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Toolkits to Participate in #SELday | SEL Day

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Access toolkits to help you showcase, promote, advocate for and support social emotional learning (SEL) on International SEL Day.

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Social and Emotional Competencies - Delaware

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Social and Emotional Competencies - Delaware

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If you fly with any regularity, you’re likely very familiar with the flight attendant’s instructions to place the oxygen mask on yourself before assisting children. The reason, of course, is that you can’t do a very good job if you don’t take care of yourself first. Particularly in challenging situations, this is absolutely vital. Teaching is very much like this!

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If you fly with any regularity, you're likely very familiar with the flight attendant's instructions to place the oxygen mask on yourself before assisting children. The reason, of course, is that you can't do a very good job if you don't take care of yourself first. Particularly in challenging situations, this is absolutely vital. Teaching is very much like this!

Always "on"

Teaching can be challenging, and educators selflessly give so much of themselves. There are the social-emotional demands to meet the needs of children and teens, many of whom are dealing with considerable life events and possibly even trauma. Then there is the heavy draw on one's attention, where making literally hundreds of decisions happens every day with very little cognitive downtime. Add to that the busy physical nature of the job, where it can be tough to keep up with just keeping yourself hydrated. We're always "on," but there's a silver lining: we love what we do, so if we take the time to recognize teacher burnout, there are definitely ways to stop it in its tracks.

The toll of teacher burnout

One of the most researched aspects of the teaching profession is stress and burnout. For example, did you know that:

Up to 40% of teachers experience burnout?

Within the first 5 years, about that many (40%) leave the profession?

Think about that for a moment. Think about how hard those teachers worked to earn their degree, get certified, find a position. Now think about how many gaps that leaves for kids to have qualified and caring teachers. How would you feel if you were one of those teachers?

I'm sure it's an extremely difficult choice to leave teaching because of burnout. But it might also be a very difficult choice to stay if one continually feels physically, mentally, and emotionally compromised. Stress and burnout have been associated with work-related fatigue, depression, anxiety, sleep disturbance, and pessimism. Not only are educators impacted directly, so are students. Teachers experiencing burnout have higher absenteeism, lower teacher self-efficacy (not feeling one has the skills and resources to do tasks), and lower effectiveness as a teacher.

So we know that teacher stress and burnout can undermine teacher health and well-being and this can also negatively impact one's pupils. Can this be turned around? Happily, the answer is YES!

A pathway to educator wellness

With numbers reaching almost epidemic proportions, researchers and practitioners have been working very hard to better understand the problem and come up with solutions. Let's take a look at two main areas and what they are finding so you can take advantage of these strategies. I'll also include some links for you to further explore.
Practicing mindfulness
Mindfulness is about being engaged fully in the present moment, and in a way that is open and non-judgmental. Mindfulness has been quickly gaining favor as a very promising approach for educators. This is based on repeated findings that it can help reduce stress and thereby improve health and well-being. For instance, a recent comprehensive review of the literature found practicing mindfulness reduces stress, increases self-efficacy, and is particularly effective in helping teachers regulate their emotions.

Here's how to begin:

1. Know your emotional triggers. Track what pushes your buttons.

2. Pay attention to your body. Become aware of bodily sensations when you start feeling stressed.

3. Write these down and then come up with techniques to implement when they happen.

Some recommended technique ideas are:

Count to 10 before responding

Let go of trying to over-control

Recognize the pain that drives someone to show difficult behavior and to not take it personally

Use kind humor

Do some stretching

One technique I used with much success when I felt things were spiraling in my special needs classroom was for everyone to stop, close our eyes, and be completely quiet until a feeling of peace returned. It wasn't about waiting for everyone to be quiet in the sense of just not talking, it was about waiting for everyone's minds and emotions to quiet-including mine!

Just remember, this is a work in progress as you determine what works best for you. Once you feel comfortable you can start teaching your students to practice mindfulness as well. Here's a great article for you to delve deeper into practicing mindfulness: Seven Ways Mindfulness Can Help Teachers.
Practicing healthy habits
Physical well-being is essential to combating not only physical stress but emotional and mental stress as well: good nutrition, exercising, and getting enough sleep form the foundation of well-being. Research shows when educators engage in more healthy behaviors, they practice more effective coping and experience less stress.

Some tips:

To get your recommended 8 hours of sleep, turn off your devices at least an hour before retiring. The blue light emitted has been found to interfere with the brain's sleep-wake cycle. Instead, use the time to do something non-tech like star-gazing, playing with your pets, doing a craft, or grabbing some pen and paper and composing a poem. Create a list of all the things like this you'd like to do.

Replace foods high in sugar and fat with those with B-vitamins for balancing neurotransmitters which kick in with the fight-or-flight response, Vitamin C and magnesium to lower the "stress hormone" that is cortisol, and Omega-3s which lower anxiety. Reducing caffeine and alcohol are also key.

It is recommended you get 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity per week. But don't be daunted by these numbers; anything is better than none and you can work your way up. If you can do this outside, even better because sunlight releases serotonin, which is a hormone that lifts mood.

Make a commitment to take better care of yourself, so that you can better take care of the children in your charge. Here's an article with a slew of great resources: Physical Health Impacts Mental Wellness.

Closing thoughts

"Teaching is the one profession that creates all other professions."~ Unknown. Perhaps like me, you've seen this quote on mugs, posters, and the like. But if you really stop to think about it, it showcases just how selfless teachers are and how big and important the profession is. With that can come a heavy burden, but by recognizing this and practicing self-care, it's then more possible for you to stay in the teaching seat for the duration of the flight!
Lilla Dale McManis, MEd, PhD has a BS in child development, a MEd in special education, and a PhD in educational psychology. She was a K-12 public school special education teacher for many years and has worked at universities, state agencies, and in industry teaching prospective teachers, conducting research and evaluation with at-risk populations, and designing educational technology. Currently, she is President of Parent in the Know where she works with families in need and also does business consulting.

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Educator Wellness: Self-Care in a Selfless Field | Resilient Educator

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Up to 40 percent of teachers experience burnout. Looking for ideas to stop burnout and better take care of yourself? Focus on these two areas first.

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The most basic definition of mindful running is to become mentally connected with your body during your runs. While there are many different ways runners can practice this technique, the principal idea is to get rid of distractions while you run, concentrating on how you feel.

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Is mindful running all about taking it easy and slow or can it actually help you run faster? Here's what mindful running is along with a few reasons why you should give it a try.

With more technology than ever to track metrics, like heart rate, running power, lactate threshold, and VO2 max, it can be easy to slip into constantly eyeballing data during your runs.

Even if you do wait until after your runs to go over your data, a lot of runners choose other distractions like music, audio books, or even podcasts to get them through their workouts. While these things aren't necessarily bad, one commonly neglected aspect of running is training the mind.

The problem with using distractions to get through your run is that you may neglect training your mind.

By taking a more mindful approach to running a few times per week (or even as part of a warm-up or cool-down), runners can improve mental conditioning that will in turn boost performance, recovery, and bring some of the joy back to the sport you love.

Let's go with the flow and explore what mindful running is and why it's beneficial for runners of all levels.

What Is Mindful Running?

The most basic definition of mindful running is to become mentally connected with your body during your runs.

While there are many different ways runners can practice this technique, the principal idea is to get rid of distractions while you run, concentrating on how you feel. Whether it's looking at your metrics every minute, being overly concerned with how fast or far you have to go, or even thinking about that argument you had with a co-worker during a run, these things tend to take away from the mind-body connection and being in the moment.

You can use many of the principles of meditation in mindful running.

Even though meditation and mindful running do have their differences, the two practices are often used together:

Meditation concentrates on removing the things in our life that cause stress or distraction in order to create calmness in the mind.

When you practice mindful running, you can use many of these same principles to not be distracted by things outside of your activity, focusing instead on embracing how you feel and being in tune with your body.

Being connected with your running often moves the focus towards things like your breathing, how your arms and legs are moving, or parts of the body that may be feeling tight or weak.

While some runners learn to ignore the pain or difficulty that running often inflicts, mindful running embraces everything going on within the body, from nutrition to how much sleep you've gotten the previous night, to create an awareness that puts you more in tune with your body.

Can mindful running help you run faster?

In the past, runners have typically focused on physiology and physical conditioning as a way to improve performance. Going further, adding intervals for speed, and doing strength training have become the common approaches, while mental conditioning is often an afterthought.

The problem is, always focusing on physical abilities without also training the mind can create a disconnect, causing negative thoughts and a higher perceived exertion when things aren't going your way during an event.

While there have been limited studies on the subject in the past, Asics recently conducted an experiment with runners of varying ability levels to determine just how much running performance can be affected by psychological factors.

Why practice mindful running?

What the proponents of the blackout experiment actually show is that runners rely too much on outside factors during training and racing, and by training the mind regularly you can in fact improve performance.

When you think about it, it does make sense.

There will always be moments during a run when things get tough. It could be those times when you just can't seem to maintain your pace, or that heavy feeling in your legs that suddenly becomes too difficult to ignore.

When the psychological battle becomes bigger than the physical one, it can be difficult to overcome if you haven't trained your mind.

Maybe it's that lonely spot on the course where there are no spectators, when none of the other participants are next to you, and the beeping on your watch isn't enough to push you forward. This is the point when the psychological battle becomes bigger than the physical one, and if you haven't spent enough time training the mind, it can be difficult to overcome.

One of the primary researchers of the Asics study, Professor Samuele Marcora of the University of Kent's School of Sport and Exercise Sciences, had this to say about the experiment and overall importance of training the mind.

"We wanted to show the critical role the mind plays in athletic performance. The difference we saw between the experiment conditions in just one day is similar to the difference you would see after a four-week high intensity training program, so the mind shouldn't be underestimated."

For whom is mindful running useful?

While practising the mind can certainly benefit those elite runners looking for an extra edge, mindful running can be useful for just about anyone.

Whether you're completing a recovery run or are simply someone who uses running to relax and destress, practicing mindful running in order to better connect with the body can be a good way to achieve a balanced state of mind and find joy in your running.

Dr. Jo Corbett, another of the collaborators in the Asics blackout study, spoke about this connection.

"Despite the challenging conditions on the track, almost every runner said they felt a kind of euphoria at some point, which they referred to as 'pure running.' It shows the power of getting more in-tune with ourselves by occasionally shutting out the distractions."

Whether it's to be a happy runner or a faster one, mindful running is a technique worth practicing and including in your workout regimen. Just like strength training, yoga, or interval training, spending some time doing nothing but concentrating on the connection of body and mind will only make you a better runner.

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Please note that the information provided in the Polar Blog articles cannot replace individual advice from health professionals. Please consult your physician before starting a new fitness program.

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What Is Mindful Running - And Why You Should Give It A Try | Polar Journal

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Is mindful running all about taking it easy or can it help you run faster? Here's what mindful running is with some tried and tested benefits.

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Mindful eating is a technique that helps you gain control over your eating habits.  It has been shown to promote weight loss, reduce binge eating, and help you feel better. This article explains what mindful eating is, how it works, and what you need to do to get started.

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Mindful eating involves paying closer attention to your food and how it makes you feel. In addition to helping you learn to distinguish between physical and emotional hunger, it may also help reduce disordered eating behaviors and support weight loss.

Mindful eating is a technique that helps you better manage your eating habits. It has been shown to promote weight loss, reduce binge eating, and help you feel better.

This article explains mindful eating, how it works, and what you need to do to get started.

Mindful eating is based on mindfulness, which is a Buddhist concept.

Mindfulness is a form of meditation that helps you recognize and cope with your emotions and physical sensations (, ).

It's used to treat many conditions, including eating disorders, depression, anxiety, and various food-related behaviors (, , , ).

Mindful eating is about using mindfulness to reach a state of full attention to your experiences, cravings, and physical cues when eating ().

Fundamentally, mindful eating involves:

eating slowly and without distraction

listening to physical hunger cues and eating only until you're full

distinguishing between true hunger and non-hunger triggers for eating

engaging your senses by noticing colors, smells, sounds, textures, and flavors

learning to cope with guilt and anxiety about food

eating to maintain overall health and well-being

noticing the effects food has on your feelings and body

appreciating your food

These things allow you to replace automatic thoughts and reactions with more conscious, health-promoting responses ().

SUMMARY
Mindful eating relies on mindfulness, a form of meditation. Mindful eating is about developing awareness of your experiences, physical cues, and feelings about food.

Today's fast-paced society offers people an abundance of food choices.

On top of that, distractions have shifted attention away from the actual act of eating toward televisions, computers, and smartphones.

Eating has become a mindless act, often done quickly. This can be problematic since it takes time for your brain to register that you're full.

If you eat too fast, the fullness signal may not arrive until you have already eaten too much. This is very common in binge eating disorder (BED).

By eating mindfully, you restore your attention and slow down, making eating an intentional act instead of an automatic one.

What's more, by increasing your recognition of physical hunger and fullness cues, you can distinguish between emotional and true physical hunger ().

You also increase your awareness of triggers that make you want to eat, even though you're not necessarily hungry ().

Knowing your triggers allows you to create a space between them and your response, giving you the time and freedom to choose how to react.

SUMMARY
Mindful eating helps you distinguish between emotional and physical hunger. It also increases your awareness of food-related triggers and gives you the freedom to choose your response to them.

It's well known that most weight loss programs do not work in the long term.

In fact, some research suggests that people tend to regain about half of the lost weight after 2 years and 80% of the lost weight after 5 years ().

BED, emotional eating, external eating, and eating in response to food cravings have been linked to weight gain and regain after successful weight loss (, , ).

Chronic exposure to stress may also play a large role in overeating and obesity (, ).

Most studies agree that mindful eating helps you lose weight by changing your eating behaviors and reducing stress ().

Interestingly, one review of 10 studies found that mindful eating was as effective for weight loss as conventional diet programs ().

Another study involving 34 females found that completing a 12-week training on mindful eating resulted in an average weight loss of 4 pounds (lb) or 1.9 kilograms (kg) and improved feelings of self-awareness, self-acceptance, and self-compassion ().

By changing the way you think about food, the negative feelings that may be associated with eating are replaced with awareness, improved self-control, and positive emotions (, ).

When unwanted eating behaviors are addressed, your chances of long-term weight loss success are increased.

SUMMARY
Mindful eating may aid weight loss by changing eating behaviors and reducing the stress associated with eating.

BED involves eating a large amount of food in a short time, mindlessly and without control ().

It has been linked to weight gain, obesity, and disordered eating behaviors like purging or compulsive exercise (, , ).

Practicing mindfulness and mindful eating may drastically reduce the severity and frequency of BED episodes ( 23, ).

In fact, one study found that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy improved eating behaviors and enhanced restraint over food intake when added to usual care in people with BED and bulimia nervosa ().

SUMMARY
Mindful eating can help prevent binge eating. It can both reduce the frequency of binging episodes and their severity.

In addition to being an effective treatment for binge eating, mindful eating methods have also been shown to reduce (, ):

Emotional eating: This is the act of eating in response to certain emotions ().

External eating: This occurs when you eat in response to environmental, food-related cues, such as the sight or smell of food ().

Unhealthy eating behaviors like these are the most commonly reported behavioral problems in people with obesity.

Mindful eating teaches you the skills you need to manage these impulses. It puts you in charge of your responses instead of at the whim of your instinct.

SUMMARY
Mindful eating may effectively treat common, unhealthy eating behaviors like emotional and external eating.

To practice mindfulness, you need a series of exercises and meditations ().

