An archive of the Daily Dose to inspire us through the most challenging times.
While it is great to have a long term wellness goals, it is also equally helpful to identify briefer, more concrete ways to build wellness into your day. Adding structure to any activity helps improve the chances that our efforts will be a success. Below. are five easy steps you can take to make wellness a part of your day from first thing in the morning to the end of the day!
Today’s Mindfulness Monday exercise brings our attention back to gratitude. Before we begin our exercise it might be helpful to briefly discuss how many are turning to gratitude at a time where it may be difficult to feel grateful for much.
UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner is a big believer in gratitude. He, like many other psychologists, have researched the benefits of practicing gratitude. Dr. Keltner’s research findings on the matter are so strong, as a matter of fact, that he uses this as a key component of his course at UC Berkeley, the Science of Happiness, which is now also taught inmates at San Quentin State Prison to good affect.
Dr. Keltner has studied stress, relationships and well-being for 25 years. He has created a series of videos designed to keep people feeling calm and resilient in the face of COVID-19, a pandemic that has touched every aspect of our lives and profoundly disrupted our sense of well-being and produced uncertainty and anxiety.
So let’s begin today’s mindfulness practice.
The video is colorful, the tune cheerful and the lyrics promise better times ahead.
“The day will surely come, near or far it will come,” the singers belt out in Arabic.
“A new dawn shall shine. Everyone shall rejoice. … That day shall be a feast. Hand in hand, we will return,” they sing, waving at each other from their on-screen tiles. In a corner of the screen, a sign language interpreter performs the song.
With their concerts on hiatus and their usual routine of rehearsals upended by the coronavirus, members of the Cairo Celebration Choir joined virtually with musicians and soloists to put out a hopeful message amid the virus gloom.
“The main comments we received: it’s joyful and it gives hope,” said choir founder and artistic director Nayer Nagui, who wrote the lyrics and had composed the music years ago for another project.
Read the full story at APNews.com, and watch the video above.
Cooper has recently launched the Heroes Health Initiative (HHI). This app, developed by and being researched in conjunction with UNC School of Medicine & UNC Health, was created to help support the mental health of first responders and health care workers during the COVID-19 global pandemic. The app is available through the App Store and Google Play Store in the United States, free of charge to first responders, health care workers, and their organizations. For individual health care workers, the Heroes Health app delivers short mental health self-assessments each week and displays symptom summary reports to help them better understand the state of their own mental health and changes over time. The app also provides links to immediate support and mental health resources, emphasizing free and low-cost services.
Learn more about the HHI, or download it in the App Store or Google Play store.
Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl said “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” This concept is at the heart of the RAIN technique for managing distress. Philippe R. Goldin, Ph.D. is associate professor at the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing at UC Davis, where he teaches, conducts research and mentors students in the areas of health promotion, clinical psychology and cognitive-affective neuroscience and has contributed greatly to literature highlighting the efficacy of this approach. You can follow along with the below video, and details are available below the video.
R = Recognize. Recognize the emotions or thoughts that are troubling you. Notice them without judgment. Naming them can also help shrink them to manageable size: “Story of how my friends will all desert me.” “Worry about my son again.” “Despising self for how I acted.” Just noticing and naming the passing parade of your thoughts, feelings, and sensations can provide some immediate relief. “Oh, so that’s what’s on my mind.” You may even notice that your painful feelings disappear after a while. “This too shall pass” can become words to live by.
A = Acknowledge, Accept, Allow. The next step is to acknowledge your distress and accept it as your present reality. Accepting the pattern does not mean you like it; it only means that you are able to put these unpleasant mental contents front and center, rather than allowing them to strum unconsciously under the surface of your mind. You might say to yourself, for example, “Yes, I’m worried about money again.”
I = Inquire, Investigate. At this stage of the process, you can use your natural curiosity to delve more deeply into your distress. You can ask yourself: What triggered this current bout of distress? When have I felt this way before? What thoughts, feelings, and sensations are connected to these feelings? How realistic is my thinking? Are there actions I could take to help myself or another person? What do I need?
