that has shade: Too much sun will sap the energy out of you even quicker than your friend who won’t shut up about their last Overwatch marathon.
Break up all the boozing by ordering some food; your drinking companions will thank you. Something greasy and salty and carb-heavy is generally a crowd-pleaser — think cheese fries, chips and queso, or fried pickles (you know, bar food). But resist the urge to tuck into a full-on meal, like a burger and fries, lest you lull yourself into a full-on food and alcohol coma.
Whether it’s relying on a teetotaling friend who’s content to observe the rest of the group’s alcohol-fueled antics while sipping kombucha or simply hailing an Uber or Lyft, arranging alternative transportation is a must. Even if you’ve kept the drinks low-proof, spaced them out, and sipped water in between, you’re probably still not in any condition to drive. Do yourself, your friends, and everyone else on the road a favor and just don’t. (Side note: Do not be tempted by the electric scooter rentals that are probably littering the streets of your city.
Many drunk people before you have tried and failed.)
Day drinking should typically conclude at or before sunset (continue drinking well into the night and that’s called a bender, which is a different story), and definitely call it quits earlier if you feel yourself starting to get totally hammered. Bid adieu to your friends, tip your server or bartender generously (you and your friends weren’t too obnoxious though, right?), and go home to your couch, multiple large glasses of water, and possibly some Bagel Bites.
Electrolytes are also beneficial, if you’re so inclined — Pedialyte is pretty effective (more like #pedialit, amirite?), though I personally prefer concentrated electrolyte drops that can be added to water. So long as you followed these tips and didn’t overdo it, you’ll likely wake up tomorrow feeling not half-bad — and if you do find yourself in rough shape, the internet is rife with questionable advice for curing a hangover.
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It’s finally summer, and with it, everything that makes life sweet: festivals, vacations with friends, and long lazy days in the park with beers.
That last part matters, because let’s face it, day drinking is as much a part of the season as sunburn and overdosing on ice cream.
While it’s tempting to approach the year’s most fun activity with chill and spontaneity, drinking minus a plan can mean peaking too early and heading home to take a nap or drinking too fast and getting nauseous.
So if you’re ready to approach getting liquored up with the precision of a chess champion, consider one or all of the following pieces of advice. They range from things you should probably know already if you're a fully functioning adult, to lesser known boozing secrets that could revolutionize your drinking sessions.
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Stephen Cheetham
In an ideal world, you’d be aware that the next day would be devoted to drinking and you’d take it easy on the drinks the night before. This is partly common sense, but how much sleep you get is linked to how drunk you'll feel if you drink the following day.
Scott Swartzwelder, Ph.D., a psychiatry professor and coauthor of Buzzed: The Straight Facts about the Most Used and Abused Drugs from Alcohol to Ecstasy, told the New York Post that drinking alcohol (a sedative) when a person is short on sleep can make them feel drunker than they are.
Swartzwelder explained that this is psychological — your blood alcohol concentration isn’t higher when you’re sleepy, but you simply feel more drunk, because alcohol heightens your tiredness and makes you less alert. So if you want to increase your chances of an effortless day drinking session, you’d better get eight hours of sleep first.
Stephen Cheetham
While lining your stomach is an eye-rollingly predictable tip, most people tend to opt for carb-heavy meals, which experts say isn’t necessarily the best option. Thrillist cites some breakfast-friendly foods that could combat the effects of alcohol later: a glass of milk (minus coffee), which according to nutritionist Isabel Maples replaces the potassium “lost with excess urination”; avocado, because the healthy fats are “digested more slowly than carbs”; cereal, because the high fiber content “provides a good buffer for the alcohol and will slow its absorption”; and, of course, eggs, because the presence of amino acids in will “help break down some of the alcohol.
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If you’re also able to order eggs Florentine with salmon at your fancy brunch, do it, because the same article states that the fish boasts “super-high” levels of vitamin B-12 (the same vitamin that alcohol depletes).
Stephen Cheetham
Again, so predictable, right? But this matters, especially when you examine the science of getting drunk. Drinking is all about your BAC, or Blood Alcohol Content. Non-profit organization Aware Awake Alive explains that a “BAC of .10 means that .1% of your bloodstream is composed of alcohol.” They stress that a BAC of .020 is when “light to moderate drinkers begin to feel some effects,” while a BAC of .040 is when “most people begin to feel relaxed” and classify a BAC of .060 as when “judgment is somewhat impaired.”