Many people find it helpful to attend a seminar, online course, or workshop on mindfulness or mindful eating.

But there are many simple ways to get started, some of which can have powerful benefits on their own ():

Eating more slowly - not rushing your meals.

Chewing thoroughly.

Eliminating distractions; for example, turning off the TV and putting down your phone.

Eating in silence.

Focusing on how the food makes you feel.

Stopping eating when you're full.

Asking yourself why you're eating, whether you're truly hungry, and whether the food you chose is nutritious.

To begin with, it's a good idea to pick one meal per day to focus on these points.

Once you feel confident in practicing the techniques, mindfulness will become more natural. Then you can focus on implementing these methods during more meals.

SUMMARY
Mindful eating takes practice. Try to eat more slowly, chew thoroughly, remove distractions, and stop eating when you're full.

What are some mindful eating habits?

Minimizing distractions during meals is a great way to get started with mindful eating. Other habits can include chewing your food more thoroughly, savoring each bite, and evaluating how you feel before, during, and after your meal ().

Can you lose weight by mindful eating?

Mindful eating has been shown to reduce emotional and external eating, which can be beneficial for weight management ().

It may also help you learn to distinguish between physical and emotional hunger to prevent overeating and foster improved awareness of your food choices ().

What foods are good for mindful eating?

You can practice mindful eating with virtually any food in your diet. However, some foods may take more time to prepare and enjoy, making paying closer attention to your meal easier as you start experimenting with mindful eating.

For example, pomegranates require you to cut, score, and section the fruit before popping out the individual seeds. Similarly, edamame is commonly consumed by sliding the beans out of each pod using your teeth, which typically requires your full attention.

Mindful eating is a powerful tool to manage your eating.

This technique is worth considering if conventional diets have not worked for you.

If you want to try mindful eating, you can find many resourceful books in stores and online. Alternatively, you can join the Healthline Mindful Eating Challenge to get started.

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Mindful eating is a powerful tool to support managing your eating habits. It can help with weight loss, reducing binge eating, and making you feel better.

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National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-8255

National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE)

Division of Family Services: 1-800-292-9582

Mobile Response/Crisis: 1-800-969-HELP (4357)

Links to Resources for NCCVT Faculty/staff

SAMHSA Disaster Distress Hotline for those experiencing emotional distress related to a crisis: 1-800-985-5990

NAMI Helpline:
1-800-950-NAMI

info@nami.org

M-F, 10 AM - 6 PM ET
TEXT "NAMI" TO 741741

https://www.crisistextline.org/

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As the number of cases of COVID-19 increases, so does the associated anxiety. For the general public, the mental health effects of COVID-19 are as essential to address as are the physical health effects.

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Grow yourself. Develop your practice. Help others.

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Grow yourself. Develop your practice. Help others.

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PositivePsychology.com is an online resource for practitioners who want to put positive psychology in practice. Let us help you help others.

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7 Best Grounding Tools and Techniques to Manage Anxiety

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7 Best Grounding Tools and Techniques to Manage Anxiety

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Sweaty palms, racing heart, and erratic thoughts - feeling anxious can be debilitating and overwhelming.

Once we recognize the experience and when it happens, we can put in place techniques that allow us to regain control. Grounding practices can be particularly helpful due to their potential for use anywhere, at any time.

While grounding is valuable for managing anxiety triggers and lessening symptoms, it is also helpful for regaining control when life appears to be running away from us (Williams & Penman, 2016).

This article explores grounding, how it can help with anxiety, and some of the best tools and techniques available.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Mindfulness Exercises for free. These science-based, comprehensive exercises will help you cultivate a sense of inner peace throughout your daily life, and will also give you the tools to enhance the mindfulness of your clients, students, or employees.

What Is Grounding & How Can It Help?

Anxiety can leave us feeling panicky, on edge, and as though we are losing control.

While it can be debilitating, anxiety is thought to have evolutionary origins. It is the unwanted product of a valuable and ancient fight-or-flight response to perceived danger and, for a long time, kept humans alive. When we experience or think about stressful events, our amygdala is activated, preparing us for events and behaviors that may need to happen (Allen, 2020; Jenkins-Omar, 2020).

A negative thought about an actual or imagined situation can lead to changes in the body, including increased muscle tension, elevated heart rate, and faster breathing. Such bodily changes can further exacerbate anxious thinking, leading to a vicious cycle that leaves us physically and emotionally overwhelmed.

In our modern, busy, and overstimulating world, such automatic and often unwanted responses can damage our mental health (Jenkins-Omar, 2020).

It doesn't have to be this way. Anxiety is not a given, and there are tools and techniques that can help, one of which is known as grounding.

Grounding essentially means bringing the focus back to our physical experiences rather than remaining at the mercy of our racing and self-doubting minds.

Becoming more aware of our body and our surroundings helps us regain a sense of control by grounding us in the present moment rather than focusing on possible and unwanted future outcomes or unfortunate past events (Allen, 2020).

In a sense, grounding gets us out of our heads, escaping anxious and stressful thoughts and regaining the moment.

Can Grounding Help With Anxiety & Dissociation?

Grounding strategies are simple yet powerful techniques for detaching from emotional pain, such as sadness, anger, and anxiety.

Decker, Brown, Ashley, and Lipscomb (2019) found that meditation, mindfulness, and breathing techniques helped social work students regulate their autonomic nervous system, decreasing their degree of anxiety.

Grounding practices can distract someone who is anxious or becoming anxious by encouraging focus on something other than the difficult or upsetting emotions they are currently experiencing. Grounding or centering creates a safe place, or healthy detachment, that provides time and space to recover and heal (Najavits, 2011).

While grounding does not attempt to solve the underlying issues causing anxiety, it does provide the temporary peace required to return to a state of mind that facilitates problem-solving and decision-making. It can also be performed in isolation, with no additional resources or anyone else being aware (Najavits, 2011).

Dissociation, not to be confused with healthy detachment, can also be helped by grounding practices. In a study of children with suspected histories of trauma, Yehuda (2005) found that practicing grounding techniques helped them reduce dissociative coping mechanisms and acquire the vocabulary to talk about their experiences and begin the healing process.

How Does Grounding Work in Real Life?

Grounding can create a sense of personal calm and be especially valuable when our days are most hectic or life starts unraveling. The techniques take little or no resources and can be performed quickly and discreetly (Najavits, 2011).

There are at least three types of grounding techniques (Allen, 2020; Najavits, 2011) used in real-world situations: mental, physical, and soothing. Individuals can use them separately as the occasion demands or combine them as needed.

Mental techniques - Focusing the mind

The individual pays attention to specific aspects of the environment, for example, describing the room, naming items in a category (such as types of cars, dogs, songs, or sports), explaining an activity in great detail, or imagining a pleasant situation or image.

Physical techniques - Focusing the senses

Stimulating or experiencing the senses can help. Running water gently over our hands or wrists and noticing the sensations or paying attention to the weight of our body against the chair provides both a distraction from the upsetting situation and a welcome focus for calm.

Soothing techniques - Talking to ourselves with kindness and compassion

Repeating words of compassion or coping statements, such as, "I can do this" or "These feelings will pass," can be comforting and consoling. Statements like this, said out loud or to ourselves, show kindness and self-compassion when situations can seem hostile.

While there are many and varied techniques for grounding ourselves when we become anxious, each helps us restore a sense of ease and peace in our lives (Allen, 2020).

7 Best Grounding Tools and Techniques

We can practice the following grounding techniques at any time when beginning to feel anxious.

With practice, they will become more familiar, habitual, and something to turn to when we recognize unhelpful thoughts or physical sensations that lead to feelings of anxiety (modified from Allen, 2020; Jenkins-Omar, 2020; Williams & Penman, 2016; Najavits, 2011):

1. Five senses

Your senses are another powerful way to reconnect with the present and redirect attention away from anxiety triggers.

While you may wish to find somewhere quiet, this exercise can be performed anywhere.

When sitting comfortably, close your eyes and take a few slow, deep breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth. Relax and focus your attention on each breath as it happens.

Next, open your eyes and, either to yourself or out loud, ask yourself the following:

What can I see?

What can I feel?

What can I hear?

What can I smell?

What can I taste?

Try to remain in the moment throughout, returning your attention to each sense and what you observe.

When you're ready, take a few deep breaths to end the exercise.

2. Holding an object

Experiencing and becoming immersed in an object can be a great way to ground yourself.

It can be helpful to keep a smooth stone or small paperweight in a drawer ready for this exercise. Any object with a pleasant texture or nice appearance that can fit in the palm of your hand will work.

Hold the object in your hand, bringing your full attention to how it looks and feels. Think about its colors, how it sparkles, reflects the light, or casts a shadow. Reflect on its texture. Is it smooth, soft, rippled, coarse, or dry? Does it feel light and balanced, or heavy and unevenly weighted?

Spend time observing the object, immersed, present, and grounded.

3. Grounding chair

Even the act of sitting can help us regain a sense of feeling grounded, and it can be discreetly performed anywhere.

Become aware of the contact between you and your seat, your weight against its surface, and the texture of the material on the chair.

When you're ready, apply pressure from your feet to the ground. Imagine the weight draining from your mind and body (perhaps as a color of your choice) into the ground. Feel the lightness of each part of your body as that weight leaves.

Take a few easy, slow breaths and return your awareness to the room when you are ready. Notice how you may feel a little lighter, more present, and less burdened.

4. Ask yourself questions

While anxiety often leaves us feeling on edge and panicky, it may also cause us to feel unreal, dissociated, and detached. Grounding ourselves with questions can bring us back to the here and now.

Ask yourself the following questions and write down the answers, perhaps in a dedicated journal or on quality paper set aside for the task using a preferred pen or pencil:

Imagine yourself at this point. A line of human ancestors brought you to the present moment, to be here right now.

5. Positive coping statement

Prepare a coping statement for when you begin to feel the onset of anxiety or overwhelm.

For example,

Repeat the above statement or something similar, lingering on each word, and recognize the temporary nature of painful memories and difficult events.
My name is X. Everything that is happening now will pass. There will come a time when I can look back on this time without fear or anxiety.
6. Three-minute breathing space meditation

Mindful breathing is the perfect companion to grounding.

Breathing is a powerful, effective, and instant way to return the body and mind to the present and experience the many benefits of mindfulness and centering.

Williams and Penman (2016) suggest using a three-minute breathing space meditation for grounding.

Sitting upright and comfortably, close your eyes, bringing your attention to your inner experience.

Step one: Explore your experience right now by considering the following:

What thoughts are going through your mind? Recognize them as mental events.

What feelings are present? Acknowledge them without attempting to change them.

What bodily sensations are you experiencing? Become aware of any tightness or discomfort, but do not try to influence the sensation.

Step two: Gather and focus.

Imagine a small spotlight following the physical sensations of each breath.

Move in close to the sensation of the breath in your abdomen. Recognize it expanding and contracting. Gently place your hand on your stomach if it helps.

Maintain your focus.

Step three: Expand your attention.

Expand your awareness of your breath to your whole body.

Become aware of your whole being as you breathe, including discomfort and tension, each breath moving around the sensations.

Rather than trying to change them, befriend the sensations.

When you are ready, take a few gentle, deep breaths, opening your eyes if you haven't already done so. Return your attention to your surroundings while carrying the calmness with you.

7. Finger and shape breathing for children

If a child is using short and shallow breaths when anxious, gaining mastery of their breathing can help them restore control of how they feel.

This simple exercise can be easily performed in a group or used discreetly by a child to manage their anxiety.

The child aims to gently track the movement, as though slowly progressing up and down a hill, in control of each breath.

Ask the child to follow the outline of their hand with their gaze or with another finger. They can imagine it if they prefer to keep their eyes closed.

As their attention moves slowly and gently up each finger, they breathe in. On the way back down the other side, they breathe out. Repeat for all five fingers on a hand, then continue back if they wish to continue.

Encourage the child to practice the exercise and have it ready when they begin to feel anxious.

For more ideas on how to manage anxiety, we suggest 20 anxiety tools in this article.

Resources From PositivePsychology.com

Grounding techniques can help us regain control physically and mentally and reduce feelings of anxiety.

Why not download our free mindfulness tool pack and try out the powerful tools contained within?

Leaves on a Stream
This beautiful exercise will help you separate from your thoughts, letting go rather than getting caught up in them.

Eye of the Hurricane Metaphor
Focusing your attention inward can help you disengage from a hectic world and create more inner peace.

Other free resources include:

Meditation Grounding Scripts for Children
These grounding scripts are especially helpful for children when they are facing tests and preparing for exams.

Grounding and Centering
Somatic experiencing involves monitoring sensations, patterns of actions, and soothing behaviors experienced in clients' bodies to avoid overriding their nervous system.

More extensive versions of the following tools are available with a subscription to the Positive Psychology Toolkit©, but they are described briefly below:

Modern life can be busy and overwhelming. This tool helps us develop the practice of self-compassion and treat ourselves with warm kindness:

Step one - Think about occasions when you have been less compassionate toward yourself.
Step two - Place reminders to be more loving toward yourself (such as photos or drawings) in a compassion box.
Step three - When you find yourself failing to show self-compassion, take out items from the box to feel the kindness they represent.

Use the tool to remind yourself what self-compassion means to you and practice applying it.

Daily Gratitude Check-In
We can encourage gratitude by recognizing how someone has helped us achieve a positive outcome.

However, unless we take time to pay extra attention and maintain focus on the good that has happened, we may fail to connect with our feelings of gratitude.

Step one - Close your eyes and bring a recent positive event to mind - perhaps something good that happened to you in the last few days.
Step two - Take a moment to think about who or what was needed for this to occur.
Step three - Notice how your body feels in response to this memory. Scan from head to toe and observe any new physical sensations.

For a couple of weeks, reflect on what you have learned from the exercise and whether you feel more grateful toward yourself and others.

17 Mindfulness & Meditation Exercises
If you're looking for more science-based ways to help others enjoy the benefits of mindfulness, this collection contains17 validated mindfulness tools for practitioners. Use them to help others reduce stress and create positive shifts in their mental, physical, and emotional health.

A Take-Home Message

Anxiety may have its origins deep in our evolutionary background, but it can have far-reaching and disastrous effects in our modern and more complex world.

Whether thinking about a past or future event or feeling concerned by present circumstances, it is possible to feel overwhelmed and experience a vicious cycle of negative thoughts that aggravate our anxious state.

Anxiety is neither a given nor something we must accept. It is possible to change our thinking and our focus.

Grounding is a practical and powerful technique for managing anxiety triggers and lessening symptoms. Part of its value is the ability to use it anywhere and anytime, often without others being aware.

While grounding may not solve the underlying problem, it does provide a safe space to regroup, gather your thoughts, and ready yourself to face difficulties.

This article provides several of the best tools for making grounding techniques a part of your emotional support toolkit, whether to help yourself or your client.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don't forget to download our three Mindfulness Exercises for free.

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7 Best Grounding Tools and Techniques to Manage Anxiety

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This article explores grounding, how it can help with anxiety, and some of the best tools and techniques available.

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Meditation Application for Sleep, Relaxation and Stress Reduction 

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Meditation Application for Sleep, Relaxation and Stress Reduction 

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Insight Timer - #1 Free Meditation App for Sleep, Relax & More

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The best meditation app with the world’s largest FREE library of more than 190k guided meditations, 17k teachers & the world’s most loved meditation Timer.

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12 Breathing Exercises for Managing Stress, Anxiety, & Panic Attacks

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12 Breathing Exercises for Managing Stress, Anxiety, & Panic Attacks

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Breathing is more than a physical requirement to live.

