Mindfulness During this Pandemic – Maintaining Your Mental and Physical Health
Mindfulness during this pandemic
- Avoid denial of your emotions, accept them and express them! It is OK to vent, sometimes. During a crisis, we can get comfort in sharing our fears and receiving calming and objective feedback from others. Sharing feelings with others, just the act of verbalizing those feelings will reduce their intensity and the others will feel supportive. Just don’t overdo it.
- Group Mindfulness Therapy is excellent for reducing stress and depression, if you have no access to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
- Help those in need, be supportive! When we are empathetic and think of others, we often find that we stop worrying about ourselves. We need to be altruistic at this time and think of those vulnerable in our society.
- Meditate! Studies found that meditating for just 10 minutes a day is enough to see significant results. As long as its done consistently, sitting still and breathing deeply for just 10 minutes can help you concentrate better throughout the day. According to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, meditation can help reduce stress, chronic pain (such as headaches), and blood pressure, as well as help you quit smoking and better navigate a variety of mental health conditions. (Mindfulness during this pandemic)
But meditation is not easy for beginners, right? Here, you can find some help. Learning to meditate is like learning any other skill. If you do not how to start, you can use an app. Headspace is one of the most well-known meditation apps out there. Calm is an app that provides guided sessions ranging in time from 3 to 25 minutes. And with topics from calming anxiety to gratitude to mindfulness at work—as well as sleep sounds, nature sounds, and breathing exercises—you can really choose your focus.
- Use this isolation time to learn more about yourself; for some, this pause on the world as we know it may allow for exploring the possibility of new directions when we emerge from the other side of this; solitude allows room for self-care practices: creating healthy habits, exercise, pampering yourself, doing a mini-declutter like recycling three things from your wardrobe that you don’t love or regularly wear, writing out your thoughts, or taking a home spa;
- Dance! Dance: is a proven depression fighter and Dance Movement Therapy (DMT) was found to be an effective therapy for the treatment of adults with depression, so it will help you prevent or ease your negative emotions, for sure. Any kind of physical movement is a great way of releasing the stress response; do some stretching, yoga or some other form of mindful movement; or put some uplifting music and dance around the house for a few minutes
- Breathe! Some breathing exercises will help you with the physical sensations of fear and anxiety. Try the following: take three long, slow deep breaths; impose a rhythm on your breathing like a 4-2-6 rhythm – e.g. breathe for 4 counts, hold your breath for 2 counts, and breathe out for 6 counts.
- Do some grounding techniques: connect to what is happening in this moment right now more consciously engaging your senses: splash cold water on your face, take a hot (or cold) shower or alternative ones, cuddle your pet, enjoy a cup of tea – really pay attention to aromas and tastes or do one of the following short guided grounding exercises from the ‘Stress Management’ program in the Smiling Mind App.
Mindfulness during this pandemic
There are also digital support groups that can help you with the specific challenges that COVID-19 brings, you can find them here. If you, or someone you care about, are feeling overwhelmed with emotions like sadness, depression, or anxiety, or feel like you want to harm yourself or others, Call the Disaster Distress Helpline.