As such, if you want to feel lightly buzzed without suffering the downsides of drinking, you’re going to want to keep your BAC around .040. One way of doing this is to match every alcoholic drink with a glass of water – this slows down the increase of your BAC (something which is essential if you drink faster than most people).
Professor Oliver James, Head of Clinical Medical Sciences at Newcastle University, told drinkaware.co.uk, “Alcohol is a diuretic, it acts on the kidneys to make you pee out much more than you take in – which is why you need to go to the toilet so often when you drink.” So no, consuming more liquids may not be something you’re desperate to do. But this not only helps keep your BAC at a relatively low level, but also counteracts the dehydrating effects of alcohol, which is especially important when you’re basking in the sun.
Stephen Cheetham
Speaking of which, as the director of Health & Safety at the American Lifeguard Association explained to Mel Magazine, “Sun and alcohol don’t mix. People don’t realize the sun amplifies whatever intoxication you’re experiencing.” Preach. Again, another piece of counterintuitive advice — skip sunbathing and encourage everyone to take as much time as possible in the shade.
Stephen Cheetham
A 2007 Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine article detailed a study in which researchers at the University of Manchester measured how different types of mixers affected levels of intoxication. They mixed vodka with still water, carbonated water, and also offered it neat. The study found that 14 of the 21 subjects “absorbed the alcohol with a carbonated mixer at a faster rate.”
Another small study showed in 2001 that sparkling wine makes people drunker faster than its bubble-free counterpart. Fran Ridout and a team in the human psychopharmacology unit at the University of Surrey organized a couple of “drinks parties” for volunteers in their department and, without informing the volunteers, Ridout used the parties to test the effects of fizzy versus still wine. Here's what happened, according to New Scientist:
“She gave champagne to 12 volunteers – half drank fizzy champagne and the other half had flat champagne, purged of its bubbles beforehand with a whisk.
The following week, she repeated the experiment but gave each volunteer the opposite kind of champagne to the previous time. That way, everyone tried both types of wine.
"Each person drank two glasses of champagne per session. Ridout adjusted the exact intakes so that everyone drank the same amount of alcohol per kilogram of body mass. Sure enough, alcohol levels rose much faster among the bubbly drinkers. After just five minutes, they had an average of 0.54 milligrams of alcohol per milliliter of blood. Those drinking flat champagne averaged just 0.39 milligrams of alcohol."
This doesn’t sound like such a big deal until you translate these figures into their practical effects — according to Ridout, the bubbly drinkers were obviously worse off afterwards as she stated “some could hardly write.” These are small-scale studies, so it’s worth exercising a little skepticism, but if you err on the lightweight side of the drinking scale and are planning on a multi-hour drinking session, it could be worth skipping the bubbly stuff — whether coke as a mixer or champagne — for something bubble-free.
Stephen Cheetham
If you care enough to google how to drink without getting paralytically drunk, one odd piece of advice dominates search results. In 2015, Esquire conducted an interview with the co-founder and chairman of the Boston Beer Company, Jim Koch. Koch had a drinking hack up his sleeve that sounded so much like a piece of dubious health advice doled out by “One Weird Trick” advertorials that the internet was immediately divided into believers and skeptics.
He cites advice developed by the late Joseph Owades, someone who “probably knew more about fermentation and alcohol metabolism than perhaps any man who has ever lived.” Thanks to Owades, Koch consumes “active yeast” by swallowing standard Fleischmann's dry yeast before he drinks, stirring it into yoghurt to take the edge off it. He argues this lessens how drunk a person gets when boozing.
On one hand, the mind boggles: carrying around a six-pack of yoghurts and a bag of yeast doesn’t exactly sound sunny day-compatible (or something you could pull off in front of anyone beyond best friends and family) and besides which, could this really be true?
But on the other hand, Serious Eats conducted some very in-depth analysis of the advice given, and reached a few interesting conclusions.
One, if trying this tip, you should use the specific brand of dry yeast recommended, Fleischmann’s. This particular brand contains the yeast strain Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which “contains the ADH enzyme that digests ethanol.” Two, the Serious Eats author concluded it does help decrease alcohol levels. So if you can chug a mouthful of dry yeast without yoghurt, this could be worth employing on your next multi-hour daytime bender.
Stephen Cheetham
Sometimes the best advice is the most obvious: sticking to drinks with a lower level of alcohol that fill you up (like beer, for example) rather than drinks which are stronger and quicker to consume (cocktails, spirits), especially when alternating with water, is an obvious strategy for pacing yourself. Take breaks from drinking. Eat balanced meals throughout the day.