It is also foundational to spiritual, mental, and emotional aspects of life.

Hindus call it prana, Chinese refer to it as chi, and Christians believe in the Holy Spirit, which breathes in them. The breath has been essential to Zen Buddhist and yogic traditions. The word "spirit" is derived from the Latin spiritus, which means "breath" or "breath of life" (Lee & Speier, 1996).

Today, the breath remains a powerful tool that can improve mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing. Perhaps the most powerful aspect of the breath is that it is readily available to most of us at any given time. Let us show you how to use this powerful tool to manage stress and anxiety with a selection of breathing exercises.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Stress & Burnout Prevention Exercises (PDF) for free. These science-based exercises will equip you and your clients with tools to manage stress better and find a healthier balance in your life.

Why Are Breathing Exercises Important?

Breathing, while seemingly simple, is a complex process involving the lungs, diaphragm, and intercostal muscles. There are numerous physical, mental, and emotional benefits that breathing exercises provide.

4 Benefits of breathing exercises

1. Decreased levels of stress and anxiety

Nearly all forms of breathing exercises have the potential to decrease stress and anxiety by acting on the autonomic nervous system and vagus nerve (Kreibig, 2010).

The physiological effect of deepening the breath and lengthening the exhale shifts the nervous system from sympathetic to parasympathetic function (Jerath, Edry, Barnes, & Hearth, 2016).

This shift gets us out of "fight-or-flight" mode and can help with both cognitive and physiological aspects of anxiety.

2. Deeper levels of relaxation

Breathing exercises and progressive muscle relaxation provide immediate states of relaxation and have lasting physiological benefits to the nervous system (Toussaint et al., 2021).

The relaxation of muscle tension can additionally improve sleep, restfulness, and quality of life throughout the day (Toussaint et al., 2021).

3. Improved physical health

Specific aspects of physical health are impacted by the breath. Breathwork can help with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and improve respiratory and pulmonary function (Srivastava & Singhal, 2005).

With improvements in lung function and enhanced respiratory capability, other aspects of physical health, such as activity and movement, can become easier and more enjoyable. More physical health benefits are discussed below.

4. Enhanced cognition

Deep breathing and holotropic breathwork have been found to improve mental focus and cognitive function. The effects of breathwork on the nervous system improve brain function by altering neural activity, decreasing parasympathetic activity, and improving the ability to focus (Sharma et al., 2014).

Are breathing exercises good?

Breathing is a necessary part of life. The best part of using the breath to improve health is that it is completely natural and there are no side effects. It is also a resource that is readily available to nearly all of us.

Breathing exercises are convenient because they can be practiced anytime, anywhere, and without any equipment.

3 Proven health benefits

Scientific evidence supports the use of breathwork for a multitude of health benefits. As mentioned above, the relaxation response triggered by conscious breathing techniques normalizes the autonomic nervous system and counteracts the automatic fight-or-flight response from real or perceived stressors (Kreibig, 2010).

Because of this powerful effect on the nervous system, breathwork can offer the following benefits.

1. Decrease blood pressure and improve cardio-respiratory function

Controlled studies have demonstrated beneficial respiratory effects for people with asthma and, among healthy individuals, improved pulmonary function after practicing pranayama (Srivastava & Singhal, 2005).

2. Potentially help with weight loss

The Japanese "Senobi" breathing technique has been used to help with weight loss and metabolic function (Sato, Kawamura, & Yamagiwa, 2010).

3. Improve sleep

As a relaxation technique, breathing exercises can help improve sleep in the short term as well as provide long-lasting effects on sleep hygiene. The activation of the autonomic nervous system affects the endocrine system, releasing hormones to regulate sleep and wake cycles (Jerath et al., 2016).

Better sleep, in turn, can help improve nearly every other area of physical and mental health.

3 Types of Breathing Exercises

There are many variations of breathwork and specific breathing techniques.

Most fall into these categories of breathing exercises.

Deep relaxation breathing

Deep relaxation breathing (DRB) is also known as diaphragmatic breathing, relaxation breathing, or abdominal breathing. It involves inhaling deeply to expand the diaphragm and follows with a slow exhale (Consolo, Fusner, & Staib, 2008).

Diaphragmatic breathing is used across health disciplines such as nursing, dentistry, medicine, and public health because of the mental and physical benefits it provides patients (Consolo et al., 2008).

DRB includes taking slow, even, deep breaths where the belly expands. This is in contrast to shallow or chest breathing, where only the top of the chest moves during inhalation and exhalation.

Most people only use one third of their lung capacity during normal chest breathing, which limits the ability to take in and use oxygen and tap into the relaxation response (Consolo et al., 2008). Timed breathing techniques such as square breathing or 4-7-8 breathing are types of DRB.

Holotropic breathwork

Holotropic breathwork is a combination of overbreathing and evocative music that leads clients to a non-ordinary state of consciousness (Grof, 2014).

During altered states, breathers often report experiencing the body in a different way (such as temperature, tingling sensations, or muscle release). Grof (2014) describes four categories of this non-ordinary consciousness that can be accessed through holotropic breathwork. These include sensory, biographical, perinatal, and transpersonal.

Sensory experiences are those described above dealing with altered physical sensations.

Biographical experiences include memories, beliefs, and emotions connected to the past.

Perinatal experiences refer to those that are similar to experiences related to birth (being held or nurtured).

Transpersonal experiences are those that are "beyond the ego" or beyond our personal identity in present space and time (Taylor, 1994).

Holotropic breathwork is not appropriate for all clients, such as those with asthma, recent surgeries, or individuals who experience hallucinations or unstable moods. The goal of this form of breathwork is to break through psychological problems and heal mentally and emotionally.

Japanese breathing exercise

The Japanese breathing exercise known as the "Senobi" breathing method entails movement and breath. Participants raise their hands until they feel tired - a type of stretch customary in ancient Japan. The "Senobi" technique involves keeping the hands, arms, and shoulders upright as firmly as possible, stretching the muscles of the back and neck (Sato et al., 2010).

This breathing technique has been studied and used as a weight-loss option for obese individuals and those who cannot take part in rigorous activity (Sato et al., 2010). It provides a simple alternative that requires no money and very little time and space.

The theory supporting this is that performing "Senobi" breathing creates an increase in skin temperature in the erector spinae, activating brown fat cells, which are an important part of fat combustion (Mattson, 2010).

Research shows that "Senobi" breathing exercises can be effective weight loss methods, regulating the autonomic nervous system and hormone secretion. Specifically, when 40 premenopausal women aged 40 to 50 took part in a one-month intervention involving this breathing technique three times a week, obese women lost a significant amount of body fat, but normal-weight women did not (Sato et al., 2010).

10 Best Breathing Exercises to Try

It is ideal to practice breathing exercises when calm and then implement them during times of stress. Select a regular time each day to spend 5 or 10 minutes focusing on breathwork.

3 Exercises for relaxation, anxiety, and stress

1. Pursed-lip breathing is a great technique to relieve stress and anxiety, but it is also helpful for people with asthma or COPD (Srivastava & Singhal, 2005). It helps get the diaphragm working and increases the amount of oxygen entering the body. To do this exercise, simply breathe in slowly through the nose and breathe out through the mouth with pursed lips (as if sucking through a straw). Make the breath out approximately twice as long as the breath in.

2. Box breathing is also known as square breathing. It has been shown to reduce stress and boost focus and concentration (Sharma et al., 2014). This exercise involves breathing in through the nose for a count of four, holding the breath for a count of four, breathing out slowly for a count of four, and then holding for another count of four, essentially making a "square" or "box" with the breath.

3. 4-7-8 breathing is especially helpful for falling asleep (Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine, 2010). Focusing on the breath and counting can distract the mind from worry and ruminating thoughts. This technique involves breathing in through the nose for a count of four, holding the breath for a count of seven, and exhaling through the lips for a count of eight (handout provided below).

3 Exercises for managing panic attacks

Panic attacks can be unpredictable and scary events for individuals who struggle with anxiety. Up to 11% of Americans experience panic attacks each year, and 2-3% develop full-blown panic disorder (Cleveland Clinic, 2020).

The symptoms are physical and can be debilitating. While Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and medication can be effective treatments for panic (Cleveland Clinic, 2020), there are some simple and immediate exercises people can do to reduce stress and manage the attacks.

1. Progressive muscle relaxation (PMR)

PMR is a technique that involves actively contracting muscles to create tension and then progressively releasing them throughout the body. The technique was developed by Edmund Jacobson in the 1920s using the principles of neural top-down and bottom-up processing, and it provides relatively quick relief from tension and anxiety (Keptner, Fitzgibbon, & O'Sullivan, 2020).

2. Inhale lavender

Research has demonstrated that inhaling the smell of lavender essential oils significantly reduced anxiety in a short period of time (Donelli, Antonelli, Bellinazi, Gensini, & Firenzuoli, 2019). Lavender was the preferred anxiety-reducing scent in this research, but other essential oils can provide similar calming effects based on preference.

Simply open the bottle of oil and slowly inhale the scent through the nose and breath out through the mouth.

3. Try the 5-4-3-2-1 exercise

This exercise involves looking at five objects, listening for four sounds, touching three objects, identifying two smells, and naming one thing you can taste. It brings you into the present moment and can help distract the mind from panic.

1 Mindfulness meditation and 3 yoga exercises

Mindful breathing is an excellent remedy for stress, anxiety, high blood pressure, and even depression (Taylor, 1994). Mindful breathing is incredibly simple but surprisingly difficult to do.

The idea is to focus awareness simply on the breath and, as the mind wanders, gently bring awareness back to the breath, allowing thoughts to pass without judgment.

Breathing is an integral part of yoga and is referred to as pranayama. It is foundational to any yoga practice, and adding movement and physical postures to the breath can bring about an incredible potential to heal.

There is extensive research that suggests yoga can improve biochemical and physiological markers of stress and anxiety, as well as self-reported improvements in mental and emotional regulation (Li & Goldsmith, 2012). Specific breathing techniques that are often practiced in yoga include the following:

Lion's breath stretches muscles in the face and can help relieve stress and tension (Li & Goldsmith, 2012). Breathe in deeply through the nose and then breathe out forcefully with the mouth open and wide, sticking the tongue out and rolling the eyes upward. It may feel strange, but it stretches facial and neck muscles and can release gripping in the jaw.

Alternate nostril breath evens out breathing and helps to slow down the breath. It is best to do this technique while sitting in a comfortable position.

This is a simple handout that outlines basic yogic breathing. The concept involves awareness and control of breathing, as well as pairing the breath with movement or postures.

4 Helpful Books and Handouts

1. Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art - James Nestor

This book provides detailed insight into research on the benefits of breathing correctly.

Nestor provides evidence of how our society has lost the ability to breathe correctly and teaches the reader the importance of focusing more on the foundational aspect of breathing.

Find the book on Amazon.

2. Feel to Heal: Releasing Trauma Through Body Awareness and Breathwork Practice - Giten Tonkov

Giten Tonkov provides an approach to healing trauma and living well in a multi-modal practice that is simple enough for anyone to access.

This book offers insight into the therapeutic benefits of using breath and mindfulness to improve wellbeing.

Find the book on Amazon.

3. Breathing Exercises - UC Berkeley

This handout from UC Berkeley provides a few reminders to breathe throughout the day and outlines step-by-step guides for some simple breathing exercises.

4. 4-7-8 Breath Relaxation Exercise - Dr. Andrew Weil

The 4-7-8 breathing technique is explained in this handout by Dr. Andrew Weil. This breathing technique is helpful for panic, anxiety, and stress (Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine, 2010).

Resources From PositivePsychology.com

Triangle breathing is an alternate variation of the square or box breathing discussed above. This handout provides a step-by-step guide to practicing it.

This anchor breathing handout provides a picture that can help individuals learn mindful breathing.

As part of the PositivePsychology.com Toolkit©, our progressive muscle relaxation script discusses the benefits of the activity and guides individuals through an entire session. The script guides clients to systematically tense and relax specific body parts, starting at the feet and moving up the body to the head. The resource can be used in session or given to clients as homework.

Another resource in our toolkit is the Breathing Together exercise. It can be found under the Mindfulness category of positive psychology exercises. This breathing exercise is meant to be done with couples or groups, with clients sitting facing each other, at first with eyes closed and then with them open, to connect through the rhythm of the breath. It can be both a relaxing and connecting experience.

A Take-Home Message

Breathing is essential for life and so automatic that most of us take it for granted. However, the power of the breath cannot be overstated. It has the ability to help us heal mentally, physically, and emotionally and can improve many aspects of life if we take the time to pay attention to it.

From better sleep to improved cardiovascular function and mental clarity, practicing breathing exercises can have an amazing capacity to enhance many aspects of health and quality of life. So the next time you take an inhale, pause. Slow it down. Mindfully appreciate the exhale. The power to improve your life is inside you already.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don't forget to download our three Stress & Burnout Prevention Exercises (PDF) for free.

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12 Breathing Exercises for Managing Stress, Anxiety, & Panic Attacks

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Breathing is more than a physical requirement to live. It is also foundational to spiritual, mental, and emotional aspects of life. Hindus call it prana, Chinese refer to it as chi, and Christians believe in the Holy Spirit, which breathes in them. The breath has been essential to Zen Buddhist and yogic traditions.

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Several mindful movement videos from Pure Edge are available on the SEL YouTube Channel. These publicly accessible videos guide you through yoga poses and can be used with adults or students.

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Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

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Check out some of the resources from DOE!

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The Delaware Department of Education (DDOE) is committed to empowering every student to be successful in college, career and life. This success requires both academic and behavioral supports to assure that all students and school communities are protected, connected and respected.

DDOE recognizes that educators cannot pour from empty wells. We place a high value on educator self-care as a universal strategy to offset the impact of compassion fatigue and secondary trauma. Our goal is to reduce educator burnout and ultimately support the retention of a high-quality workforce.

Additional Resources

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Home / Educator Self-Care and Emotional Resilience

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The Delaware Department of Education (DDOE) is committed to empowering every student to be successful in college, career and life. This success requires both academic and behavioral supports to assure that all students and school communities are protected, connected and respected. DDOE recognizes that educators cannot pour from empty wells.

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3 months of free guitar lessons from Fender

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Learn to play guitar with Fender Play’s easy, bite-sized lessons, featuring 100s of your favorite songs for acoustic and electric guitar.

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Check it out!

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Delaware's socialand emotional learning (SEL) toolkits are designed to be used as a starting point for educators, school staff and community members to begin integrating SEL into their practices and interactions with students. The following toolkits include initial strategies and resources to improve students' social, emotional and behavioral health:

For classroom teachers

For school staff, families and stakeholders

For specific skill support

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Delaware's socialand emotional learning (SEL) toolkits are designed to be used as a starting point for educators, school staff and community members to begin integrating SEL into their practices and interactions with students. The following toolkits include initial strategies and resources to improve students' social, emotional and behavioral health:

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Read what CASEL has to say about the fundamentals of SEL!

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We define social and emotional learning (SEL) as an integral part of education and human development. SEL is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.

SEL advances educational equity and excellence through authentic school-family-community partnerships to establish learning environments and experiences that feature trusting and collaborative relationships, rigorous and meaningful curriculum and instruction, and ongoing evaluation. SEL can help address various forms of inequity and empower young people and adults to co-create thriving schools and contribute to safe, healthy, and just communities.

New to Social and Emotional Learning? Start here (2 min. read).

