Kids Help PhoneSince schools have closed, Kids Help Phone has reported record numbers of kids making contact. There are many reasons why kids are reaching out. Some of reasons why kids are reaching out include, loneliness & isolation, feelings of depression including lack of energy and feelings of hopelessness, stress due to home living situations including parent lack of employment or abuse in the household. What ever the reason it is important to know that you are not alone and there are people to help 24 hours 7 days a week. Kids Help Phone has also opened up the lines to adults that are struggling right now. You are of course always welcome to contact me, but Kids Help Phone is an amazing support for you while you are at home. Here is a link to their website: https://kidshelpphone.ca/tag/coronavirus/
Keep safe you amazing Kiddos! We are all in this together!
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Over the next 4 weeks I will be posting a weekly challenge for NMS students to take care of their emotional, physical, brain and spiritual health. One of my most favorite ways to take care of my emotional health is to have a laugh. If I am starting to feel stressed out, depressed or lonely, and it is starting to affect my ability to get through my day. Taking a time out to laugh is a great way to take a bit of a break from your deeper emotions. Laughing creates good feelings in your brain and can help you change your perspective on life. Here are a few things that make me laugh: My Pets Are Always a Good LaughI don't often have my phone videoing my life, but when I can, I try and catch my pets doing something cute or funny. They make me laugh every day. Funny Videos are the Best!Who Doesn't Love Memes?!Yesterday I talked about what big emotions are, and how to understand them. Today lets explore other ways to cope when having big emotions. Here is a helpful graphic: This list is helpful. What things can you do today to help you cope with negative emotions? Today, because it is a beautiful day I think I will take my dogs for a walk at lunch. So I am getting some time outside, and physical exercise. The weather is amazing get outside!You don't even have to leave your home to enjoy the great outdoors. A calming activity that you can do anywhere outside is to sit with your eyes closed in the sun and pay attention to all of the sounds around you. Here is a video that I took last summer on a walk. See if you can identify all of the summer sounds: We have all been facing a difficult time in our lives right now. We haven't had a "normal" day in over a month!! Because life is not normal right now, we may be feeling some more intense emotions. I have recently had a few students that asked me if the stress they were feeling is harmful. The short answer is no, we are no doubt in a stressful time, but we are all in this together and eventually we will be back in school together. Even though having stressful feelings is uncomfortable, it is normal right now. Sometimes our big emotions can be confusing. For example, if you are feeling a lot of anger then there may be many other emotions underneath that anger. Here is an infographic that explains more: I am feeling uncomfortable with my big emotions right now, what do I do?Here is the tough part...any one of the above emotions can be really unpleasant. They can cause suffering and uncomfortable feelings in our bodies. We often want to push those feelings away. Unfortunately, the more we push those feelings away, the more likely they are to erupt like a volcano out later on. And THAT is a really unpleasant feeling let me tell you from my own experience. It can damage your relationships, and can be damaging to you in many other ways. The image below shows us how the emotion volcano works: So how do I avoid the emotion volcano?There is good news and bad news. The good news is that you don't have to feel like an exploding volcano ever. The bad news is that means you need to feel your feelings as they come to you. What does that mean? If you resist your feelings, then they get pushed down in your body. But if you feel your feelings as they come to you they are released. They may feel uncomfortable in the moment, but like a thunder storm they will come and go. One way to think about feeling your feelings in the moment is to think of it like a thunder storm. It can be scary and unpleasant for awhile, but eventually the storm goes, and you don't feel the same intensity of emotions. Have you ever had a good cry and felt kinda better afterwords? By letting yourself cry, you are letting the storm come and go. What happens after a storm? Usually the sun comes out, the birds sing and life goes on business as usual! Letting the storms of your emotions come and go is the least harmful way of dealing with the stress in your life. Calm Your StormsAfter you have let the storm of your emotions pass, take a few minutes to breath and relax. Here is a calming video that includes a relaxing rain shower you can try. Just sit comfortably, close your eyes and listen to the sounds, notice what sounds you hear and make note of them: A creative and fun way to track keeping balanced is to create a bullet journal, or use a habit tracker. It can be helpful to sent an intention to work on your physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual (personal values/goals) every day. There are many free trackers that can be found online. Here is one that might be fun to use:
Here is an example of what it could look like:
You do not have to be religious to be a spiritual person. Someone who is spiritual is a person who makes loving yourself and others a priority. A spiritual person cares about people, animals and the planet. A spiritual person knows that we are all connected. There are many things you can do to take care of your spiritual health. The medicine wheel recommends connecting with your elders, your culture and with nature. Here are some other things you can do to take care of your spiritual health: Understanding Your ValuesUnderstanding your values is an important part of taking care of your spiritual health. Values are the qualities you aspire to have such as kindness, respectful, compassionate. They are action words. One way to think about your values is to think about what is important to you treat people, animals and nature. How would you like to be treated, how do you treat others? When you brainstorm specific words, those words may reflect your values. A fun activity to do while at home is to create a vision board. A vision board is a collage of images that speak to you about the way you want to live your future life. There are several ways to do a vision board. You can go through old magazines or books that have images and words that make you feel good or that speak to the way you want to live your life and create a collage. Or, you can create a virtual collage on a free site like Canva (https://www.canva.com/). What ever way you decide to create your vision board, make sure you put it in a place that you can look at and reflect on, be it on your wall in your bedroom, or as your background on your PC. I guarantee you will learn a lot about yourself. Here is an example of a vision board, what do you think this persons values are?