As Gary Shteyngart’s protagonist in Super Sad True Love Story put it, “We know summer is the height of of being alive.” Daytime drinking is a great part of that — embracing an ambling sort of hedonism that feels like one of the sweetest things a person can do in the year’s sunniest season.
But nobody wants to be that person who’s uncomfortably wasted in broad daylight. So this summer, get lightly buzzed instead.
Next up: do fitness apps actually do anything?
It is always pleasant to talk about rest. It’s even more pleasant to talk about fatigue, because such a conversation implies that we “did a nice job”, and we had a free minute to evaluate the results of our work, stop for a while and exhale ...
And maybe feel sorry for ourselves : “How hard we work! How tired we are! And there is not enough time for almost anything! A lot of things have piled up, you need to rake ... so much work ... chronic fatigue! This is our conversation with Archpriest Yevgeny Popichenko.
Pilgrimage trips include the relics of the holy saints of God, and miraculous icons, and bathing in holy springs
- Father Eugene, what does modern man get tired of?
- Tired of the fuss, of the inability to properly allocate one's strength, time, resources.
And this happens because a person cannot clearly define life priorities. Time is a loose concept.
It is enough for what a person likes. Often we hear: “When should I go to church, when should I pray, if I work, I have a family and children, do I need to earn money?”.
What the person really wants to say is quite different. He has time for friends, for TV, for going to the bathhouse, for talking on the phone. And there is no time for God alone. It's not a matter of time, How to rest and not get tired, but a question of love: "Do I love God?" Most people will never admit to themselves that they do not love God, that He is an extra link in their lives.
They want to receive blessings from God, health, well-being, but it is better if these are one-sided relationships. They only want to use God's love for themselves, and therefore, in response to God's actions in a person's life, there is silence and oblivion.
After all, this is a very terrible truth, and in most cases people understand that God is a Being on Whom life entirely depends.
We feel it with all our skin, and only a madman can say: “I don’t need God.” “The word is foolish in his heart: there is no God” (Ps. 13, 1).
Therefore, a person acts more cunningly. He says to himself, and he firmly believes in this: “I need to support my family, educate children, I have gardens, kitchen gardens, what I will live on,” etc. Well, really: “With good intentions ...”. But in fact, we simply do not need God, we do not love Him. Our time depends on our priorities.
The Lord said: “So, do not look for what you eat or drink, and do not worry, because the people of this world are looking for all this, but your Father knows that you need it most of all, seek the Kingdom of God, and it will all be added to you". (Luke 12:31-33). Work, and family, and children, and interesting meetings, and rest will follow. If the system of priorities is built correctly, then a person will not have a conflict with his inner world, with his soul.
Man was created by God as a spiritual and material being, as a harmonious, complex system, therefore he must live according to the laws of spiritual and physical.
We observe the laws of the physical world (we accept and take into account in our actions the law of universal gravitation or the change of seasons).
But few people recognize and accept spiritual laws as the most important principles of life. When the physical and spiritual laws of God begin to be violated, a person’s life comes into disharmony, tension arises: a person does not have peace with himself, he begins to fuss, drive himself, afraid of not being able to do something.
And this tension is not so much physical as spiritual — “I didn’t do something, I did something wrong, I didn’t have time to do something.”
This is what causes chronic fatigue syndrome. In the monasteries, people worked from early morning until late at night: the monks worked in the fields, kept the household, prayed at long services - there was a combination of hard physical and intense spiritual work. And yet, chronic fatigue syndrome is not observed in monasteries. Why? Because there is a clear regime, a clear understanding of the purpose of labor (salvation of the soul), there is a voluntary acceptance of the conditions of life as necessary to achieve the goal, there is trust in God and the rector.
Where there is understanding, there is obedience; where there is obedience, there is humility; and where there is humility, there is peace of the soul.
- Human life also depends on the speed of information movement. It's one thing - a monastery or a village where life flows measuredly. Another thing is a city in which a person constantly receives new and new information, with which something needs to be done, one needs to somehow react to it.
Modern man is literally "attacked" by the media and advertising, his eye is constantly "caught" by some texts, messages, pictures and so on.
Does the selection of information also depend on life priorities?
- Of course, today we must constantly filter out unnecessary information that comes to us from outside. This is necessary both in professional activities for more efficient work and distribution of time and effort, and in everyday life.
Today it is very difficult for a person to think, to formulate his thoughts, so it takes him a lot of time to approach the question that interests him.