Think of a young person in your life. What skills will they need to achieve their hopes and dreams?

Chances are, you just named social and emotional skills - like staying motivated, communicating effectively, practicing curiosity, and working with others to solve problems. Social and emotional learning, or SEL, helps develop the skills we need for life.
Hear why students, parents, and educators want SEL in schools. Here are 3 things to know about social and emotional learning:

1. Social and emotional learning is a foundation for many of our most pressing priorities: SEL helps young people - and adults - learn and practice skills that set them up for academic success, fulfilling careers, healthy relationships, and responsible civic engagement.

2. The research is clear: Social and emotional learning in schools leads to positive outcomes, including better academic performance, and decreases in stress and anxiety.

3. There's no one-size-fits-all approach: Social and emotional learning brings families, schools, and communities together to make sure every child has caring relationships and what they need to learn, grow, and thrive.

Subscribe now for our expertly curated 3-part email series delivered straight to your inbox. We'll roundup the key facts from our website on SEL is, it matters, and it shows up in schools.

By submitting this form, you are consenting to receive marketing emails from: . You can revoke your consent to receive emails at any time by using the SafeUnsubscribe® link, found at the bottom of every email. Emails are serviced by Constant Contact

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SEL can help all young people and adults thrive personally and academically, develop and maintain positive relationships, become lifelong learners, and contribute to a more caring, just world.

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The SEL 3 Signature Playbook can help you infuse SEL strategies into your educator best practices!

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Adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, are potentially traumatic events in childhood (0-17 years), such as neglect and experiencing or witnessing violence.

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Childhood experiences-good and bad-shape our health, well-being, and livelihoods over a lifetime. This infographic uses data from the CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Study and recent findings to show how ACEs and prevention can affect people's lives and society.

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This handout includes a self-care self-assessment with key strategies for fostering resilience and a self-care planning tool to assist educators in identifying areas of strength and growth related to self-care and developing self-care plans.

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Both social and emotional learning (SEL) and restorative practices (RP) are used to systematically and intentionally build equitable learning environments in schools. While differing in their approaches, they share many common characteristics.

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Restorative Practices are a set of practices that develop relationships and community and repair those relationships when harm is done. They are aimed at shifting focus away from just punishing and towards repairing harm done to people. Lastly, restorative practices support social and emotional development by promoting inclusiveness, relationship-building, and problem-solving.

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Pure Edge is a free curriculum for educators to engage in self-care for themselves or for teaching students strategies for mindfulness and self-care through brain breaks, mindful movement, and breathing exercises.

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Are you worried about your child?

We offer education and therapeutic support to empower and give you hope as you support your child’s mental health.

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Are you worried about your child? We offer education and therapeutic support to empower and give you hope as you support your child's mental health. View Courses 50% of parents [...]

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Home Activities that Build Social Emotional Skills

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Home Activities that Build Social Emotional Skills

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Family Activities that Build Social Emotional Skills

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Family Activities that Build Social Emotional Skills

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Life skills that help your teen succeed!

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What's in the handbook
You, as the parent, grandparent, teacher, or other trusted adult in a child's life are the first line of defense for the children in our community. But it can be hard to know where to begin.

United Way is on a mission to provide tools that will help you help the children in your life. One of those tools is this handbook.

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For more than 40 years, United Way of Utah County has been involved in creating lasting change in our community by strengthening families.

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To help families build resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic, WhyTry is providing this guide free of charge. To learn more about our engaging social and emotional learning curriculum, visit whytry.org. Stay safe out there.

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SEL Resources for Families and Educators

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Social emotional learning for a variety of landscapes.

The way our communities learn is changing faster than ever.

Harmony brings evidence-based social and emotional learning (SEL) resources to educators, students, and families at no cost. Our innovative online tools support SEL as educators and families navigate distance learning, modified classroom protocols, and hybrid classes. Provide inclusive, whole-child education with Harmony.

Each pathway makes social and emotional learning approachable and accessible for every school community and home school setting with tools that adapt to virtual, in-person, and hybrid classrooms. Expand the tabs below to explore Harmony's remote learning resources.

Harmony Distance Learning Resource
SEL Support for Educators in Multiple Learning Environments
Strengthen peer relationships and academic engagement with Harmony's Everyday Practices, lessons, and activities optimized for immediate use in any school setting.

Access these materials and optimize distance learning in your school:

Planning materials

10-Day Easy Start Resource with Everyday Practices

Flexible lesson plans for grades Pre-K to 6th

Family support resources

Professional development opportunities

When planning Distant Learning with Harmony, you have all the resources you need to:

Harmony at Home
Learning Tools & SEL for Parents, Caregivers, & Families
Harmony at Home helps parents, caregivers, and families practice vital social and emotional skills with students in grades Pre-K to 6th. Our tools and resources support families who are learning at home or in modified school settings with the evidence-based strategies that Harmony has developed for classroom teachers.

Get started with user-friendly support for SEL at home:

Introduction to SEL

Harmony Everyday Practices

Adapted grade-specific lessons

Access to live implementation training webinars

Recommended on-demand webinars

Additional resources for families

Access SEL support that empowers families who are schooling at home to:

Get Started

Bring Harmony to your classroom, home, or remote setting today!

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Distance Learning Support for Educators and Families Social emotional learning for a variety of landscapes. The way our communities learn is changing faster than ever. Harmony brings evidence-based social and emotional learning (SEL) resources to educators, students, and families at no cost. Our innovative online tools support SEL as educators and families navigate distance learning, [...]

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Duolingo is the world's most popular way to learn a language. It's 100% free, fun and science-based. Practice online on duolingo.com or on the apps!

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The ComPsych® GuidanceResources® program is a FREE program available exclusively for State of Delaware Group Health Plan non-Medicare members and their dependents. The program offers someone to talk to and resources to consult whenever and wherever you need them. Members can call the toll-free number at 877-527-4742 directly for 24/7 access to a GuidanceConsultant℠, who will answer your questions and, if needed, refer you to a counselor or other resources such as work-life, legal and financial support. You also have access to the website at www.guidanceresources.com (WebID:State of Delaware), mobile app to consult articles, podcasts, videos, webinars, and other helpful tools.

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Now you can see actual events and ongoing support groups in one place, on one calendar.

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Department of Education Child Nutrition Sites

(link: https://www.doe.k12.de.us/page/4149 to see a complete list, that is continually updated for local feed sites. Information is current as of 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 18, 2020. Please note: Families can visit any of these meals sites.

The site does not need to be in your home district or at the school your child attends.

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Online Guide to Human Services | Delaware 2-1-1 - Online Guide to Human Services | Delaware 2-1-1 | Home

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(link: https://www.doe.k12.de.us/page/4149 to see a complete list, that is continually updated for local feed sites. Information is current as of 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 18, 2020. Please note: Families can visit any of these meals sites. The site does not need to be in your home district or at the school your child attends.

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Fun family night out ideas for all ages are great for families with kids in different developmental stages. Whether you choose to go out or stay in, look for ac

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Family night ideas include fun games and activities any family can enjoy together at home or in their neighborhood. Whether you've got toddlers or grandparents to entertain, family nights are the perfect family bonding activities.

Family Night Ideas With Toddlers

When you've got little kids, learning how to have fun with your family at home is priceless. Babies, toddlers, and preschoolers don't stay up too late and often get cranky at night, so finding fun in and around your home is often the best option.

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Free and Cheap Family Night Ideas for Little Kids

Free and fun family activities are great for this age group because little kids already require a lot of money for necessary items. Toddlers especially enjoy things they aren't supposed to do or play with, so give them novel experiences, and they'll be thrilled.

Play flashlight hide-and-seek in the house.

Create an indoor drive-in movie by pushing the couch aside and sitting in pillow-lined laundry baskets to watch a show.

Use painter's tape to map out a road around one floor of your house, then play cars together.

Outline each family member on the floor using painter's tape. Find clothes and accessories to lay on top of the outlines to dress the people.

Craft and serve custom drinks by giving your child small cups of a few different drinks like juice, soda, and lemonade. Each family member can make and name a new drink, then everyone votes on their favorite.

Start a family band using items from around the house like pots and pans. Let the kids pick their favorite song, then try playing and singing it together.

Have a playdough guessing game where you each fashion creations out of playdough and guess what each other made.

Have a dance party using a speaker with a built-in light show or a disco ball and make up new dance moves to teach each other.

Watch a movie somewhere weird, like while sitting in the empty bathtub together or laying in a pillow fort.

Set up your own bowling alley using 16-ounce plastic cups or empty pop bottles as your pins and any softer toy ball.

Play your family's favorite board games.

Elaborate Family Night Ideas for Little Kids

If you've got a little more spending money, kids who don't get too cranky in the evening, or aren't afraid to make a mess, you can try out some more elaborate family night ideas.

Go on a holiday decoration scavenger hunt in your car by driving around town looking for great displays at Christmas or Halloween.

Head to the nearest railroad tracks and watch for trains to pass by. Bring snacks and train-themed coloring pages to keep kids busy while you wait, then count the cars when one appears.

Create your own indoor water park if you have one of those large walk-in showers. Throw on your bathing suits, turn off the lights, and bring glow sticks and water toys into the shower to play.

Build a teepee out of sticks and branches in the woods, then sit inside and play a card game.

Use snow tools like brick molds to make an igloo in the backyard.

Fill water balloons and squirt guns with colored water and create snow art by playing with the water toys in the snow-covered yard.

Use a kit to build a simple rocket that launches using baking soda and vinegar, then take it outside to launch again and again.

Make your own pizzas using unique and creative ingredients.

Go camping in the backyard. Set up tents, build a fire, and roast hot dogs and marshmallows.

Family Night Ideas With School-Aged Kids

Elementary-aged children have very definitive ideas about what they like, so look for family night ideas that play to their interests. Since they're older, you'll be able to try out activities that take up more time.

Free and Cheap Family Night Ideas for School-Aged Kids

Willing parents are pretty much all kids need to have fun as a family. Think outside the box and look for activities that are really creative and fun.

Invent your own family board game and play it.

Have a fun family photoshoot where each person gets the chance to create the backdrop and choose everyone's outfits.

Make a family trip wish list in a notebook or on a map of all the places you'd like to visit together. Hop on a computer or iPad and research the top three places.

Set up a s'mores buffet and use an outdoor fire pit to roast marshmallows. Make each other unique s'mores by replacing the chocolate bar with other candy bars and ingredients. Which one is the sweetest, the most clever, and the most delicious?

Play a group phone game that gets you moving, like Pokémon Go or Wizards Unite.

On warm summer evenings, have a real water war in the yard where each person has a home base, and use water balloons, squirt guns, and even buckets of water.

Have a Nerf gun fight indoors or outside. Make sure you stock up on Nerf darts and keep them in buckets around the play area.

Make a ninja warrior course inside or outside using furniture, kiddie pools, and other DIY obstacles.

Break into two teams and go on the ultimate nature scavenger hunt. See which team finishes first.

Make a family time capsule.

Play a hilarious game of charades.

Elaborate Family Night Ideas for Older Kids

Kids in this age group like to feel independent and want a say in how they spend their free time. That said, some of their ideas won't come cheap. If you have the funds and the time to devote to making their family night dreams come true, let them take the reigns and plan your family night.

Host a "Chicken Challenge" dinner where each person creates a dish featuring chicken and anything they can find in the pantry. Everyone will try each other's dish and vote for the best.

Support a local sports team by attending a game or special fundraising event. Treat everyone in your gang to a matching hat or shirt with the team logo.

Do tandem sledding at a local ski resort, or tie your inflated sleds together as you slide down a local hill in winter.

Sleep over at a museum, aquarium, or sports stadium when they host one of these sleepover events.

Take apart an old piece of electronic equipment, like a VCR or broken DVD player, then rebuild it.

Make homemade dog treats or accessories, like doggie scarves and tied blankets, then deliver them to a local animal shelter.

Host a dollar store challenge where each person has the same amount to spend in the dollar store, but the goal is to buy more individual items than anyone else.

Create a family cookbook or a family scrapbook.

Create an at-home spa complete with a bathtub foot soak and wash-off facial masks you do while wearing big, comfy robes.

Family Night Ideas With Tweens and Teens

Teens and tweens aren't always excited about family nights, but this kind of family bonding time is crucial to their emotional and mental health. Include them in the planning to ensure they participate willingly and have a good time.

Free and Cheap Family Night Ideas for Teens

Use your interests or your kid's interests to help you decide which family nights will be most enticing. Show your tweens and teens that they're never too old for fun with free and cheap family night ideas.

Take a night bike ride through town together. Make sure everyone has a light on their bike or is wearing reflective clothing. Have more fun by decorating your bikes with glow-in-the-dark materials.

Upcycle clothing or jewelry together by cleaning out your closets and working together to turn the old into something new.

Host a family ping-pong tournament complete with a poster board bracket where you can track the winners.

Have a cemetery picnic and tell ghost stories.

Use the pieces from your existing lawn games to invent a cool new lawn game.

Host a themed dinner event for the family.

Make a YouTube or TikTok video together.

Binge-watch a favorite show of theirs with them.

Create and share vision boards.

Elaborate Family Night Ideas for Teens

Kids in this age group will appreciate the chance to do things that might be a little more novel and sometimes more expensive. Save your pennies and give them a fun family experience they will never forget.

Complete a ropes course together.

Head out to a virtual reality (VR) gaming site where you can all play a cooperative VR video game together.

Buy a couple of laser tag sets and play in your home or yard.

Head out to the nearest trampoline park for a competitive game of dodgeball.

Host an in-home paint night where you each create a painting that matches the next person's when they are hung side-by-side.

Have a Pinterest challenge where everyone chooses a craft or recipe to make, shops for the items needed, and shares their masterpiece with the family.

Spend an evening touring a local college campus. Buy a sweatshirt, grab a snack, and look toward the next stage in life.

Host The Great Takeout. Have everyone order a dish from a different restaurant and then create the buffet of all buffets.

Learn how to make sushi and spring rolls together.

Family Night Ideas With Mixed Age Groups

Fun family night out ideas for all ages are great for families with kids in different developmental stages. Whether you choose to go out or stay in, look for activities that will be fun and doable for everyone. If you like to include Grandma and Grandpa or your siblings and their kids in your family nights, you'll want to find great large group activities.

Play costume charades where you have to find clothing, accessories, and costume pieces from around the house to dress up as whatever you're supposed to portray.

Play a game of family Guess Who? where you each write down three to five things you have done that others might not know. Take turns pulling papers out of a bowl and guessing who did which thing.

Host a family favorites TV marathon where each person can choose one show to watch an episode of with the whole family.

Host a family craft night where you lay out all your craft supplies on one table, and everyone can create their own craft while sitting together at another table.

Challenge each other to brain games such as logic puzzles. Set up a point system to assign each person an IQ at the end of the night.

Play Minute to Win It style games. Pretend you're on the game show and assign one person to host.

Gather Family Feud data by polling all family members on several Family Feud style questions, then play a DIY Family Feud game.

Go rollerskating, ice skating, or to a family-friendly movie.

Have a family sleepover in the basement or living room.

Family Night Ideas to Enjoy With Neighbors & Friends

Get your favorite families together at once with the following group activities. Everything from educational and creative family literacy activities to family movie nights are fair game, as long as you can host a crowd.

Family Fitness Night: Create stations for activities like yoga, an obstacle course, and even a short walk where families can engage in physical fitness together.

Family Movie Night: Show a movie on a large screen and include a concession stand with snacks.

