Daily Dose – Page 24 – Compassion & Resiliency Experience (C.A.R.E.) Program

Well-Being Services for Health Care Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to have profound personal, public health and economic consequences worldwide. Since its onset, health care providers have worked tirelessly to treat adults and children facing this complex condition, and are consequently at increased risk for acute and long-term mental health conditions. Starting in late March, 2020, the Department of Psychiatry, University of Colorado School of Medicine, has launched COVID-19 related wellness programs for health care workers and staff across disciplines and medical settings. The services are designed to support colleagues in health care, promote their physical, emotional and relational well-being, and reduce their risk for adverse mental health issues. These programs include Team Support Sessions, COVID-19 Support Groups, a Well-Being Support Line, Faculty and Staff Mental Health Services, an eight-session series on coping during and after COVID-19, a series entitled Mind the Brain: Mental Health in the Time of COVID-19, website programming, and much more. Learn about their efforts and success on the Division 38 Website.

Mindfulness Monday: Afternoon Reset

Every Monday, the Daily Dose is dedicated to starting your week right with a brief guided mindfulness exercise. We recognize that as you build your mindfulness practice it may be easier to incorporate exercises into the beginning or end of your day, whereas building it into the workday may be more challenging, though that is often where mindfulness is needed the most. Today, instead of reaching for a coffee when you’re feeling tired in the afternoon, try the Calm.com Afternoon Reset. You can do this mindful movement session at your desk!

Feel Good Friday: Poems from Portsmouth

Valerie Rochon is eager to read her email every Monday morning, even when it makes her cry. In addition to the endless Zoom meeting invitations, each week brings a new poem tucked into otherwise matter-of-fact messages about the coronavirus pandemic from the Portsmouth city manager. Tammi Truax, the city’s poet laureate, has been contributing to the newsletters since early April, elevating the collection of public health updates and community resources with a layer of emotion and introspection.

Wellness Design Ideas as We Return to Remote Learning

Recognizing that many will continue to home school in the Fall, school psychologist Roseann Capanna-Hodge offers a variety of means by which parents and children can promote good learning and wellness. These include creating a designated space for learning, overall having a routine and structure to lower cognitive demand, minimizing stimuli that cause agitation, fatigue, or any reaction such as noise, lighting, smells, and tactile needs, and assessing your child’s preferred methods for learning (visual, auditory, etc.). Read the full articles and complete, specific recommendations at Forbes.com.

Mindfulness Mondays – 3 Minute Breathing Exercise

Every Monday, the Daily Dose is dedicated to starting your week right with a brief guided mindfulness exercise. As we continue to adjust to life with COVID-19, many of us continue to straddle between the safety precautions that have been in place since March and returns to normalcy which, itself, creates more of a feeling of unsettledness and harriedness. As such, today we offer a very brief and very effective exercise. The goal of this activity is to notice when the hectic nature of the day is seeping in and to hit reset – spending just 3 minutes focused on your breathing. This exercise comes courtesy of the MyLife app.

Feel Good Friday – Have a Cow!

When the coronavirus pandemic forced the University of Vermont to close and send its students home, the alarm spread: What would happen to the cows? The university’s beloved herd of about 100 dairy cows is normally tended by students taking part in the Cooperative for Real Education in Agricultural Management program, or CREAM, and without those students, the fate of the cows seemed to be in jeopardy.

Find out how alumni and students came together to solve this problem at https://apnews.com/01757ed26d4f6a2af57af3b0fa61a6b7.

Marco! Polo! Kid Safety at the Pool

Children are naturally curious, so it’s especially important to be careful with children around any body of water. According to the Centers for Disease Control, drowning is one of the top 10 causes of death for children in every region of the world. Most drownings in children under the age of 4 years happen in home swimming pools, whether at their own home or that of a friend, relative or neighbor. These guidelines can help protect children at the pool or near a lake or at the beach.

Pediatrician Amanda Kay, M.D., MPH discusses strategies including keeping kids at arm’s length, having designated water-watchers, learning CPR, and how to be COVID-wise this summer while having fun! Read more at https://news.christianacare.org/2020/07/whos-watching-those-tots/

Mindfulness Monday: The Anger Experience

Every Monday, the Daily Dose is dedicated to starting your week right with a brief guided mindfulness exercise. One emotion many of us are hesitant to acknowledge, especially in the moment, is anger. Like any emotion, in small doses and the right situations, anger has a job to do and can be beneficial. It is meant to motivate you and others to find solutions to problems. Tara Brach teachers us that, when anger is held in mindfulness, it can energize us to respond wisely to challenging situations. This meditation guides us in meeting personal or societal anger with RAIN – recognize, allow, investigate and nurture.

Feel Good Friday: Brooklyn eatery serves soul food — and food for the soul

Growing up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Kiana Muschett-Owes treasured one spot above all: the family’s round dining table. There, family members would gather to recount their days, debate issues, celebrate any occasion they could think of — and of course, to eat. Along with basic nourishment, the table provided sustenance for the soul, says Muschett-Owes. She’s tried to replicate that feeling at her own restaurant, Katie O’s, which she launched six years ago in nearby Prospect Lefferts Gardens, specializing in soul food. And now, she’s trying to give a little of both — soul food, and food for the soul — back to her community, amidst a pandemic that has exposed just how easy it is to go hungry in New York by distributing between 1,000 and 1,500 meals to Brooklyn’s needy, accompanied by uplifting notes tucked into the boxes, with prayers or thoughts like “We’ll get through this” or “What doesn’t kill you will build you.” She also asks questions: how are people doing, whether they’ve lost their jobs. “This isn’t just, ‘grab your food and go,’” she says.

Read more about Kiana’s story in her AP News feature.

10 Simple Ways to Improve Your Health

While many of us have been well-intentioned before and during COVID in terms of resolving to make sweeping lifestyle changes, it is common to become complacent. Many have continued to aim to quit smoking, lose 20 pounds, AND start exercising daily. While it is good to have goals, the beginning of better health doesn’t always have to mean making huge leaps and, in fact, should not! In today’s Daily Dose emphasizes that great change comes from taking one small step and mastering that, before moving on to the greater goal. The below article describes 10 potential ways to improve your health. Pick one (or choose your own) and see if you can slowly master it over the next two weeks. If so, great, move forward! If it is a challenge, taking a step back and consider a smaller, simpler goal to gain a sense of mastery before retrying the more advanced health behavior change.

https://www.rush.edu/health-wellness/discover-health/10-simple-ways-improve-your-health