Self-care resources during Covid-19
It can be incredibly difficult to prioritise and care for ourselves in day-to-day life. During a crisis, like the one we are currently living through, this can be even harder.
Below is a range of different resources, from mindfulness to stretching, breathing to reading, watching to listening. Whether you have 5 minutes or 50, these resources have been really useful for some of us, and we hope they will feel helpful in some small way for you too!
Mindfulness
Take a Deep Breath, Calm: A collection of meditations, music, sleep stories, soundscapes, stretches, and other resources.
Weathering the Storm, Headspace: Free guided meditations for relieving stress, walking at home, and for when you’re feeling overwhelmed.
Insight Timer: A free library of meditations, from sleep to stress, anxiety to music, with meditations for children and young people.
Guided Relaxation, Harcombe House: A guided meditation from The Fire Fighters Charity, alongside soothing visuals of Harcombe House.
Stretching and your body
Yoga for Uncertain Times playlist, by Yoga with Adriene: A YouTube playlist of different yoga tutorials. Featuring yoga for insecurity, mood swings, anger, stuckness, stress relief and management, and many more (varying lengths, video here is 20mins, 42secs).
Day 8: Heal, Yoga with Adrienne: A particularly loving and gentle yoga video from Adrienne (26mins, 28secs).
Stretches for Back Pain Relief: A 20-minute routine to help stretch your back, neck and shoulders (18mins, 46secs).
Ganesha Mantra: Om Gam Ganapataye Namaha mantra (5mins, 28secs).
Yoga at Your Desk, by Yoga with Adriene: A quick 5-minute routine if you are working at a desk or a table and feel you need some easy stretches (6mins, 23secs).
10,000 Indoor Step Challenge, with Joanna Soh: A 30-minute indoor step / walking workout (32mins, 23secs).
Joyn Yoga & Meditation: A free collection of fat-positive and accessible yoga and meditation videos (varying lengths).
Watching
Monterey Aquarium Live Cams: Ten different live cams from the Monterey Aquarium in California from jellyfish to penguins, the open sea and the kelp forest! See below for a 5-minute look at the jelly cam.
Museum Virtual Tours: From the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul to the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, this list of 12 museums you can tour online for free is a useful resource for time alone or with children.
Kitten Rescue Cam: Watch a private room at Kitten Rescue Sanctuary in Los Angeles!
Mary Oliver reads her poem, Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are,
no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Listening
Audible Free Children’s Stories: A free Audible library of stories for small children, teenagers, and some for adults too (varying lengths).
Unlocking Us, a podcast by Brene Brown: Brene’s first episode of her new podcast is about anxiety, calm and under / over functioning (35mins).
Candle Hour, Nocturne: A podcast about switching off, for however long we can, for Candle Hour. A text version of Candle Hour is available here. (27mins, 21secs).
Goodnight with Dolly: Imagination Library bedtime stories, read by Dolly Parton.
The Art of Us: Love, Loss, Loneliness, and a Pinch of Humor Under Lockdown: 4 YouTube Videos that can be listened to as podcasts by psychotherapist Esther Perel. She is famous for writing Mating in Captivity and her podcast where she records a 1-hour therapy with couples. (They are also amazing).
Workshop 1: How to adjust to your entire relational world being confined to one space – Part 1
Workshop 2: How to adjust to your entire relational world being confined to one space – Part 2
^ The first two workshops look at working ‘with home’ e.g. navigating space, boundaries, heightened trauma responses, capacity for care and how we can support each other in these things.
Workshop 3: How to live with prolonged uncertainty and anticipatory grief
Workshop 4: Is there room for pleasure in the midst of a crisis?
Reading
Do What You Want Zine: A one-off online-version of Do What You Want zine edited by Ruby Tandoh and Leah Pritchard, all about mental well-being.
How to Manage Coronavirus Anxiety, The Guardian: A mid-length piece on adopting strategies to control our inevitable anxiety at this time.
LGBTQ+ Guide to Self-Isolation: A 32-page PDF focusing on mental, physical, and emotional health and well-being for LGBTQ+ people in isolation.
Coronavirus and your well-being, Mind: A huge list of different resources from Mind, from practical advice and support services to coping strategies and tips on taking care of your well-being.
Looking for a distraction? 25 Guardian Long Reads: 25 Guardian Long Reads, in one place, if you have the space and time to read something not about Covid-19.
Doing
Jo Bodley: A knitting and crochet blog with designs to make finger puppets, bags, patterns, scarves and loads more.
Meet the Animal: If you have an AR-enabled phone you can bring up an animal right in your own home. There’s a full list of animals it works for here and it includes a tiger, a wolf and a giant panda!