Moving around the Medicine Wheel below, another important element to finding balance and remaining healthy is to take care of your brain or cognitive health. Even though you are not in school full time right now, it is important to take care of and exercise your brain every day so that when we do return to school your brain will be in good shape. Think of it like another muscle, if you were fit when the school closed, and you didn't exercise while away from school, then you will be less fit when you return. Crazily enough, it is the same as your brain! There are some good recommendations in the above medicine wheel including, reading a book, or learning something new. But if you are looking for other things to do in order to flex your brain muscles, try the following: Roblox- Build Your Own GamesThere are countless opportunities to learn code and if you are in to Roblox here is a link that can help you learn more about programming: https://developer.roblox.com/en-us/resources/learn-and-explore/index.html Mental up is easy to access and there is no need to download games, you can just play and excercise your brain muscles. Here is the link: https://www.mentalup.co/brain-games Playing ChessChess can be played with a family member at home or with anyone online. If you do not have a chess board, then there is countless online chess games. One site that I like is Spark Chess, there is no need to sign up, you can play a friend or anyone online. Here is the link: https://www.sparkchess.com/
Using the Medicine Wheel pictured below, consider how you can take care of your physical health in order to stay balanced and healthy. fAs you can see doing some of the basic such as washing your hands, and practicing social distancing will prevent you from getting sick. But also keep in mind how you can move your body. If you find you are lacking energy then moving your body will give you energy. Weird hey?! Trust me this is scientific fact, using energy will give you more energy. What things can you do? One fun thing you can do is try today's challenge video that was posted on our main page. Mr. Martin challenged you to build an obstacle course in your back yard. Here are some other ideas: Try a Tik Tok Challenge!Just Dance!Soccer Drill IndoorsNike Training ClubThis free app offers many diverse and free workouts here is the link for more information: https://www.nike.com/ntc-app
One way to look at remaining healthy during this pandemic is to remain balanced. A helpful way of remaining balanced to is to ensure you are taking care of yourself emotional, physically, spiritually, and mentally. One way that can be helpful to understand balance is to understand the medicine wheel. The medicine wheel is an aboriginal symbol of health. The medicine wheel is like a life compass that shows us the four directions, seasons and cycles of life: Taking Care of Our Emotional HealthThe Medicine Wheel shows us that it is important to hold space for your feelings. Holding space means allowing yourself to feel your feelings. If we avoid feeling our feelings it can affect our health in so many ways. Below is a helpful diagram that answers the question "how do I know what I am feeling, and what my feelings are saying about me?
Learning to breath is so important when feeling stressed out. Breathing techniques help to calm our amygdala down and can feed our brains and our lungs with healing oxygen. When we are feeling stressed out, anxious, scared or angry, our amygdala takes over. Here is a helpful video that explains more:
So what helps with managing our emotions? Deep belly breathing is the simplest and best way to manage. Here are some helpful activities to try:
Box or Square BreathingBelly Breathing
Belly breathing helps to give our bodies more oxygen. When we practice, think about filling your belly with air when you breathe in through your nose, like you would fill a balloon. And when you blow out, let the air out of your belly and out of your mouth. Here is a video that you will not forget!:
4-7-8 Breathing
This style of breathing takes belly breathing one step further. Watch the video and follow along:
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