Feel Good Friday: Rescue Lifting Medical Debt

When flight paramedic Rita Krenz boards a helicopter, she knows her patients are about to face problems she can’t fix — a health care system that buries people in debt after a car accident or stroke.

So she decided to do something about it. She turned for help to RIP Medical Debt, a nonprofit that buys and forgives medical debt.

Krenz started a fundraising campaign that brought in more than $18,000 for the charity. That money has helped RIP Medical Debt forgive the debt of more than 900 people so far, with the average bill abolished totaling around $1,340.

Learn more about Krenz, her efforts, RIP Medical Debt, and more at APNews.com.

Feel Good Friday: Food for the Soul

Once a week Glenda Andrew and other volunteers prepare hot meals with the zing of their Caribbean heritage and deliver these meals to Britain’s older immigrants who have been isolated from friends and family by the pandemic.

“It’s a great way to connect and build that relationship, but I didn’t know that at the time,″ Andrew said of the project’s beginnings. “I just knew that I wanted to do something and make sure that they were getting a hot meal — not sandwiches, not soup — getting something that they’re accustomed to eating and hope that they would enjoy it.”

Once a week, for the last 42 weeks, the lucky seniors on Andrew’s list have been treated to delicacies such as jerk pork, curry goat and cow foot soup accompanied by rice and peas, yams and plantains. Portions are hefty, so there’s enough to go in the freezer for another day. Last week, some 400 meals were packed into yellow foam packages and delivered by volunteers.

In addition to food, the volunteers offer a bit of human contact. The loneliness and isolation of the past year is painful for many of the seniors. When deliveries arrive, they seek out friendly gossip with the volunteers about what their neighbors are up to.

Learn more about Glenda and her efforts at APNews.com.

Body Awareness

Recently, Crystal Hoshaw wrote a piece on the subject of body awareness, why it may be beneficial to improve this, and how that can be done. Her takeaway message is that everyone can benefit from improving their body awareness, and especially helpful for people who’ve recently been injured, had surgery, or have a developmental or neurological condition. Simple exercises, mindfulness, and focused therapies can all help you deepen your connection with your body. Covered in this article are how to combine physical exercise with meditation & mindfulness, as well as the specific benefits for different groups including those with autism, The full article can be read here:

https://www.healthline.com/health/mind-body/body-awareness

Feel Good Friday: Floral Hearts

When artist Kristina Libby started the Floral Heart Project to give the survivors of COVID-19 victims’ places to mourn, she was thinking of people like Michelle Pepe, who last saw her father just before she went into quarantine after contracting the coronavirus — and unwittingly infecting both parents. Her last goodbye to him came by phone. Pepe and her family never had the chance to have a proper memorial, and so Libby stepped in.

Each week she would construct and lay large floral hearts around New York City.

“I would watch people kneel down and pray. I would watch people sort of kiss their fingers and then kiss the heart,” Libby said. “It was allowing them to feel like it was OK to admit our sadness in this moment.”

Watch the story of Kristina Libby and her efforts to help provide memorials below and read the full story at APNews.com.

Feel Good Friday: How to Keep the Upbeat

Early in the pandemic, researchers from University College London found that control was the number one contributor to people’s overall level of happiness, and that this had taken a hit as COVID touched every part of people’s lives. One of these researchers, cognitive neuroscientist Tali Sharot, recently spoke about how, in the months since the height of the pandemic, people have adapted and the average person’s happiness level has returned to a “baseline.” She referred to this as a sort of happiness treadmill.

“You can go up and down, but people do converge to a certain baseline of happiness,” she said. “That’s true when things are very, very difficult; they eventually find their way back to that baseline. But also when things are good; after a while, they adapt to these good things and go back to the baseline.”

However, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t find new ways to boost our happiness levels, said Sharot.

One of the best ways of doing that is to start making plans, or what she calls “anticipatory events.” Such tactics can not only help us regain feelings of excitement but also that sense of control, she said.

She says that such plans don’t need to be huge or immovable. They could range from vacation for next summer to smaller highlights like dinner with friends, watching a movie or going on a hike.

“It’s important to still get into the habit of making those plans, putting them in the diary, and having things that we can look forward to,” she said.

Read the full article at CNBC.com and check out Dr. Sharot’s TED Talk here or below.

What Loss Looks Like

A favorite mug, now empty, that a loved one used to sip tea from.

A notebook full of scribbles from a dream job that ended in a layoff.

A child’s backpack, that never saw the inside of her Kindergarten classroom.

As part of a project to memorialize the lives — and livelihoods — of all that has been lost in the pandemic, The New York Times is asking readers to submit photos of objects that remind you of what you personally have lost during this time.

Read more about this project and submit your Objects of Remembrance at https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/19/well/share-objects-of-remembrance.html

Mindfulness Monday: A Minute to Arrive

While the ways in which we engage in work, school and our personal lives have significantly changed over the last year the demands placed on us throughout the day have remained steady, if not increased. While it may be easy to bring our bodies from one physical space to another, or click over from one video conference to the next, or minds are often elsewhere – either hung up on things discussed in a previous appointment, or dreading some upcoming task. This prevents us from being focused on the task at hand and can leave us cognitively and emotionally drained. This is why companies like SAP encourage what they call the “Minute to Arrive,” which is based on the mindfulness practice of Simply Stopping, and which is the focus of today’s exercise.

Feel Good Friday: The Remarkables

Neil Renton, Headteacher at the Harrogate Grammar School, cautions that we must avoid labelling a generation of schoolchildren negatively, e.g. “the COVID generation” and focus on their amazing resilience instead,

Renton likens this experience to World War II era British children who “played games in air raid shelters as children, grew stronger for knowing that they could adapt and survive, and grew up to appreciate small pleasures. The pain and suffering that they experienced was remarkable, but they adapted and shaped our future.”

He also discusses the work of Rosenthal and Jacobson looking at how the expectations of teachers affect student performance. Specifically that “when we expect others to behave in particular ways, we create a script that makes the behaviour more likely to occur. A teacher who is made to think that a student is high performing, expects higher performance and ultimately creates actual higher performance.” To the point, we can use that.

Renton ultimately says that he is “optimistic for this generation and wants to dedicate our collective efforts as educators to helping these children who have experienced the remarkable, become remarkable. They are not the disease ‘Covid Generation’. They are The Remarkables. Let’s forget the ‘Covid Generation’ and focus on The Remarkables.”

Read Neil Renton’s full piece at positive.news.

Music Therapy Brings Solace To COVID-19 Patients And Healers

Tom Sweitzer knows firsthand how social isolation and loneliness are real side effects of living through a pandemic — just as mental health professionals have warned. After he tested positive for the coronavirus last July and recovered from the worst of his initial symptoms, Sweitzer joined a COVID-19 support group on Facebook to help him deal with the condition’s lingering effects.

As he watched people join “by the hundreds every day,” he decided to start another support group where he could incorporate his skills as a music therapist.

Music therapy treatments, tailored to each patient’s needs, can involve creating, singing, moving to and/or listening to music in ways that have been shown to promote physical and psychological healing. Research has shown the reduction in pain and stress from such treatments can be profound.

Interested in learning more? Visit the full story at https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/02/13/965644120/music-therapy-brings-solace-to-covid-19-patients-and-healers.