The ability to receive and transmit information is very important. As an example, we can recall the style of work of Abbot Dimitry (Baibakov): he values his time very much, so he teaches people to be approached with a clearly formulated essence of the issue. Spending five minutes on introductory conversations, on formulating what can be put into thirty seconds, is a huge luxury, a busy person simply cannot afford it.
- While at work, a person is constantly working with information, distributing it, sifting it out, assimilating it. But when he comes home, he again joins the “race for information”, sitting down at the computer and going into the wilds of the Internet, or turning on the TV (in the public mind, this form of pastime has long become one of the most common). It seems that a person is resting, spending time on himself, but is he resting?
- No, he only pollutes his consciousness even more, burdens his soul. Life priorities are the criterion by which a person determines what information is important and necessary for him, and what is superfluous, useless and even harmful.
Only in this way can we protect and protect our consciousness.
One of the most common trends in modern culture is the “black life”. A person lives as if he is writing a draft, postponing life for tomorrow: “Tomorrow I will read this book, tomorrow I will think about this matter, tomorrow I will better pray,” and so on. Illusion of life.
It seems to a person that a day will come when everything will change, when he will think everything over and it will dawn on him how to live and what to do. A person lives, remembering the “bright past” and dreaming of a “bright future”, and writes a “draft of life”. And, as a rule, with these dreams and a draft, he comes to the end of his real life. We live very superficially, unstressedly, wasting ourselves.
In the Holy Scriptures there is such a thought: “Remember your last and you will never sin.” If a person remembered the brevity of life, the proximity of death, then he would live every moment as the most significant. To everything that would meet on his way, he would treat with maximum attention - to a person, to work, to a book, to a confession - because "tomorrow" may not be possible that this person, this book, this confession last in your life.
Such remembrance of death forms the right attitude towards life and, as a result, the right disposition of the soul.
- How can one rest when one has the memory of death? The first thing that comes to mind when the words “Orthodoxy” and “rest” are heard nearby is a pilgrimage...
- One should rest for the benefit of the soul. And this does not mean that all the time of rest should be spent in holy places. After all, whatever a person touches, he can pervert everything. And even a pilgrimage to holy places can be turned into idleness, into the satisfaction of one's own vanity.
He goes to some holy place and begins to “broadcast” to everyone: “I was here, I was there, and here I am against the background of the Holy Sepulcher, and here I am kissing such and such a shrine.” Often on a pilgrimage a person loses the understanding of why he is going somewhere.
Today's pilgrimage is full of hustle and bustle: you have to go around several places, you have to not get lost on the tour, you have to order the rites, you have to not miss your turn to venerate the relics, and so on.
Vanity destroys all reverence for the shrine. Therefore, if a person really wants to go on a pilgrimage, then the advice would be this: spend a week in one holy place, come quietly, get a job, pray, seriously prepare for confession and Communion.
- In this case, a unique combination of spiritual rest and spiritual work is obtained.
- Yes, it's important. After all, there is one more thing in modern pilgrimage: today a person has become more mobile. He pays the money, gets on the bus, on the plane, on the train, and comfortably reaches his destination. Costs are only material. And earlier it was a real work, when a person made a vow to the Lord: “If You heal my child, then I will go to holy places,” and then, expressing his gratitude, he walked for a long time to the shrine.
If we take a pilgrimage to Verkhoturye, then it means two weeks of travel, two weeks of prayer, attunement of the soul and concentration, when all forces are gathered in order to receive the grace of God later in a holy place.
On the one hand, the person was physically tired, but on the other hand, his soul turned out to be ready for a meeting with God, just like cultivated land is ready to receive grain in order to grow a crop.
Wonderful recreation and tradition of our church: summer rafting along the rivers of the Urals on boats with children
And the man left the holy place rested, having nourished his soul. When a person just goes to a shrine, what does he have? The road, beautiful Ural nature, prayer and the Lord.
But what should not be on vacation is idleness: senseless lying on the beach, eating and drinking out of boredom. The beach is great, but with what motivation are we going there? Many residents of the Urals need the sea and the sun for medical reasons. But again, for many, a vacation at a resort turns into an occasion for sin (drunkenness, fornication). Moreover, according to our parishioners, one can notice that a holiday in a foreign resort is safer from a spiritual point of view than a holiday in a sanatorium.
However, more often people go to the resort with the whole family. But they go to the sanatorium alone on a ticket or a doctor's referral, and sometimes they find "love adventures" there. Who needs a rest that destroys a person?