Family Baking Night: Get a local baker to volunteer to show families how to make a cupcake bouquet or decorate holiday cookies.

Family Building Night: Set up stations that include different building materials like LEGO, fort kits, and even wood and nails for older kids.

Family Science Experiment Night: Create a few "class" options families can opt to take where they learn about one science topic and complete a related experiment.

Family Game Night: Invent fun group games or set up various board games and giant games.

Family Escape Room Night: Make your own escape rooms for different age levels and have families sign up for time slots.

Family Lock-In: Give families the chance to bring their own sleeping bags and camp out inside your church or school. Provide lots of snacks and fun activities to keep everyone entertained.

Family Versus Family Competition: Host a fun tournament, like kickball or wiffle ball, where families can compete against each other.

Make the Most of Family Nights

Whether you're looking for summer family fun or great winter family nights, there are thousands of activities to choose from. Get creative and look for activities that will be new experiences for your kids or your entire family.

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62+ Fun Family Night Ideas and Activities You'll Want to Give a Go | LoveToKnow

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Finding the right family night ideas can be a hassle. Don't stop until you try one of these incredibly fun suggestions for different ages (or all of them)!

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Sean’s House is a mental health safe haven for young adults ages 14-24, created by the local non-profit SL24: Unlocke the Light. We promote our guests’ mental wellness by providing access to trained peer support specialists and assistance connecting with community mental health resources, as well as by providing space for guests to do schoolwork, relax with friends, or simply pick up a hot cup of coffee. It is our hope to reduce the rate of youth suicide by providing a place for young adults to feel safe, welcomed, and supported.

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Sean's House Sean's House is a mental health safe haven for young adults ages 14-24, created by the local non-profit SL24: Unlocke the Light. We promote our guests' mental wellness by providing access...

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A fantastic free course on the science of well-being by Yale psychology professor Dr. Laurie Santos

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Learn The Science of Well-Being from Yale University. In this course you will engage in a series of challenges designed to increase your own happiness and build more productive habits. As preparation for these tasks, Professor Laurie Santos ...

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Positive Psychology is the scientific study of the strengths that enable individuals and communities to thrive. The field is founded on the belief that people want to lead meaningful and fulfilling lives, to cultivate what is best within themselves, and to enhance their experiences of love, work, and play.

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Positive Psychology is the scientific study of the strengths that enable individuals and communities to thrive. The field is founded on the belief that people want to lead meaningful and fulfilling lives, to cultivate what is best within themselves, and to enhance their experiences of love, work, and play.

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Limiting screen time is important, but sometimes you want to curl up and watch a show or movie. Try these tips for incorporating SEL.

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Feeling overwhelmed? Take a moment and write down all the things that YOU CAN control (activity adopted by Ricky Robertson training).

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Remember: Give yourself grace. These tools and strategies won't work for all. Find what feels right.

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Schedule a time with family or friends to have a virtual game night.

Scattegories https://swellgarfo.com/scattergories/

Pictionary (try the whiteboard function on Zoom!) https://randomwordgenerator.com/pictionary.php

Jackbox Games (cost depending on the game)

Hey Robot - try and get your smart device (google, siri, alexa) to say specific words. https://playheyrobot.com/

Houseparty App (Facetime with games built in)

Psych! App: Created by Ellen Degeneres has a number of games that can be played remotely.

More ideas:  https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/11-board-games-play-online-223223599.html

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Virtual Tours of Museums, Theme Parks and Zoos

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Virtual Tours of Museums, Theme Parks and Zoos

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Aw snap! Google Earth isn't supported on your browser. You may need to update your browser or use a different browser. Please see our system requirements for more information. Chrome is a great choice and you can download it here. Or if you're feeling adventurous, you can try Earth anyway by choosing an option below.

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FOX Presents The iHeart Living Room Concert for America

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FOX Presents The iHeart Living Room Concert for America - iHeartRadio

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A music event to provide entertainment relief and support for Americans to help fight the spread of the COVID-19 virus and to celebrate the resilience and strength of the nation during this pandemic.

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Create a self-care wheel (www.olgaphoenix.com) and pick one thing from each section that incorporate into your week. Remember to include things that are easy "wins" for your day. You can also add your own area to the wheel (e.g., social, finances, hobbies, etc)

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This website has coping tools for adults and children. Try the Educator Self-Care menu or self-care bingo!

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Top Books for SEL

Check out some favorite books to help kids navigate the messy feelings in their lives so they can become more aware, connected, compassionate, kind, inclusive, responsible, and resilient.

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Cultivating Well-being, Resilience, and SEL for Educators and Children - constantloveandlearning.com

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Helping educators nurture well-being, resilience, and social emotional learning within themselves, their students, & their school systems to sustainably increase impact without sacrificing their health, happiness, or wholeness

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Use this inventory to get more ideas of ways to engage in self-care. Try and pick a new way once a week.

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For several weeks-or even longer, depending where you are in the world-we've been finding ourselves trying to gain footing and get used to our new realities, which present differently for each person. As the pandemic continues to unfold, a few universal truths are reaffirming themselves to me: First, in almost all but extreme cases, we have a choice about how we want to respond to what is happening. Second, the cliché and often-time overused metaphor of putting the oxygen mask on ourselves first so that we can help others has never been truer, whether we are on the front lines providing an essential service or finding ourselves at home. And finally, and perhaps most importantly, love and compassion are more viral than COVID-19.

We Have a Choice to Remain in Control

Two weekends ago, as the state where I live was finally waking up to the realization that preparation was in order and that we wouldn't be spared, my husband and I made a trip to the supermarket to stock up on supplies and essentials. Now you have to understand that I live in a state that is under a threat of hurricanes almost annually at this point, and that what I saw was beyond the frenzy we experience when we are in the "cone of uncertainty" and being told to brace for impact. All around us, people were frantically loading their carts with toilet paper, jugs of bleach, and bottled water. The panic in the air was infectious; we humans are not immune to panic.

I found myself on a mission to not only get as much as I could on my grocery list but also to not panic. For the first week, my husband took up a new hobby as the town crier only instead of announcing the time each hour, he would report the numbers of infected individuals and worse, the number of deaths. On one particular day, my mother called me to report that five people in her synagogue tested positive and that another had passed away the night before. Things were getting real, real fast. After hanging up with my mom, frustrated that I could not properly console her over our video call, I went outside to our backyard, sat on a deck chair and just lost it.

I realized that this virus had me feeling sad-yes-but it also sent me into a tailspin and everything about my schedule, my hours of sleep, and my regular routine was completely out of control.

In the midst of crying inconsolably, I realized that this virus had me feeling sad-yes-but it also sent me into a tailspin and everything about my schedule, my hours of sleep, and my regular routine was completely out of control.

Taking a deep breath, reminding myself that I have tools to use, I wrapped up my crying, and began to feel like the clouds had parted. I could see clearly and I knew what I needed to do: Rewrite a new Self-Care Plan. The world had changed in a matter of days but my formalized plan had not-and so it was clear to me that, just as I needed to be adaptable, the plan needed to be, too. Adjusting my Self-Care Plan to meet this new normal was this shift that allowed me to launch the Pandemic of Love initiative (more on that later).

What is a Self-Care Plan and Why Do I Need One?

A Self-Care Plan is an intervention tool that keeps you from being completely sucked into the vortex, saving you when you find yourself standing on the precipice gazing into the dark abyss. It's a fail-safe, created by you, and filled with your favorite self-care activities, important reminders, and ways to activate your self-care community-even virtually.

Here are my top three reasons to get on top of this plan, as early as you can (don't put it off!):

1) Customizing a Self-Care Plan is a preventative measure. By designing a roadmap that is unique to you, in moments when you're NOT in crisis, you're directing your best self to reflect on what you may need (and have access to) in your most challenging moments. The reality is that only YOU know how intense your stress levels can get and what resources are available to you. Write that sh*t down.

2) Having a plan takes the guesswork out of what to do and where to turn in moments of crisis. From a mindfulness point of view, it helps you respond instead of react to the situation at hand. When you have a plan in place, you'll feel more in control of your circumstances and life won't feel quite as chaotic. (It also makes it easier to ask for help from those you share your plan with.)

3) A Self-Care Plan helps you stay the course. You'll find it far easier to stick to your personal care strategy and avoid falling into the trap of making excuses. Having a plan helps you establish a routine, ensuring that you and your self-care partners don't wind up in isolation, but rather check in with each other (even if it's virtually these days), hold each other accountable, and share the responsibility to support one another.

To read more about Self-Care Plans, you can check out an in-depth article that I wrote for Mindful.org last February.

A COVID-19 Self-Care Checklist

Besides disinfecting and washing my hands, I made a list of the best ways I could take care of my heart and spirit in these times, putting that proverbial oxygen mask on first before I tend to my family, my community, and the world.

Here are eight things that are on my extensive list:

1. Stick with my normal, daily meditation practice. It's easy to lose track of time when the days blend into one another, but now more than ever, my twice daily meditation practice (20 minutes at a time) is so important. Also, I no longer have the excuse "I don't have time" these days-all I seem to have is time, I just need to remain disciplined.

2. Maintain contact virtually by creating a schedule. Now is a great time to make sure that we check on the ones who matter to us, and those who we rarely get to see in person because they are so far away. However, it's very easy to lose track of time-especially across time zones-so having a set schedule of times to check in, hang out and even eat "dinner" together can help to restore some social structure to the day.

3. Get outdoors. If you are blessed to live in a place where there are parks or waterfronts (that are not closed during the pandemic) and you can access them with walks, runs, and bikes, it's a blessing that should not be squandered. Each day I commit to getting outdoors and moving for at least an hour, plus taking a barefoot walk on grass.

4. Give myself permission to cry. This is actually a point on my usual Self-Care Plan, which seemed appropriate to migrate over in these times. I know that I will inevitably feel sad, disheartened, or downright hopeless at times, but I also know that giving myself permission to feel these emotions fully and turn towards my suffering will help me release any pain or tension and help me see the sun through the clouds once again.

I know that I will inevitably feel sad, disheartened, or downright hopeless at times, but I also know that giving myself permission to feel these emotions fully and turn towards my suffering will help me release any pain.

5. Create a venting-hour. Just like some families have adopted a "happy hour," we've adopted a "venting hour." It sometimes only lasts five minutes but being that we are all stuck together in close quarters for the next few weeks or months, we make sure that there is an "airing of grievances," (just like in Seinfeld's fictitious holiday, Festivus), so that nobody keeps anything inside. I found that it reduces the build-up of tension and makes sure that there is no resentment, which is possible for even the kindest amongst us.

6. Limit how often and through what means I access the news and information. I have personally noticed how I feel when I watch the news or hear certain people speak, so now, I limit myself to 30 minutes of news per day on the television with a news anchor and station I trust. Otherwise, I mostly get my news online by reading articles and transcripts of press conferences. I also make sure to not watch the news before I go to bed, because it can get me all worked up, which is counterproductive.

7. Be of service to others without depleting myself. Within a few days of people in my community being laid off, I started to get emails and see posts on social media from my friends and community members who were scared about having their basic needs met-food, medicines, and other essentials. I realized that because I did not share those concerns, I am in a position of privilege to help others and that I can use my platform to help neighbors, community members and even strangers. I put my grass-roots activism skills to work and launched the Pandemic of Love project, a mutual aid community that has connected more than 10,000 families in need with patrons who can offer help.

What skills can you bring to this moment in order to be of service? As always, it's important to recognize and hold the boundaries that are safe for you. This is why your Self-Care Plan is so important. Offering help to others can give you meaning during this time of uncertainty. I know it has helped me stay on the side of hope, even when things seem hopeless.

8. When all else fails, ask myself: "What do I need in this moment?" This is my default question-the one I immediately ask myself when I sense that I am not feeling right, physically or mentally. I just pause, take a long, slow deep breath and ask myself this question. In this space between, I almost always find the answer.

Each day, invariably, I find myself looking at this list. It provides me with a measure of comfort, reminds me that I am in control, and that in times of crisis, I have the choice to either be my own worst enemy, or my best ally. I choose the latter.

How to navigate your way around a black hole of hopelessness-Hint: you have to stare down the despair. Read More

Shelly Tygielski offers a three-step exercise to help you get started with your own self-care plan-no bubble bath required. Read More

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Rethinking Our Self-Care During the Pandemic

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Shelly Tygielski, who has connected 10,000 families (and counting) to support each other during the pandemic, explains why intentional care for yourself is also needed, now more than ever.

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Tips for helping with zoom exhaustion.

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Steven Hickman, Psy.D., executive director of the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion, offers this timely perspective on managing our new virtual reality.

I've been teaching mindfulness and compassion for about twenty years now, and I believe I thrive when I'm sitting with a group of people open to exploring this transformative practice. Friends and family have known me to "come alive" when I am teaching and I feel a familiar surge of excitement and animation when I have those opportunities. But the other day, a colleague invited me to co-teach a short compassion session online with her. I deeply appreciated the invitation but immediately declined because I just haven't felt like a teacher since this virus invaded our lives. I've worked my tail off in other ways, but something had me holding back from teaching. I knew in my bones that I couldn't do this, but that made me curious.

I've spent hours in Zoom meetings of various sorts the past couple weeks, connected with dear friends in China, Australia, England, Israel, Spain, Singapore, Canada, Switzerland and Croatia (to name just a few). I have felt joy arising to see the faces and hear the voices of people whose faces and voices I first encountered when we were breathing the same air, standing in the same physical space, each (in Dan Siegel's term) "feeling felt" by the other. And so it was nice to be with them electronically in this age of social distancing and sheltering in place.

And that was it, it was nice.

I've been so busy lately that I thought perhaps I was just fatigued. But the more it happens, the more I realize that I end up feeling both connected but disconnected to these dear people. And I have heard multiple accounts of therapists doing tele-therapy and sharing how exhausted they feel after several sessions online.

Zoom Exhaustion Is Real

There is a different quality to our attention when we are online. We are hyper-focused on the few available visual cues that we normally gather from a full range of available body language. Or perhaps, we are totally distracted and checking email while we are supposed to be conversing or listening intently to a colleague's detailed presentation. If we are with several people online at the same time, we are simultaneously processing visual cues from all of those people (and perhaps a handful of their pets and children too!) in a way we never have to do around a conference table. It is a stimulus-rich environment, but just like rich desserts, sometimes too rich is just too much.

If we are with several people online at the same time, we are simultaneously processing visual cues from all of those people in a way we never have to do around a conference table.

And when we start to be over-stimulated by extraneous data that we haven't had to process in the physical world, each new data point pushes us just a little bit farther away from the human-to-human connection that we all crave and appreciate. Italian management professor Gianpiero Petriglieri recently tweeted "It's easier being in each other's presence, or in each other's absence, than in the constant presence of each other's absence." So beautifully and eloquently perceptive!

The constant presence of my colleagues' absence may have been underlying my disinclination to do what I love on this platform that has become a lifeline for so many of us. And so, the question arises for me: Is there some way to ease the burden of this "disconnected connection" and allow me to foster a better balance of connection between us?

Six Ways to Manage Zoom so we Can Find Balance and Connection

Here's what I am going to try starting today (and suggest you consider) when my new reality resumes anew and I find myself on various calls with all manner of people looking to connect in various ways:

Take a few moments before clicking "Start" to settle and ground your attention. Take a few breaths, feel your body on the chair, notice whatever is present in your mind and allow yourself to arrive fully to the moment at hand. If you're feeling unsettled or preoccupied, you might place your hand on your heart in a supportive and comforting way as if to say "I'm here for you. It's ok to feel how you feel at this moment."

