Words for Wellbeing Term One, 2022
Welcome to Words for Wellbeing
To our Emmanuel College Community,
Welcome to the new quarterly format of Words for Wellbeing, delivered to your inbox in the final week of each term for 2022.
You'll notice the new format includes all six components of the Fit4Life Framework: Social; Mental; Cultural; Cognitive; Physical; and, Spiritual.
Within each section, you'll discover articles, self-help tools and resources.
At the end of the newsletter, you'll find a recently updated list of school and external services and contacts for your information.
As always, if you need any assistance with your social, emotional learning, don't hesitate to reach out to us - your Fit4Life Wellbeing team.
We warmly welcome Megan Collins, Student Wellbeing Assessment & Referral Worker, to our team this year.
Social
Developing the skills to navigate social connections and relationships is a significant part of adolescent development. In this section you will find a selection of resources not only to support young people throughout this stage of life, but that may assist all of us in the varied relationships within our lives.
Teen Girls Sexy TikTok Videos Take a Mental Health Toll - The Wall Street Journal
A Wall Street Journal investigation found that TikTok needs only one piece of information to figure out what you want: the amount of time you linger over a piece of content. Every second you hesitate or re-watch, the app is tracking you. Click the image or link below to read more.
What is Social Anxiety?
The Centre for Clinical Interventions is a wonderful website filled with self-help resources for a variety of life's problems. Here is one example, a fact sheet on Social Anxiety. Why not search the website yourself. You never know what you may find.
Here's How to Do a Social Media Detox the Right Way - Good Housekeeping
There’s no denying that social media has become a huge part of modern life. Apps like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter help us stay connected with loved ones, catch up on news, and discover both beautiful destinations and inspiring people. Yet you may find that spending hours on end scrolling through various feeds can leave you feeling anxious, drained, or dissatisfied. So how do you know if you’re in need of a social media detox?
Ready to take a break from social media? This article is here to help. Click the image or link below for more information.
Mental
Mental health is a term we often hear, yet often confuse with other terms, such as mental illness. We all have mental health. Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act. It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices. Mental health is important at every stage of life, from childhood and adolescence through adulthood. Looking after our mental health is very important and in this section, we share a variety of topical articles, resources and self-help tools for you to do just that.
News of War can impact your mental health and here's how to cope - The Conversation
Research shows that even short exposure to bad news can lead to increased levels of worry and anxiety that can be long lasting. Bad news can also perpetuate negative thinking, which can lead to feeling caught in a loop of distress. Click on the link below to read more.
Mindfulness & Letting Go
Mindfulness can be used as a tool to manage your wellbeing and mental health. Some people call mental health ‘emotional health’ or ‘wellbeing’. We all have times when we feel down, stressed or frightened; most of the time those feelings pass, but sometimes they develop into a more serious problem, and this could happen to any one of us.
With good mental health, you can:
• Make the most of your potential
• Cope with life
• Play a full part in your family, workplace, community and among friends
While research is still growing in the area of mindfulness, evidence has suggested the benefit of mindfulness to health and wellbeing, with results showing positive effects on several aspects of whole-person health, including the mind, the brain, the body, and behaviour, as well as a person’s relationships with others.
Mindfulness has also shown to help with a number of conditions, including stress, anxiety, depression, addictive behaviours, and physical problems like hypertension, heart disease and chronic pain.
Here is a brief resource from the Centre for Clinical Interventions to assist you to be more mindful.
Netflix - Headspace: Unwind Your Mind
Have you discovered the new Headspace series on Netflix yet?
Headspace takes a friendly, animated look at the benefits of meditation while offering techniques and guided meditations to jump-start your practice.
Here's a little snippet.
Cultural
Cultural Health refers to having a deep awareness of your personal culture and life experiences and understanding how they influence your value system, worldview, and practices; recognizing and respecting the culture and life experiences of others and intentionally taking time to empathize with, understand, and respect other perspectives. Ultimately, it refers to appreciating a diversity of culture and experiences and working with others to enhance personal and community well-being through culturally responsive action.
What is Cultural Health?
How to Practice Loving Kindness Meditations
Loving kindness meditation (LKM) is a popular self-care technique that can be used to boost well-being and reduce stress. Those who regularly practice loving kindness meditation are able to increase their capacity for forgiveness, connection to others, self-acceptance, and more. This technique is not easy as you are asking yourself to send kindness your way or to others. It often takes practice to allow yourself to receive your own love or to send it.
Diversity Month - May 2022 @ Emmanuel College
May is Diversity Month at Emmanuel College. A month where we'll be celebrating diversities in physical abilities, neurodiversity, learning, cultural, gender and sexual identities to name but a few.
Stay tuned to your emails, extended homerooms and Daily Messages to find out what your Diversity Month Committee have in store for you!
Cognitive
Cognitive brain health refers to brain function such as attention, learning, memory, language and executive function. This includes higher order functions, like decision-making, goal-setting, planning and judgment.