- Father Eugene, the condemnation of fornication, drunkenness, gluttony is quite understandable. But what's wrong with relaxing on the beach when you just read a good book, chat with family or friends, enjoy the taste of seaside apples, admire the beauty of God's world?
- The Apostle Paul said: “Everything is permissible for me, but not everything is beneficial; everything is permissible for me, but nothing should possess me” (1 Cor. 6:12). Rest is for man, not man for rest. The Lord created the sun, the sea, and apples for man. But can an idle person with a “untuned” soul see the world in this way?
I repeat once again - in the absence of the correct system of priorities, a person does not know how to allocate his time.
And there is just no time for the most necessary and important time. Here he works a lot in order to "decently" earn money, and there is sorely not enough time for life. But he does not even think that if he worked less, got less, reducing some of the whims, then he would not lose, but, on the contrary, win by getting time to communicate with loved ones.
The thirst to fulfill his whims, "take everything from life" (what you need and don't need) makes him a crazy workaholic. And there is not enough time for God, for spiritual life, for reading, for a family. At the time of rest, a person should give himself to his loved ones. What do we see today?
New "fashion" - separate rest. Husband, wife and children go on vacation to different places to "rest from each other." With the modern atomization of society as a whole, the family, as a small society, is also atomized: family members rarely gather at the dinner table, even less often discuss some common topics, rarely give themselves permission to experience some important events together.
Therefore, rest, on the contrary, should become a time of strengthening the family, when all family members belong to each other. Whether it will be a trip to the sea, or a hike, or a vacation in the country - it doesn’t matter, but it’s important to relax with the whole family. At least two or three weeks of vacation should nourish the family, enliven people with love for each other.
- A marching tradition is taking shape in St. Panteleimon's Church. Last year, two rafting trips were made along the Serge and Chusovaya rivers. Rafting is also an excellent combination of leisure and work.
- This is one of the wonderful forms of recreation for a city dweller, when a person finds himself in extreme conditions that require him to show his best qualities.
Rafting is a test of oneself: how do you survive bad weather, fatigue, unforeseen circumstances. It seems like it’s time to sleep, and you’re still on the road, you want to eat, but it’s still so far before dinner, because you’re still swimming .
.. and even the rain delays, making it difficult to set up camp and cook dinner.
And, oddly enough, a person returns from the rafting rested in all respects...
Although the physical effort was great compared to lying on the couch. We often understand rest as a kind of relaxation. Relax - go to the cinema, sit in a cafe, lie down in front of the TV. The Lord gives man the seventh day to rest, but He does not bless idleness. From relaxation, the soul cannot be nourished by anything; it becomes even more upset, filled with unnecessary impressions and accompanying sins. They also say “Monday is a hard day”, that is, the weekend has passed, but vigor has not appeared. You need to artificially cheer yourself up in order to get involved in the work, which is often perceived as a heavy burden. By Friday, a person accumulates even more tension and fatigue, and then ... relax again.
Family outdoor recreation
A Christian regards work as a vocation, as a service to God through the honest performance of one's professional duties, and not as a yoke or bondage.
Even if a Christian has a completely “non-prestigious and low-paid job,” he works in obedience to the will of God. On the seventh day, a Christian goes to the temple, where he actually receives grace-filled energy from God.
The human soul is like a musical instrument. Even the most wonderful instrument will sound out of tune if it is not in tune. In a week, our soul is upset, and on the seventh day, the Lord sets up our soul for the week ahead. If a person has formed a good habit of coming to church on weekends, then Monday will not be a hard day for him, he will joyfully come to the beginning of the work week. Although from the outside it may seem that a person should get tired, "standing in the services."
- The image of a stretched string is indeed very successful. It seems to the layman that the strings of his soul are stretched during the working week and they need to be loosened on weekends, otherwise they will simply burst. But it turns out that if you strike the strings of our spiritual instrument all week, they weaken and at the end of the week you can hear false rattling instead of music.
That is why on the seventh day you need to come and, having pulled the strings, tune the soul.
- The sacraments of the Church are the source to which a person should strive to resort throughout his life in order to nourish his soul, to properly tune it. In one of the hymns there are such words: "In the Holy Spirit every soul is alive and exalted in purity." How this happens is the mystery of God's grace-filled love.
But vacation is “human medicine”. Vladyka Vikenty once said about priests: “If a priest goes on vacation and takes off his cassock, he still remains a priest.” We can say the same about any Christian. Faith and fidelity to God, the mode of spiritual life and the behavior of a Christian during the holidays should not change.