Take the time to truly greet whoever is in the room with your full attention-offer your attention to each face that appears (if the group is not too big). Give yourself a moment for each person to make an impression on you, and "take in the good" as Rick Hanson would say. Give yourself an opportunity to feel what it feels like to be in the presence of another.

Choose "speaker view." In Zoom, one can choose Speaker View or Gallery View, and I think I prefer Speaker View so that the one person who is speaking has more of my attention and the others are more peripheral. This seems to be more like sitting around a conference table where we are aware of everyone there but we direct our attention primarily to whoever is speaking. Tracking an array of 24 (or more) faces on the screen can be a challenge!

Resist the urge to multitask. I sheepishly have to admit that I am a multi-tasker on Zoom many times and have been known to read and fire off several emails while also sitting in a meeting. This has got to stop. Not because I need to hyper-focus on just what is happening in the meeting, but because I can't be putting additional effort into attending to anything else. If anything, I need to let go of a bit of "efforting" and let my attention rest more lightly and lovingly on what (and who) is before me. I can periodically ease up my focus and look out the window behind my screen, or at the knick-knacks on the shelves in my office, or just soften my gaze to take in the array of faces on my screen (to see without looking) without having to analyze or scrutinize any of them.

Try to take measured breaks between sessions. As a clinical psychologist, when I used to do psychotherapy, I was fairly good at enforcing a 50-minute hour. That gave me ten minutes to write notes, run to the restroom, get a drink of water and generally settle and decompress. Quite often my Zoom meetings run back to back and I find that sometimes my Zoom room becomes a kind of random encounter anteroom where people from various aspects of my personal and professional life bump into each other for a few moments on their way in and out of a meeting with me. Fun as these moments are sometimes, I need to take better care of my precious attention and energy, and take a refreshing pause. Why not give that a try yourself?

And finally, remind yourself periodically that this is a new place between presence and absence that we will have to learn how to accommodate as we go forward into the uncertain future. It is both better than absence (imagine life in a pandemic without FaceTime, Zoom, Skype and the rest) and not quite as resonant as presence (do we know if mirror neurons still function over the internet like they do in person?). Let's see if we can simultaneously refrain from high expectations without dismissing the clear benefits of online communication.

And let's not forget those benefits. We can have important meetings while only dressed appropriately from the waist up. Our beloved pets can be perched lovingly in our laps while we review our colleague's budget projections. If we are the host of the meeting we can "accidentally" mute or remove a colleague in a way that would never be socially appropriate in person. We can even feign a poor connection if the meeting is getting so deadly dull that we are in danger of nodding off and striking our heads on our keyboards.

But on a serious note, let's not dismiss this amazing technology, but instead learn to find a way to assimilate it into a full spectrum of interpersonal experiences that our new lives include. Let's be present to absence, without becoming absent to presence. It won't be easy, but it will be worth it to develop this new capacity.

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Zoom Exhaustion is Real. Here Are Six Ways to Find Balance and Stay Connected

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Steven Hickman, Psy.D., executive director of the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion, offers this timely perspective on managing our new virtual reality.

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Bedtime math has a daily question to help children find the value in math and help make math fun. Try to incorporate into a daily routine.

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Bedtime Math – We inspire kids to love math so they embrace and excel at it.

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From Lists 26 More On Stage Plays and Musicals to Watch From Your Couch The SpongeBob Musical to Nick Kroll and John Mulaney's Oh, Hello, from Lincoln Center Theater's The King & I revival to Audra McDonald in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill, here are 26 more captures of live performance to watch from home.

If you're anything like us, you've already devoured the offerings on our list of 15 Broadway Plays and Musicals to Watch On Stage From Home. But wait! There's more!

From acclaimed West End revivals to Off-Broadway stages, from Broadway to houses in Texas and Louisiana, here are more titles to keep your appetite for theatre satisfied:

The SpongeBob Musical: Live On Stage!
Absorbent and yellow and porous, SpongeBob SquarePants officially opened on Broadway December 4, 2017 at the Palace Theatre in an explosion of color, innovation, craftiness, and joy. Inspired by the Nickelodeon cartoon from Stephen Hillenburg, SpongeBob SquarePants The Broadway Musical -as it was first called-offered a completely original storyline (from director Tina Landau's concept and Kyle Jarrow's book) with all of the memorable characters of Bikini Bottom, including SpongeBob, his snail Gary, his best friends Patrick Star and Sandy Cheeks, his curmudgeonly neighbor Squidward J. Tentacles, his boss Mr. Krabs (and his daughter Pearl), the evil Plankton, as well as bit characters like Mrs. Puff, the driver's ed teacher.

The musical featured a patchwork score with multiple Grammy-nominated and Grammy-winning recording artists and songwriters contributing individual tunes. Among them: Plain White Ts, Yolanda Adams, Sara Bareilles, John Legend, and David Bowie. David Zinn's jaw-dropping costume and scenic designs, Kevin Adam's lighting design, and Peter Nigrini's projection design created the world of Bikini Bottom, which was under threat of demise as Mount Humungous threatened to erupt unless SpongeBob and his friends could save the day. The musical featured choreography by Christopher Gattelli, with orchestrations and arrangements by Tom Kitt. Members of the original cast (including Ethan Slater as SpongeBob, Danny Skinner as Patrick, and Gavin Lee as Squidward) reunited for a 2019 live re-staging on Nickelodeon. But if you missed the live broadcast, you can still watch it!
Available on: Amazon, Google Play

The New One
Mike Birbiglia was one of the first comedians to cross the threshold to theatre with the creation of his first solo show Sleepwalk With Me. This time, Birbiglia takes his humor to Broadway with The New One. The solo show bowed at the Cort Theatre October 25, 2018, and hit Netflix in 2019. A comic meditation on all the reasons he did not want to become a father-and how most of those reasons came true when his daughter came into the world-Birbiglia's show, directed on stage and film by Seth Barrish, reveals with startling honesty the challenges of new parenthood and what makes it all worth it anyway. (The scenic design by Tony winner Beowulf Boritt is a particular highlight.)
Available on: Netflix

Oh, Hello on Broadway
John Mulaney and Nick Kroll took Broadway by storm when they brought their altacocker alter egos to the Broadway stage in 2016. Directed by Alex Timbers (who also directs this Netflix capture), Oh, Hello first hit Off-Broadway in 2015 as an expansion of a sketch on Comedy Central's Kroll Show. Mulaney and Kroll play George St. Geegland and Gil Faizon, respectively, two Upper West Siders obsessed with turtlenecks, raccoons, improperly emphasizing words, and thinking they know more about everything than they do about anything. The Broadway show featured a segment "Too Much Tuna" popularized on YouTube, where George and Gil invited a different celebrity guest to join them onstage at each performance. It's an hour and 42 minutes of absurdity at its finest.
Available on: Netflix

Indecent
Paula Vogel's 2017 Tony Award-nominated play has earned a reverence in the theatre community for its story, for its vision by director Rebecca Taichman (who won the Tony for it), for the subtly stunning performances (notable Katrina Lenk), but most of all for its own honoring of artmaking. Both Taichman and Vogel had been taken by Sholom Asch's 1923 play God of Vengeance, a love story between two women. Considered in violation of obscenity laws, productions of God of Vengeance were shut down. Indecent tracks the history of Asch's controversial play and the risks a troupe of artists will take to perform it. In an unprecedented move, producer Daryl Roth announced the play's closing only to rescind the notice and extend the play for more to see.
Available on: PBS Passport and BroadwayHD

An American in Paris
The 1951 Oscar-winning Best Picture musical from Vincent Minnelli, starring Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron, came to life onstage in this 2015 Broadway musical from director-choreographer Christopher Wheeldon. With book writer Craig Lucas, Wheeldon was able to transpose all of the sweeping romance from the film to the stage and elevate the level of dance on Broadway. (Wheeldon won the Tony for his choreography.) This was the Broadway breakout moment for New York City Ballet dancer Robert Fairchild as well as Royal Ballet dancer Leanne Cope. Just as in the film, the production features the music of George and Ira Gershwin.

This capture features the London production of the musical, with original stars Fairchild and Cope. Co-directed by Wheeldon and Ross MacGibbon, this is the gold standard of execution of the capture of a stage production.
Available on: PBS Passport and BroadwayHD

42nd Street
The tap extravaganza first came to Broadway in 1981 from director-choreographer Gower Champion, who was assisted by Randy Skinner. Since then, Skinner has mounted the 2001 Broadway revival, as well as national tours, London productions, and regional presentations around the world. The backstage musical follows the making of Julian Marsh's next musical, Pretty Lady. He hires past-her-prime Dorothy Brock since her beau promises to invest heavily-but Brock is taking risks with an old flame. Meanwhile, doe-eyed Peggy Sawyer is dying to prove herself in the chorus and when an accident befalls Brock, Sawyer gets called up to the big leagues. Watch this recording of one of the final performances of the 2018 West End revival starring Bonnie Langford ( EastEnders) as Dorothy Brock, Tom Lister as Julian Marsh, and Clare Halse as Peggy Sawyer.
Available on: PBS Passport and BroadwayHD

Putting It Together
A tribute to Stephen Sondheim, the Broadway revue played the Ethel Barrymore Theatre beginning October 30, 1999. The show starred Carol Burnett, George Hearn, John Barrowman, Ruthie Henshall, and Bronson Pinchot, and featured songs from the Sondheim catalog like "Rich and Happy" and the title song from Merrily We Roll Along, "Every Day a Little Death" from A Little Night Music, "Pretty Women" from Sweeney Todd, "Being Alive" from Company, and the titular "Putting It Together" from Sunday in the Park With George.
Available on: BroadwayHD

25th Anniversary Concert The Phantom of the Opera
In 2011, The Phantom of the Opera commemorated 25 years in London. Starring Ramin Karimloo as The Phantom and Sierra Boggess as Christine, the concert was filmed across three performances as Royal Albert Hall in London.
Available on: BroadwayHD, iTunes, Google Play and Amazon.

The King & I
Lincoln Center Theater's opulent 2015 revival of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical earned nine Tony nominations, winning four, including Best Revival of a Musical, Best Leading Actress for Kelli O'Hara and Best Featured Actress for Ruthie Ann Miles.

The Bartlett Sher-helmed revival showcased new choreography from Christopher Gattelli and made use of all of the space in the massive Vivian Beaumont-from the life-size ship to the magnificent palace. See Catherine Zuber's costumes and Michael Yeargan's sets up close, as O'Hara and Ken Watanabe wow with their performances as Mrs. Anna and the King during the London production.
Available on: PBS Passport and BroadwayHD

Red
John Logan's Tony-winning Best Play bowed on Broadway in 2010, starring Alfred Molina and Eddie Redmayne. More recently, Molina reprised his role opposite Alfred Enoch ( How to Get Away With Murder) for a limited run in 2019 at London's Wyndham Theatre, once again directed by Tony winner Michael Grandage. Molina plays renowned artist Mark Rothko, who takes on an assistant (in this fictionalization) to work on a commission for the Four Seasons restaurant. Red confronts the ever-present battle of art and commercialism and the gaps in philosophies between artistic generations.
Available on: PBS Passport and BroadwayHD
READ: Alfred Molina and Alfred Enoch Talk Bringing Red to the Big Screen
Much Ado About Nothing
The first-ever PBS broadcast of a Shakespeare in the Park Public Theater production aired in November 2019. Taped at the Delacorte Theatre, Much Ado, directed by Tony winner Kenny Leon, starred Tony nominee Danielle Brooks ( The Color Purple) as Beatrice. Set in modern-day Georgia, the production re-framed Shakespeare's language through a contemporary lens. Much Ado is, of course, one of the Bard's comedies (see: happy ending); Benedick and Beatrice are tricked into confessing their love for each other and Claudio is tricked into rejecting Hero, but Benedick and Beatrice team up to set things right.
Available on: PBS

Kinky Boots
It's a kinky revolution, courtesy of Tony Award-winning composer-lyricist Cyndi Lauper and Tony-nominated book writer Harvey Fierstein. Inspired by the non-musical movie, Kinky Boots came to Broadway in 2013. Lola and Charlie join forces to save the Price & Sons shoe factory and the feet of many a drag queen by entering the niche market of manufacturing kinky boots. But the story is merely a front for the important message of acceptance (self and otherwise).

This recording of the West End production, directed and choreographed by Tony winner Jerry Mitchell, stars Olivier Award winner Matt Henry as Lola and Oliver Award Killian Donnelly as Charlie.
Available on: PBS Passport and BroadwayHD

If I Forget
From the Tony-winning book writer of Dear Evan Hansen comes this stinging family drama, presented by Roundabout Theatre Company. Filmed Off-Broadway, this production of Steven Levenson's play stars Jeremy Shamos as Michael Fischer, a Jewish studies professor who writes a controversial book about the case for "forgetting" the Holocaust. When he and his sisters, played by Kate Walsh and Maria Dizzia, gather at home for their father's 75th birthday, emotions run high and Michael may not be able to come back from his hypothetical argument. Through sharp argument and empathetic dialogue, Levenson is able to raise a debate about the help and hindrances of clinging so desperately to our pasts.
Available on: BroadwayHD

Pipeline
A Pulitzer Prize finalist, Dominique Morisseau's play bowed Off-Broadway at Lincoln Center Theater. Omari, a black student at a predominantly white prep school, gets in trouble when he attacks his teacher; his mother Nya, a teacher at the local public school, fears her son will fall into the pipeline she desperately tried to help him circumvent. The play investigates our education structure, racism in the classroom, and what it means to feel righteous rage in a powerful can't-miss performance.
Available on: BroadwayHD

Macbeth
Broadcast as part of PBS' Great Performances in 2010, Patrick Stewart and Kate Fleetwood reprise their 2008 Tony-nominated performances in the Shakespeare classic, directed by Rupert Goold. This time, the Scottish play takes place in a nameless 20th-century netherworld.
Available on: Masterpiece on Amazon, iTunes and Amazon

Miss Saigon
Just as the original production catapulted Lea Salonga to well-deserved fame, so too did the revival of the Schönberg-Boublil musical for Eva Noblezada. The 25th anniversary production (a.k.a. the 2016 revival) began in London, starring Noblezada as Kim and Alistair Brammer as Chris. The tragic tale of star-crossed lovers who meet in Saigon during the Vietnam War, Chris is an American G.I. who falls for young Vietnamese woman Kim. When Saigon falls, Chris is airlifted out of the city, unable to find Kim, who is pregnant with his child.
Available on: Google Play and BroadwayHD

Before Women's History Month comes to a close, check out the offerings of female-driven stories, works by female writers and directors, and more from the Trailblazers section of BroadwayHD:
Shakespeare at the Donmar Warehouse
Tony-nominated director Phyllida Lloyd earned international acclaim for her all-female trilogy of productions of Shakespeare classics: Henry IV, Julius Caesar, and The Tempest. Donmar executive producer called the trilogy "a feminist mission, a social mission, an inclusivity mission, an education mission." Lloyd's daring conceptual direction of each play, combined with Harriet Walter's lead performances as Henry IV, Brutus, and Prospero, respectively, render the series a must-watch.
Available on: BroadwayHD

A Night With Janis Joplin
Written and directed by Randy Johnson, Janis Joplin is similar to Lady Day in that it unfolds as a single concert performance (this time set in 1970) to lay bare a greater truth about the artist, who passed away later that year. Mary Bridget Davies earned a Tony nomination for her performance in the title role. This recording was filmed at the Portland Center Stage in Oregon as a preservation of the show, Davies' performance, and Joplin's music,
Available on: BroadwayHD

Hetty Feather
The 2015 Olivier-nominated production played London's West End and starred BAFTA nominee Phoebe Thomas as Hetty Feather. Written by Emma Reeves with a score by Benji Bower and directed by Olivier nominee Sally Cookson, Hetty Feather follows the story of a young girl abandoned by her mother as an infant, who, after living in foster homes, returns to the hospital where her mom first left her.
Available on: BroadwayHD

Ernest Shackleton Loves Me
The new musical from Joe DePietro ( Memphis) and GrooveLily's Valerie Vigoda and Brendan Milburn played Second Stage's Tony Kiser Theatre-and this capture features an Off-Broadway performance from 2017. A sleep-deprived composer of video game music suddenly hears from Ernest Shackleton, the Antarctic explorer, when he travels across space and time. He shares his adventures with her in the best way she can understand: through video and song. Vigoda stars as the songwriter with Wade McCollum as Shackleton.
Available on: BroadwayHD

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26 More On Stage Plays and Musicals to Watch From Your Couch

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From The SpongeBob Musical to Nick Kroll and John Mulaney's Oh, Hello , from Lincoln Center Theater's The King & I revival to Audra McDonald in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill , here are 26 more captures of live performance to watch from home.

