Whether you are self-isolating, working to keep essential services going, or spending a lot more time at home— managing your mental health and psychosocial wellbeing is as important as managing your physical health.
Maintaining familiar routines as much as possible or developing new routines that incorporate the five interconnected dimensions of wellness can help reduce boredom, avoid stress-related immune system suppression and promote overall wellbeing.
We encourage you to prioritize whatever allows you and your family the space the emotional and mental space to be okay during this time, and we invite you to consider and integrative approach to COVID-19 using the resources below
Physical Wellness:
Movement is essential for brain and body health. Regular exercise has a profound impact on cognitive function; it improves mood and memory and reduces the risk of developing depression by 35%.
Only half of American adults achieve the recommended 150 minutes (or 2.5 hours) of moderate aerobic activity per week. And only 20% of us complete the two recommended strength training sessions per week.
Every minute of exercise counts. We recommend starting with small goals and scheduling exercise into your day, so it becomes an easy and consistent routine. If you start with a small enough change, new habits should feel easy, especially in the beginning. You can make incredible progress if you are consistent and patient with yourself. Great resources for physical wellness activities that you can do from home include:
Yoga for all skill levels, as well as 7- minute workouts, barre, and high intensity interval training, are available through its apps. All content is free until May 1st. They are also offering free access until July 1st for all students, teachers, and healthcare professionals.
Free live-streamed home “work-ins” are now available to the public on Planet Fitness’ Facebook page. Best part: no equipment is needed for any of the “work-ins”.
Get Moving With Disney Family features creative Disney workouts and is the perfect way for the whole family break a sweat without leaving the comfort of home!
Now free until further notice! The app includes a huge variety of yoga, interval training, and mobility work, as well as multi- week programs, led by Nike instructors.
National Institute for Aging’s
Go4Life Program offers workouts from 10 minutes to 60 minutes for older adults that include warm-ups, flexibility, strength, and balance exercises and cool down activities.
Emotional Wellness:
Emotional wellness involves expressing feelings, enjoying life, coping with stress and adjusting to challenges and change. It is the ability to practice mindfulness and recognize the opportunity for growth in difficult situations. Practicing emotional awareness and stress management reduces the risk of depression and anxiety, as well as fosters self-acceptance, enhances contentment and promotes self-care.
Personality tests, like the Enneagram and Love Language tests, can also be helpful tools in identifying the emotional patterns in your life. Consider inviting your closest friends and family member to take the tests as well to understand how their personalities complement your own. Other strategies to boost emotional wellness from home, include:
Meditation & Mindfulness
Headspace: App for mindfulness & meditation
Calm: App for guided meditations, stretching exercises & conversation and kindness prompts.
Animal Therapy
Spend time with a family pet or let the San Diego Zoo come to you! Check out live video streams featuring pandas, koalas, elephants, tigers and other animals on the zoo’s website.
Journaling
Journaling can help with expressing feelings and gratitude. Find the format that works best for you, from stream of consciousness writing to a line-a- day or bullet journaling.
Self-Care
To practice self-care consider reading a book, cleaning your home, having a cup of tea or preparing a comfort food, lighting a candle, drawing a bath, or just taking a break from the news.
Arts & Crafts
Whether putting pen to paper, blogging, capturing videos, knitting, painting, cookie- decorating or scrapbooking, consider expressing yourself through a craft or hobby.
Social Wellness:
Many people think about wellness in terms of physical health only. However, social wellness is crucial for development, health and survival. In fact, a lack of social connectedness has been shown to be a greater detriment to health than obesity, smoking and high blood pressure.
Social wellness involves building healthy, nurturing and supportive relationships, as well as fostering a genuine sense of belonging and connection. It is the ability to communicate, trust, set boundaries and manage conflict. People who maintain a positive social support network and feel a genuine sense of belonging experience improved health outcomes and lower rates of depression and anxiety.
Although social distancing is required to slow the spread of the virus, technology, like video conferencing, social media and e-mail, can help fight loneliness and build social solidarity while promoting public health. Great resources to promote social wellness during COVID-19 include:
Family Movie Night
Enjoy a family movie night from a selection of Amazon Prime Video’s family-friendly movies and TV shows which are now available to stream for free.
Netflix Party Plug-In
Watch movies or TV with your friends online using the new Netflix Party Plug-In which offers synchronized video playback and a group chat feature.
Video Conferencing
Boost mood by staying connected with friends, family and co-workers with video- conferencing platforms like Facetime, Skype and Zoom.
Peer Support Groups
Participate in an online peer support community like 7 Cups, Turn2Me, Emotions Anonymous, Support Groups Central, and Therapy Tribe.
Volunteer or Donate
Helping others builds social solidarity. Consider grocery shopping for high-risk or quarantined neighbors or donating to organizations.
Intellectual Wellness:
Intellectual wellness involves participating in academic, cultural, artistic or skill-based education. It is a dedication to lifelong learning through critical thinking, skill development and knowledge expansion. Cultivating intellectual wellness reduces the risk of depression and dementia, as well as boosts self-confidence, increases self-esteem and improves outlook on life. Consider practicing intellectual wellness from home with:
Learn something new today from over 80 online classes led by instructors like Anna Wintour, Gordon Ramsay, Serena Williams, and many more. Cost: $180/Year
Choose from thousands of free online university courses on a range of topics including Yale University’s most popular class ever: The Science of Well-Being.
Enjoy hundreds of free digital audiobooks made available to stream in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Japanese.
Learn a new language or improve your language skills with short, easy & free lessons in French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian and more.
Unleash your inner creative with free courses on calligraphy, watercolor, cookie-decorating and more. Use the code SELFCARE for a 100% discount.
Spiritual Wellness:
With all the time we spend plugged in, tuned in or online, it’s easy to get disconnected from our inner selves. Taking time to appreciate what’s meaningful to you can make daily irritants and stresses less burdensome.
Spiritual wellness involves having a set of values, principles, morals and beliefs that guide your actions. It is a willingness to appreciate, enjoy and express gratitude for the things that make life meaningful. When faced with adversity, people who find a sense of meaning in life experience improved health outcomes and lower rates of depression and anxiety.
Cultivating spiritual wellness is deeply personal. You – and only you – define the role that spirituality may serve in your life. Several possible ways to practice spiritual wellness include:
Meditate
Appreciate, enjoy and express gratitude for the things that make life meaningful through meditation. Try apps like Calm or Headspace for guided mindfulness videos.
Practice Religion
Many places of worship and congregational communities are now offering virtual services from online masses to live-streamed Shabbat worship.
Appreciate Music
Stream handpicked past performances of the Met Opera’s Live in HD series from their website. The performances go live at 4:30 p.m. PST and remain active for 20 hours online.
Appreciate Art
Take virtual trips to famous venues all around the globe via Google Arts & Culture. Virtually see inside sites like the Guggenheim, Paris’s Musée d’Orsay, Alcatraz & the Taj Mahal.
Spend Time in Nature
Spend some quiet time with your thoughts and feelings. Slow the pace of your day, remove your watch, turn your phone or pager off and focus on the immediate experience of being outdoors.