And often people come back from vacation “disappointed”: the prayer rule is abandoned, fasting is forgotten... God forbid that a person does not bring mortal sins with him. We must not forget about God, about eternal life under any circumstances.
In addition, a Christian should strive to visit holy places located near the place where he rests (you just need to know about them in advance). Greece, Egypt, Turkey - all these countries became the cradles of Christianity. The Golden Ring of Russia, the south of our country, Abkhazia, Europe - all these wonderful places can nourish the soul with meetings with shrines.
Cultural tourism can also be the first encounter with Orthodox culture. Such a journey can be a stepping stone to faith. The Lord can find a person in all circumstances!
- Father Eugene, what would you wish our readers planning a vacation?
- The first and most important thing is not to be ready for sin, because where there is sin, the Lord will no longer be able to participate in a person's life.
Well, and secondly, you need to relax so that new impressions and thoughts would inspire a person to new good deeds and accomplishments - that is, so that the vacation becomes a real relaxation.
To paraphrase St. Philaret of Moscow, we can say that during our vacation we should fill the time with "pious contemplation, in which the spirit rests from the labor of the flesh and gathers strength for the working days of life."
Ksenia Vozgrivtseva
#family
Do you feel that your energy is at zero? Welcome to the club! Fatigue is one of the most common reasons women go to the doctor in developed countries. If you do not pay attention to the body's cries for help and do nothing to change your condition, you can become seriously ill. Fortunately, energy is not a constant, its amount is individual and depends on daily, monthly, seasonal rhythms, experts explain. And if you constantly feel tired, you can start with small changes that will give you a quick “recharge”.
Vita Zorina
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Women Health
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Emotional burnout
Fighting Fatigue
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Problem: Too much work, too little rest Being a reasonable and responsible adult is not easy. All these obligations, affairs, household and family issues sometimes get bored, and the body takes this boredom for fatigue. The desire to be an efficient and productive person 24 hours a day, 7 days a week may be commendable, but it often leads to physical and emotional burnout.
Solution: Plan a vacation
At first, you may not be able to relax just like that, so make a list of fun little things: write a playful letter, call an old friend, play twister with your children, listen to your favorite music in silence. .. Such small breaks will make the daily routine less boring.
If there is not enough natural light outside, the body tries to go to sleep. As a result of a study involving more than 600 adults, scientists from the University of Massachusetts found that depression, feelings of loneliness, anger, and disorder appear more often in winter.
Solution: more light!
Walk at least 10 minutes outside during the day or when you feel most tired. Sunlight will help you wake up and perk up. Even if the weather is cloudy, there is still more light outside than in the office. If you can't get out of the room, a short stay in a room with natural light will help.
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When you breathe unevenly, your lungs don't get enough oxygen, and there is a lot of carbon dioxide in your blood. This also leads to a feeling of fatigue, as well as an increase in pressure and pulse.
Solution: diaphragmatic breathing
A few short sessions a day and you will feel much better. Put your hand on the navel, while inhaling, focus on making the stomach “breathe” too, then you will get more oxygen.
Sitting in the same position for several hours consumes a lot of energy, the body begins to think that soon it will be possible to go to bed. And if you also look at the screen, you start blinking more slowly, and your eyes dry up (and tend to close completely).
Solution: Move more
Stretch. Take a walk. Take a shower or wash your hands. Frequent breaks will help the body not to relax too much. Take your eyes off the screen every half hour and focus on a distant object or object.
The body has its own biological clock. And if you get up early on weekdays and sleep until noon on weekends, then you arrange a hard jetlag for yourself without leaving your home. And in the end, you don’t feel too good, even if you seem to have slept enough in time.
Solution: normal schedule
Try to go to bed and wake up at the same time every day.
If you really want to sleep, it is better to go to bed earlier than to get up later.
Many people put themselves under unnecessary stress without realizing it. Thirst symbolizes the loss of 2-3 percent of the fluid, and even such a slight dehydration can create a feeling of fatigue and drowsiness: the blood pressure level decreases, as a result, the blood supply to the brain deteriorates and the heart has to work at increased speeds.
Solution: drink more
Keep a bottle of water nearby, drink your food. If you don't like water, add orange slices or herbal infusion to it. Soups, fresh fruits and vegetables also help increase the water level in the body.
They confuse the body, it does not understand when you really need to sleep. Bright lights interfere with the production of melatonin.