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Take a virtual cooking class from one of your favorite chefs.

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Bon Appétit! 12 Free Online Cooking Classes You Can Take Right Now

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Chefs and lifestyle experts from around the world are offering free online cooking and baking lessons to help you make the most of your time at home.

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These days, anxiety, which we already know is contagious, seems to be spreading like wildfire. And if you've ever struggled with anxiety, you might also know it's not just in your brain, but at its worst permeates your entire body as well. As a clinician, I've even encountered cases of people breaking out in hives with anxiety, in addition to the sweats, chills, shakes, shortness of breath, and pounding heart that many of us associate with anxiety. What's more, many of these signs of anxiety can also look like sickness, and it is often hard to parse what's what, especially when many of us are afraid of becoming sick ourselves.

Many signs of anxiety can also look like sickness, and it is often hard to parse what's what, especially when many of us are afraid of becoming sick ourselves.

This is where practices like the body scan can help-is that tight chest a symptom of serious illness, or is it more likely anxiety? Anxiety usually passes pretty quickly, while symptoms of illness can last for days. In shorter moments in the day, we might not have the time away from family or work for a forty-minute body scan, or even if we had time, anxiety can really cut into our ability to pay attention. A number of years ago I heard a great acronym from a colleague that we can use for a mini body scan or relaxation practice when we are feeling flooded with strong emotions, anxiety, anger, or anything else setting off our limbic alarm system.

The practice is as simple as the acronym. "The CALM Reminder" helps us check into and then relax four big zones of our body (C-Chest, A-Arms, L-Legs, M-Mouth). Those four zones offer great information about our emotional state. What's more, when we relax our body zone by zone, it becomes physiologically almost impossible to also be stressed, anxious, angry, or otherwise overwhelmed with difficult emotions.

A Body Scan Practice: The Calm Reminder

This practice can expand or contract depending on the amount of time and attention you have-from just a few minutes, up to ten or fifteen. Start by finding a comfortable position to stand, sit or lie down. Allow your eyes to close if you feel comfortable. Begin with a few expanded breaths, allowing your body to relax as you extend the out-breath.

C-Chest

After a few breaths, bring your awareness to your chest and torso area. First scan your chest, opening and lifting it, creating enough room for your lungs and belly to fully expand. Bring your awareness to any sensations there.

Is your breath shallow and short, or slow and even? As you regulate your breath, you regulate your body and brain, and in turn your emotions, impulses, and attention. Is your heart beating fast or slow? Is there any tightness or tension in your chest?

Allow your breath to expand your chest, releasing any tension there. Lastly, tense all the muscles throughout your chest and torso, hold for a count of three as you notice what tension feels like, then allow your muscles to relax and feel the tension flow away and relaxation flow in with the next few breaths

A-Arms

Shift your awareness now into your arms, from your shoulders down to your fingers. Lift and drop your shoulders once and let your arms fall to your sides or into your lap. Now scan your awareness upward from your hands through the forearms and upper arms.

Are they shaking or still? Can you just allow them to settle if they are shaking? Are they tensed partly into fists? If so, just release that tension. Are your hands sweaty or clammy?
Scan up your arms to your shoulders, continuing to notice any other sensations that might give you a clue as to your emotional state.

Lastly, squeeze your fists, tense your arms all the way up to your shoulders and hold for three breaths, feeling the tension, and then just release the physical and emotional tension, and let your arms relax completely. Take three more breaths, enjoying the relaxation you feel in your arms.

L-Legs

On the next breath, direct your attention down to your legs, from your hips down through your toes, allowing your attention and breath to flow through your thighs, calves, and feet. Often our legs can be shaking with anxiety, or hold tension and stress. Notice if your legs are communicating anything in this moment, and just allow them to become still if they are.

Then, gently begin to squeeze the muscles in your feet, up through your legs and around your waist, holding that tension for three breaths, noting the sensations, and then release. Take three more breaths as you feel the tension flowing out of your legs.

M-Mouth

Lastly, shift your awareness to your mouth and jaw, a place where many of us hold tension and clench our muscles without realizing it.

What expression is your mouth communicating inwardly and outwardly- stress, anxiety, anger? Notice this and any other sensations in your mouth and even the rest of your head and neck. Now clench your mouth and other muscles around it, holding for three breaths and release.

As you let go of the tension, allow your mouth to relax into a small smile to yourself and to the world around you. Take a few more moments to enjoy the sensations of relaxation and smiling.

As you come to the end of your practice, you might take time to reflect on where in your body you tend to hold emotions and tension, and adjust or breathe into those areas before finishing your practice. Remember too that at any point in your busy day you might choose to check in with your body and relax yourself. Perhaps before or during tense moments at work, after you read the news, with a partner or your family, or even before bed, you can CALM yourself down with this simple acronym.

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A Quick, Calming Body Scan to Check in With Yourself - Mindful

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Many signs of anxiety can also look like sickness, and it's hard to parse what's what. Use this fast and easy tool to ground yourself several times a day.

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credit: https://www.facebook.com/stepmomming/

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NASA.gov brings you the latest images, videos and news from America's space agency. Get the latest updates on NASA missions, watch NASA TV live, and learn about our quest to reveal the unknown and benefit all humankind.

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10 stretches that can feel great after a day of zooming and working from home.

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Free for educators! They have breathing, meditation and sleep stories (some even by celebrities like Matthew McConaughey)

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Calm is the #1 app for sleep and meditation. Join the millions experiencing better sleep, lower stress, and less anxiety.

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Try a new book:
https://www.bookofthemonth.com/

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credit: https://www.facebook.com/stepmomming/

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Grab family and friends and "meet up" for a virtual paint class with a local artist.

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Christina Wilson Art. 11,270 likes · 153 talking about this. Contemporary Landscape Artist & Instructor of Studio Art at Alaska Pacific University.

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We did not plan for or expect this pandemic. Be kind to yourself. Choose a guided meditation or exercise (e.g., journaling, reflecting) to practice self-compassion.

https://self-compassion.org/category/exercises/

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Log into Facebook to start sharing and connecting with your friends, family, and people you know.

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Teleparty | Watch together on Netflix, Youtube, HBO Max + more

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Teleparty (formerly Netflix Party) lets you watch TV together with your friends. Have a watch party on Netflix,Youtube,Disney Plus,Hulu,HBO,and Amazon Prime!

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Pick a class and have a dance party in your living room to get some great cardio and positive energy.

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"hip hop workout" "fun dance workout" "fun fitness" "dance workout" "305 fitness"

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Life's too short to count calories. 305 Fitness makes working out FUN! 305 is a dance workout with IRL classes in NYC, DC, Miami and LA. Check out #305AtHome for hundreds on-demand workout videos. 305 also has #305certified instructors teaching all over the world!

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Being kind towards others is another way to be kind toward ourselves. This website has ideas for random acts of kindness while maintaining physical distancing.

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Coronavirus: Mental Health in the Pandemic Study

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The Mental Health Foundation is leading an ongoing, UK-wide, repeated cross-sectional study of how the pandemic is affecting people's mental health.

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10 Family Card Games That Support Early Math Skills - DREME

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Family card games are an inexpensive way to have fun with children while learning important math concepts. Play these 10 card games designed to reinforce and build upon your child’s math skills—all you need is a deck of playing cards!

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https://www.orangetheory.com/en-us/athome/

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Take a free Survey to find out your Character Strengths. https://www.viacharacter.org/

Research shows that when we find new ways to intentionally use our top 4-5 strengths, it can improve our happiness and our sense of work satisfaction.

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Pick a time of the day and set a occurring alarm on your phone. Stop what you're doing and take 5 deep breathes. I recommend picking a time for a mid-day reset.

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Work from Home tips, but some are also good for the office!

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Work from Home tips, but some are also good for the office!

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Wake up and get ready for the day. Get dressed and out of your pajamas - wear something you feel good in.

Set a schedule and stick to it.

Try and set a time to get outside (even if it's just opening a window)

Incorporate movement breaks: walk around the house, stretch, play with kids, anything to get away from the screen for 5-10 minutes.

Set boundaries with your time. Have a "work" space and use it only during work hours.

Set attainable expectations. Some people take months to get in the flow of working from home. Practice self-kindness

Try and work in terms of tasks rather than time. Start your morning by writing down your most important task for the day. Post it somewhere that you can see it.

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There are lots of fun math activities for families to do together that don't require special materials. In fact, with just a few sheets of paper, families can find fun ways to explore math ideas and problem solving!

Why Do Math with Paper?

Kids can learn a lot about math at home through hands-on, playful activities that inspire conversations about numbers, shapes, and spatial relations.

The activities outlined below introduce and reinforce math concepts while encouraging creativity. They are also easy to adapt for different ages and may be done with multiple kids at once. Because families can do them together, it's a great opportunity to talk about math.

Materials

Many of these activities can be done with whatever paper is available-even scrap paper, newspapers, or magazine pages would work. Scissors, hole punchers, and pencils or markers will be helpful, too.

Math with Paper Activities
Origami
Origami is great for thinking about shapes and ideas of space and place. The same sheet of paper can look completely different depending on where and how it gets folded.

A quick search online will lead you to lots of origami instructions. Here are some origami projects to get you started:
Paper Wizard
Mental imagery-the ability to imagine what a shape looks like or to move objects around in your mind-is an important part of math. This activity helps children practice thinking about spatial information and imagining how space can be transformed without actually seeing it.
Even More Ideas
There are lots of ways to explore math with paper! Check out our printable Guide to Math with Paper for ways to keep going and to support children's math thinking during all of these activities. You can also get creative and think of your own ways to do math with paper.

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Math with Paper: Fold Some Math into Your Day! - DREME

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Many fun math games for families can be done with materials you probably have at home already, such as scrap paper. Learn how to create origami shapes, be a paper math wizard, and support children's learning with these activities.

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Have a library card? Access e-books and audio books through the Libby app

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Download the Libby App: ebooks & audiobooks FREE from your library

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Bring the library to you! Free digital books, magazines and more! Available for iOS and Android devices.

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Enjoy free access to this collection of on-demand classes to keep your practice moving-wherever you are. Click any class below to get started.

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Everyday day for 2 weeks write down 3 good things from the day. Write them throughout the day, right before bed, with your child, or share them with a friend  - whatever works best for you. This has been found to improve your happiness even 6 months later.

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The Three Good Things (TGT) is a simple but powerful exercise to boost our daily happiness. It only takes three minutes.

It comes from positive psychology-the science that explores the healthy side of mental health, like our psychological strengths, eudaimonia, and how we can flourish. By the way, experts refer to happiness as positive affect or subjective well-being (SWB).

TGT has been scientifically proven to raise our happiness level.

This short and easy guide to the Three Good Things (TGT) will tell you how to practice it, overcome its hurdles, and maximize its benefits, with examples and research.

Introducing Three Good Things (TGT)

Three Good Things (TGT) is a journaling activity that urges you to focus on 3 positive events in your day.

Results in about a week:

More gratefulness, optimism, self-compassion, and happiness.

Less negativity bias in noticing/recalling events.

How to do the Three Good Things (TGT)?

Here's how to practice the Three Good Things (TGT), a proven happiness-boosting exercise:

Step 1. Look back upon your day.

As you finish your day and prepare to go to bed, sit down on your bed or a chair nearby.

Keep a notepad and pen ready. Close your eyes and look back on your day.

Recall the things you did and things that happened during the day.

Problems in Step 1: Humans are born with a negative focus bias. So, when you reflect on your day, your mind veers toward negative things - a little accident, an unwanted event, a rude remark, or a negativity-spouting person.

Solution: Let the thoughts about any negative event pass without dwelling on it. Gently redirect your attention to the next experience.

Step 2. Think of 3 good things that happened.

Ask yourself what went well today.

Pick out three positive highlights of your day.

Make sure these are positive things, not the least negative ones.

Problems in Step 2: Your negative bias may make it difficult to sift three positive things in a routine day.

Solution: Take a few deep breaths and release your thoughts about the negative events. Note down a positive event as it comes to your mind.

Step 3. Write down the good things.

Once you find three events that made you smile and feel happy, write them down.

Even if they were small events, as long as they were positive, write them down. I suggest you use a paper journal and a pen. Avoid writing on your mobile or a digital journal.

Problems in Step 3: The act of physically writing down the three good things can feel tedious or like an unnecessary chore, making you rush through this step.

Solution: Reframe writing as a chance to savor and expand upon the positive experiences, rather than just a rote task. Encourage yourself to take your time, and add a few descriptive details about why each good thing mattered.

Step 4. Reflect on the good things.

Close your eyes and spend 15 to 20 seconds reflecting on each event.

Visualize the event in detail, and think about what made it memorable.

Think about how it was different, why it helped you, and how it was meaningful.

Problems in Step 4: Your mind may try to rush you through the reflection step, not allowing enough time to savor and internalize the positive experiences.

Solution: Take a few deep breaths to center yourself. Then, as you reflect on each good thing, silently affirm to yourself, "This moment brought me joy/peace/gratitude." Allow yourself to feel the positive emotions associated with each experience.
That's all there is to it. That is the shortest guide to TGT. Take up this positive challenge for your greater good-I urge you.
The picture-quote version below is for those who want it even simpler:

Think of 3 things that went well during the day. Write them down. Reflect on them. See your happiness rise.

How frequently to do the TGT?

Do the 3 good things in life exercise for a week initially.

Thereafter, do it weekly as long as you want, but do it for at least six weeks.

The key is to build in a simple, sustainable ritual that enables genuine reflection, rather than a rigid structure that may feel burdensome.

What are some themes of TGT?

Five themes you could explore by asking yourself:

1. What one way I made the most meaningful use of my time today?

2. What one helpful support did I have from my relationships today?

3. What one good thing happened at my work/office/college today?

4. What one good act of generosity or kindness did I do today?

5. What one thing brought a smile to my heart today?

3 Good Things Examples

Stuck still about how to do it? Take a look at these examples to help you:

A great feeling of love you felt when someone checked to find out how you were doing.

It could be a token of appreciation someone gave you at your workplace. Or good feedback from a customer.

It could be a simple, enjoyable occasion, such as a shared time of conversation and laughter with your family during supper.