N = Non-identification. Your painful thoughts, feelings, and sensations are not you. Instead of identifying with them, you can mentally “step to the side” and watch them scroll by like a newsfeed.
S = Self-compassion. Self-compassion means offering yourself some friendliness, generosity, and sympathy. It is not self-pity; rather, it is a recognition and acceptance of your humanness, your imperfection, and your suffering. It is empathizing with yourself the way you might for your best friend or love partner. You might say to yourself, “It’s hard for you when you feel so self-critical,” for example. In her book, Radical Acceptance, Tara Brach puts it this way: “Instead of resisting our feelings of fear or grief, we embrace our pain with the kindness of a mother holding her child.” (Note: Brach updated the RAIN meditation acronym in 2019 in her new book, Radical Compassion. In her revised acronym, the “N” of RAIN has become “Nurture.”)
For many 12th graders, the closure of Nigeria’s public schools to combat the spread of COVID-19 presents a particular problem: How to prepare for crucial, final exams? Basirat Olamide Ajayi, a math teacher in Lagos, Nigeria’s biggest city, came up with a solution. She began offering free mathematics classes online via Twitter, WhatsApp and Instagram. And now, after almost six months, more than 1,800 students at various levels are taking her classes — across Nigeria and even internationally. Students watch her short math videos — no more than 5 minutes long — and respond to her questions. She will send them homework, and occasional assignments. And she grades them.
“COVID is here with both negative and positive impacts. The positive impact is that we can use technology to teach our students, which I am very, very happy about,” she said.
Read more about Basirat Olamide Ajayi and her inspiring story at APNews.com.
School can put pressure on children and parents. As a parent, you may worry about things like your child’s academic performance, health and relationships with other students and teachers. And while you can’t keep an eye on your child at school, you can encourage healthy habits starting at a young age. Of course, the script is flipped on many of these things in the era of remote learning. As such, these tips from Johns Hopkins may be more helpful than ever for both student and parent. They boil down to a Focus on Nutrition, Being Aware of Age-Specific Concerns, Making Sleep a Priority, and Establishing Partnerships in Health and Education.
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The Phillies are determined to make this another productive and informative Childhood Cancer Awareness Month despite COVID.
Sharon Snyder is a lifelong Phillies fan, but she admittedly didn’t pay attention to the Phils’ 6-0 shutout of the Nationals on Tuesday. Instead, she watched her late son, Kyle, smile on TV for everyone to see, all from one of the best seats in the house. Kyle’s image is one of many gold cardboard cutouts of kids placed in the sections behind home plate during Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. “My Kyle was right there the entire time,” Snyder enthused. “It was literally difficult for me to focus on the game, concentrate on the game for the first half of it or so because I was in awe. I could not take my eyes off of seeing my child right there every time I looked at the screen. It was so surreal.”
Childhood cancer is the No. 1 killer in children right outside of accidents, and the Phillies have dedicated amazing time and resources to funding treatment and research. Learn more about Kyle, the other honorees, and the Phillies’ efforts to fight childhood cancer at KYW News Radio.com.
In the time of COVID, it can be helpful to keep our eye toward aspirational things, those things that will bring it joy when, not if, life returns to normal. Matthew Miller gives us an example of this.
Matthew Paul Miller, known by his Hebrew and stage name Matisyahu, is an American Jewish reggae singer. This most recent orchestration in Haifa asked 3,000 Muslims and Jews (none of whom had met before) to come together and learn the song “One Day” by Matisyahu in under an hour. Not only that, but they learned how to sing and harmonize the lyrics in three different languages. The resulting concert, which was made in collaboration with Beit HaGefen, the Haifa Municipality, and the Port of Haifa, is a breathtaking display of unity and beauty.
Every Monday, the Daily Dose is dedicated to starting your week right with a brief guided mindfulness exercise. This week, we meet the director of Johns Hopkins’ Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, Neda Gould, Ph.D., who is a clinical psychologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences as well as Associate Director of the Bayview Anxiety Disorders Clinic. Dr. Gould and her group lead us in a Guided Imagery exercise appropriate both for adults and children.