In the education setting, optimal cognitive functioning assists with learning. In this section, you will find information related to a variety of ways to maintain and enhance our cognitive health.
5 Ways Anxiety Harms Learning and 8 Things Parents can do Help - Melbourne Child Psychology
There is an ‘epidemic of anxiety’ among Australian children. And many experts are attributing this to increasing pressure at school. But when it comes to school and anxiety – it can be a case of:
What came first, the chicken or the egg?
Click on the image or link below for the full article.
Facts About Sleep
Good quality sleep of 7-8 hours per night is required for optimal health and wellbeing, yet sleep is something we, in general, struggle with. Teenage brains in particular experience a shift in their internal sleep and wake cycle that can cause sleep disturbances.
See this fact sheet from the Centre for Clinical Interventions to see if you can improve your sleep tonight.
Wordle - A Cognitive Challenge!
This little word game has taken over the world with a great puzzle, great vibes and great social connection. Have you tried yet? Click on the link below to start your Wordle journey!
Physical
Physical activity is a great way to keep you physically healthy as well as improving your mental wellbeing. Research shows that doing exercise releases feel-good chemicals called endorphins in the brain. Even a short burst of 10 minutes brisk walking can improve your mental alertness, energy and mood.
Whether you’re tending your garden or running a marathon, exercise can significantly improve your quality of life. Finding an activity you enjoy can make you feel less stressed, more focused, and give you a sense of purpose.
In this section, you'll find some other interesting tools to care for your physical health.
Nature and Mental Health - Mind
This article from Mind explains how nature can help your mental health. It gives tips and ideas for you to try, and suggests where to go for more information.
Click the image or link below to discover more.
What is Distress Tolerance?
Many emotions have strong physiological/physical components to them. Sometimes, managing our emotions begins with calming our nervous systems - calming our bodies. Developing tolerance to the feelings of distress in our bodies can be a useful way to regulate our emotions. Read more about how in this fact sheet from the Centre for Clinical Interventions.
A 30 day Yoga Journey - Yoga with Adriene
Yoga, an ancient practice and meditation, has become increasingly popular in today's busy society. For many people, yoga provides a retreat from their chaotic and busy lives. This is true whether you're practicing downward facing dog posture on a mat in your bedroom, in an ashram in India or even in New York City's Times Square. Yoga provides many other mental and physical benefits.
Click on the link below to see how 30 days of yoga can change your physical and mental wellbeing.
Spiritual
Spiritual health includes a purposeful life, transcendence and actualization of different dimensions and capacities of human beings. Spiritual health creates a balance between physical, psychological and social aspects of human life.
In this section, you'll find a variety of informative resources that fit under this umbrella.
'I just go to school with no food' - why Australia must tackle child poverty to improve educational outcomes - The Conversation
About one in six children in Australia live in poverty. These children generally have poorer educational outcomes than more advantaged children. Recently published research shows students who live in poverty also experience more social exclusion at school than their more advantaged peers. Failure to act on poverty will cripple the life chances and productivity of future generations. Click on the link below to read more.
What is Self Compassion?
Self-compassion is the ability to turn understanding, acceptance, and love inward. Many people are able to extend compassion toward others but find it difficult to extend the same compassion toward themselves. They may see self-compassion as an act of self-indulgence, but extending compassion toward oneself is not an act of self-indulgence, selfishness, or self-pity. In fact, self-compassion can help relieve many mental health concerns such as anxiety or insecurity. Many mental health professionals help people develop compassion for themselves.
Follow the link below to further explore Self Compassion with this link from the Centre for Clinical Interventions.
Character Strengths and Spirituality
As is true for many of the character strengths in the VIA Classification, the strength of spirituality has many dimensions. Some of these include meaning, purpose, life calling, beliefs about the universe, the expression of virtue/goodness, and practices that connect with the transcendent. Spirituality has been defined consistently by scientists as the search for or connection with “the sacred”. The sacred might be that which is blessed, holy, revered, or particularly special. This can be secular or non-secular: sacredness might be pursued as the search for a purpose in life or as a close relationship with something greater; the sacred might be experienced in the forgiveness offered by a child, a humble moment between a leader and a subordinate, an awe-inspiring sunset, a profound experience during meditation or a religious service, or the self-sacrificing kindness of a stranger. As a character strength, spirituality involves the belief that there is a dimension to life that is beyond human understanding. Some people don’t connect this belief with the concept of a divinity and prefer to think of it in terms of a sense of meaning rather than spirituality, but in the VIA Classification the terms are considered closely related. Spirituality is believed to describe both the private, intimate relationship between humans and the divine, and the range of virtues that result from the relationships. Spirituality is universal. Although the specific content of spiritual beliefs varies, all cultures have a concept of an ultimate, transcendent, sacred force.
Senior Sessions - Term 2, 2022
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