It may be a fruitful discussion on a sensitive topic (like relationship boundaries or personal space) you had with your children, parents, spouse, friends, or online connections.

A joyful moment when you stopped to see a fabulous flower in bloom or a few cute puppies playing in abandon.

It could be you looking at some old pictures of your friends and being flooded with positive thoughts and memories about them.

Don't limit yourself to the above. Explore your possibilities. Many positive moments are waiting for you; seek them out.

Even if you find it difficult to bring up some good things at first, keep a glass-half-full attitude. Let's find out how you can get them sooner.

Are there any rules for practicing TGT?
Rules of TGT: Writing, Reflecting, Timing.
The TGT practice needs three conditions to work well:

1. Writing down is vital as it helps you to focus on the events in a properly structured way.

2. Reflecting on what you did is essential, as it adds to your sense of control and perceived well-being.

3. Timing is significant. Research says to get good results, do it daily for a week (or once a week for six weeks).

The real task is to approach your TGT practice sincerely and consistently. No one is judging you for it, and you too shouldn't judge yourself for the low positivity in your days.

It is a happiness-boosting exercise. So, if it feels like an unhappy, tedious task you must endure every day, then it's okay not to do it every day.
Do it for one week, then stop.
If you feel like it, come back to it for another week sometime later. Or do it specifically on days that had extraordinary positive events.

Why is TGT difficult at first?

Humanity evolved with a negative bias, and survival meant that our brains constantly checked for dangers around us. So, it is tough to spot 3 good things at the start.

Martin Seligman, fondly called the Father of Modern Positive Psychology, explains it:

"For sound evolutionary reasons, most of us are not nearly as good at dwelling on good events as we are at analyzing bad events. Those of our ancestors who spent a lot of time basking in the sunshine of good events, when they should have been preparing for disaster, did not survive the Ice Age. So, overcoming our brains' natural catastrophic bent, we need to work on and practice this skill of thinking about what went well."

Solution: Remind yourself that your 3 good things don't have to be special or spectacular. Your good things need not be winning a championship, grabbing a promotion, or getting engaged to your long-lost-found-again love.
Even finding marriage-heaven, whatever that means. Or something as earthshaking as escaping a prison sentence, though that counts.
Any three simple things that you are thankful for and are glad they happened, will count. Eventually, with a little practice, you will see good things light up like tiny sparkles.

What Are The Happiness Benefits of TGT?
Three Good Things (TGT) practitioners had their happiness levels rise by 2% after one week, 5% in one month, and 9% in six months.
Sheldon and Lyubomirsky investigated the effects of three good things in 2004, and Seligman, Steen, Park, and Peterson in 2005.

Sheldon and Lyubomirsky (2004):

At the one-month follow-up, participants in this exercise were happier and less depressed than they had been at baseline, and they stayed happier and less depressed at the three-month and six-month follow-ups.

As we expected, our simple exercise was effective in producing higher levels of thankfulness and appreciation. More important, those participants who counted their blessings on a regular basis became happier as a result.

Compared with a control group (i.e., people who did not practice TGT), the gratitude group reported significantly bigger increases in their happiness levels from before to after the intervention. Interestingly, this effect was observed only for those who expressed gratitude every Sunday night.

In 2009, Sin & Lyubomirsky combed through 51 studies on positive psychology interventions (like being asked to count their blessings), and found that people became noticeably happier when they were given individual positive interventions.

'What Went Well' in Positive Psychology?

Martin Seligman, widely known as the Father of Positive Psychology, explains the "What-Went-Well" happiness intervention in this video:

How To Practice TGT by Martin Seligman
Transcript of the video (slightly edited for ease of reading): The Three Good Things exercise has you write down for a week, before you go to sleep, three things that went well today, and then reflect on why they went well. It works because it changes your focus from the things that go wrong in life to the things that you might take for granted that go well. And focusing your attention on things that go well breaks up depression and increases happiness. I don't need to recommend it beyond a week, typically for three good things, because when you do this, you'll find you like it so much. Most people just keep doing it. We ask people to write down the causes because we want people to reflect on and immerse themselves in the good events.
Final Words

TGT is simply finding and writing down three things that went well each day.
Try the TGT tonight-it may be the best 3 minutes of your day!
√ Also Read: Mindfulness For Beginners: 7-Step Guide

√ Please spread the word if you found this helpful.

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Shortest Guide To Three Good Things (TGT) Or What Went Well

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The Three Good Things or What-Went-Well Exercise is a gratitude journal exercise you adopt as a daily habit to increase your happiness. Once you start the practice of Three Good Things, your happiness, hope, and optimism levels rise.

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Free educator accounts! Pick an area you want to focus on and try out a meditation.

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Improving the health and happiness of the world, one educator at a time.

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Cooking together can be a fun (and delicious!) activity for families with young children. It can also be an opportunity to explore important early math concepts. Whether counting the number of strawberries for a fruit smoothie or guessing the number of pancakes on a plate, time spent cooking together can go a long way to promoting children's math learning.

How Can Family Cooking Time Support Early Math Learning?

Our research team spent the last year exploring how family cooking time can be used to support early math learning. We wanted to understand whether and how often families talk about math as part of their everyday cooking routine, what math topics they discuss, and whether there are ways to encourage even more conversations around math.

We recruited more than 50 preschool families from different ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds and gave them cookbooks full of easy, kid-friendly recipes. Check out some of the most popular recipes on the DREME Family Math website.

Along with the cookbooks, half of the families also received tips for talking about math while cooking with young children. The tips focused on numbers and counting, because research has shown that understanding these concepts can predict later academic success. [1] [2]

Families followed the recipes and tips at home, and we asked that they record the time spent cooking together. The recordings shed light on the ways in which families talk about numbers in the kitchen, and how suggestions for talking about early math could help shape the conversation.

Families Enjoy Cooking Together

One of the most important findings from the recordings-and from families' own feedback-is that families enjoyed making the recipes together!

Another important finding is that all of the families, regardless of whether they received the tip sheet, spent some time talking with their children about early math. However, families who received the cookbooks with tip sheets talked about the key counting concepts in our tips more than twice as much as families who did not receive the tips.

Moreover, the conversations among families who received the tip sheet focused on the kinds of concepts that support math learning beyond early childhood. For example, when children are learning to count how many pieces of food there are all together, they need to learn that the last number they count is in fact the total number of pieces. Families who received the tips helped their children to understand this concept more often than families who didn't receive the tips.

When Parents Talk About Math, Kids Start Talking About Math

We found that the more parents talked about numbers and specific counting concepts-using the suggestions in the tip sheet as a guide-the more their children began to talk about math on their own, without prompting from parents. For example, after parents asked questions about counting, their children often counted the ingredients again later in the interaction, without being asked to do so.

Talking About Math Doesn't Add Extra Cooking Time

Because all families are busy, we wanted to understand whether talking about numbers would add significant cooking time. We found that families who received the tips for talking about math spent the same amount of time making the recipes as those who did not receive the tips.

Cooking and Learning Together: Let's Make a Fruit Smoothie!

One of the most-enjoyed recipes from the cookbook was the berry smoothie. In this recipe, we use strawberries and blueberries, but families can use their favorite fruits or whatever fruit is on hand. Simply cut the fruit into bite-sized pieces for children to practice counting. Here are some suggestions for talking about math while following the berry smoothie recipe:

1. Put a few strawberries in front of the child and ask them to count the pieces one by one before putting them in a measuring cup.

2. After the child counts the strawberries, ask, "How many are there in all?"

3. Try also counting some blueberries or another favorite fruit one by one and ask how many there are all together.

4. If the child easily counts the pieces, try a larger number. If the child struggles to count the pieces, stick with a smaller number until they grow more comfortable with counting.

5. Practice simple addition by making a pile of two strawberries and a pile of three strawberries. Ask, "How many strawberries do we have in all?"

Tips for Talking About Math While Cooking with Young Children

There are easy ways that families can practice talking about math while cooking any meal together. Families can use our recipes or their own favorites-the tips for talking about math work across any meal or recipe.

Count ingredients one by one. Start with a small number (three or four) and ask children to count the number of pieces of food, using a finger to point to each piece. Children often don't realize that each piece only gets counted once, or they try to count too quickly and skip numbers. Help them to keep track by moving the already counted pieces into a new pile.

Count the total number of ingredients. Ask children to count two, three, or four pieces of food and then say how many pieces there are all together. After they finish counting, ask, "How many do we have in all?" Or simply, "How many?" Move up to larger numbers as the child grows more comfortable with counting.

Guess which pile has more ingredients. Create two small piles of food and ask children which one has more in it. Then have them count the number of pieces in each pile to see if they are correct. Try asking them which pile has fewer pieces-something that many children find more challenging than estimating which pile has more.

Add or take away ingredients. After young children are able to correctly count the total number of pieces, they can be asked to do simple addition and subtraction. Add a piece of food to the pile and ask, "Now how many do we have?" Or take one piece away and ask, "How many do we have left?" Many children will need to count all of the pieces again in order to get the answer. As children grow more comfortable, families can try adding or taking away more than one piece of food at a time.

Easy Recipes That Kids Can Help Make

Talking about math while cooking together can increase the likelihood that children will talk and think about numbers on their own, without taking a lot of extra time for busy families. Here are recipes and tips to engage families around math learning while cooking together.

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Easy Recipes That Will Get Your Family Talking About Math - DREME

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Cooking together can increase the likelihood that young children will talk and think about early math on their own, without taking a lot of extra time for busy families. We offer easy recipes that children can help make and suggestions for talking about math while families cook together.

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Write a gratitude letter to someone important to you. You can't deliver it in person now but I encourage you to video chat and read your letter.

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Time Required

Budget about 10 minutes for writing the letter and at least 30 minutes for the visit, if you choose to deliver your letter in person.

How to Do It

Call to mind someone who did something for you for which you are extremely grateful but to whom you never expressed your deep gratitude. This could be a relative, friend, teacher, or colleague. Try to pick someone who is still alive and could meet you face-to-face in the next week. It may be most helpful to select a person or act that you haven't thought about for a while-something that isn't always on your mind.

Now, write a letter to one of these people, guided by the following steps.

Write as though you are addressing this person directly ("Dear ______").

Don't worry about grammar or spelling.

Describe in specific terms what this person did, why you are grateful to this person, and how this person's behavior affected your life. Try to be as concrete as possible.

Describe what you are doing in your life now and how you often remember their efforts.

Try to keep your letter to roughly one page (around 300 words).

Next, you should try if at all possible to deliver your letter in person, following these steps:

Plan a visit with the recipient. Let that person know you'd like to see them and have something special to share, but don't reveal the exact purpose of the meeting.

When you meet, let the person know that you are grateful to them and would like to read a letter expressing your gratitude; ask that they refrain from interrupting until you're done.

Take your time reading the letter. While you read, pay attention to their reaction as well as your own.

After you have read the letter, be receptive to their reaction and discuss your feelings together.

Remember to give the letter to the person when you leave.

If physical distance keeps you from making a visit, you may choose to arrange a phone or video chat.

Why You Should Try It

Feeling gratitude can improve your health and happiness; expressing gratitude also strengthens relationships. Yet sometimes expressions of thanks can be fleeting and superficial. This exercise encourages you to express gratitude in a thoughtful, deliberate way by writing-and, ideally, delivering-a letter of gratitude to a person you have never properly thanked.

Why It Works

The letter affirms positive things in your life and reminds you how others have cared for you-life seems less bleak and lonely if someone has taken such a supportive interest in us. Visiting the giver allows you to strengthen your connection with them and remember how others value you as an individual.

Evidence That It Works

Seligman, M. E., Steen, T. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive psychology progress: empirical validation of interventions. American Psychologist, 60(5), 410.

When researchers tested five different exercises, writing and delivering a Gratitude Letter showed the greatest benefit to people's happiness one month later; however, six months after, their happiness had dropped back down to where it was before. This is why some researchers suggest doing this exercise once every six weeks or so. Participants in this study were largely white, middle-aged adults with college degrees.

Froh, J. J., Kashdan, T. B., Ozimkowski, K. M., & Miller, N. (2009). Who benefits the most from a gratitude intervention in children and adolescents? Examining positive affect as a moderator. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 4(5), 408-22.

Adolescents who often don't experience positive emotions showed a significant boost in positive emotions two months after writing and delivering a Gratitude Letter. Nearly 70% of the adolescents in this study were Caucasian, with the rest identifying as Asian American, African American, Hispanic, or "other."

Research suggests that while there are benefits simply to writing the letter, you reap significantly greater benefits from delivering and reading it in person.
Who Has Tried The Practice?
Additional research has engaged members of other groups:

More research is needed to explore whether, and how, the impact of this practice extends to other groups and cultures.

Keep in Mind

In different studies, participants have taken as little as 5 minutes or as long as 30 minutes to write their letters; spending more time to deepen and enrich the practice could be a good thing, but you can also reap benefits from a short practice.

Evidence from cross-cultural research suggests that writing Gratitude Letters may be less beneficial for people from collectivist cultures, or cultures that prioritize the needs of the group over the needs of each individual:

South Koreans experienced smaller improvements in well-being from writing a Gratitude Letter than Americans.

Similarly, Asian Americans who wrote Gratitude Letters didn't see as big of a reduction in negative emotions as their Anglo American counterparts.

Indian adults felt more guilty and indebted after writing Gratitude Letters than white American, Asian American, and Taiwanese adults.

This may be because Western and non-Western countries have different views on social responsibility and emotions. Fostering gratitude towards others may be more rewarding for people in individualistic, Western societies because these cultures tend to emphasize personal independence and view gratitude as a positive emotion. People in collectivistic, non-Western societies tend to believe that everyone has a responsibility toward each other, so feelings of gratitude may come with worries about their own obligations to others or fears of being a burden.

Additionally, it may be possible to adapt this exercise for different religious groups. For example, Muslim college students who centered their Gratitude Letters around Allah felt greater happiness than those who wrote secular Gratitude Letters.

References

Al-Seheel, A., & Noor, N. M. (2016). Effects of an Islamic-based gratitude strategy on Muslim students' level of happiness. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 19(7), 686-703.

Boehm, J. K., Lyubomirsky, S., & Sheldon, K. M. (2011). A longitudinal experimental study comparing the effectiveness of happiness-enhancing strategies in Anglo Americans and Asian Americans. Cognition and Emotion, 25(7), 1263-1272.

Fritz, M. M., Armenta, C. N., Walsh, L. C., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2019). Gratitude facilitates healthy eating behavior in adolescents and young adults. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 81, 4-14.

Khanna, P., & Singh, K. (2019). Do all positive psychology exercises work for everyone? Replication of seligman et al.'s (2005) interventions among adolescents. Psychological Studies, 64(1), 1-10.

Layous, K., Lee, H., Choi, I., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2013). Culture matters when designing a successful happiness-increasing activity: A comparison of the United States and South Korea. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 44(8), 1294-1303.

Shin, L. J., Armenta, C. N., Kamble, S. V., Chang, S., Wu, H., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2020). Gratitude in collectivist and individualist cultures. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 5, 598-604.

Titova, L., Wagstaff, A. E., & Parks, A. C. (2017). Disentangling the effects of gratitude and optimism: A cross-cultural investigation. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 48(5), 754-770.

Writing and delivering a Gratitude Letter is a powerful way to connect with those who have helped you. Do you have an attitude of gratitude? Take our Gratitude quiz to find out:

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Gratitude Letter (Greater Good in Action)

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Write a letter expressing thanks, and deliver it in person.

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Meditations for articles for all adults (including tips for parents)