Mental Health Mondays: Breathe
We are not mental health professionals. If you are feeling overwhelmed with emotions like anxiety or depression, or they are impacting your daily life, please reach out to professionals who can help you. If you need immediate help, use the National Suicide Hotline, 1-800-273-8255, which offers online chats as well. Jewish Community Services also offer help to people experiencing emotional crises.
We aim to provide some tips and guides to help those who are self-isolating and to connect with our JMM community. These ideas might not work for everyone, but we hope that by starting the conversation about mental health, we can inspire you to take a moment to breathe and reflect on what you need today to feel good.
Today is Memorial Day. Usually, this three-day weekend signals the start of summer, meaning the start of cookouts, beach days, and traveling. We were planning to open a new exhibit this weekend, which has been delayed by our closure. Instead of taking the day to work, as we had expected to welcome people to see the new exhibit, we’re taking the day off. To start the day off with calmness and to help with actually relaxing, I’m going to do some breathing exercises. I invite you to join me in breathing today. Take the five minutes it would have taken you to read my blog post to instead do some breathing exercises. Here are some suggestions for videos to watch to breathe along with. If you want to find out more about meditation and breathing, check out our previous blog post about mindfulness.
1) Live Jelly Cam – Monterey Bay Aquarium
2) Relax and Breathe: Do Nothing for 10 Minutes
3) Kids Meditation – Square Breathing (Focus & Calm)
Do you have a favorite tool to help you “just breathe?” Share in the comments!