Foundations of Mental Health
Build Movement into your Daily Routine
Stretch when you wake and before you go to sleep.
2. Prioritize Nutrition
Maintain a consistent meal plan and manage portion sizes.
Use a food diary to track your plan and progress.
Stress can increase selection and consumption of palatable (comfort) foods, which are typically high in sugar and fat, which increases the risk for cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and depression.
Maintain good gut health by eating fermented foods that are high in probiotic and other healthy bacteria.
Add garlic to your diet for its anti-inflammatory, anti-viral, and anti-bacterial effects.
Boost your immune system with nutrient dense fruits and vegetables.
Sugar, pasta, white bread, and corn increase inflammation.
Avoid excess consumption of drugs and alcohol.
3. Keep Up with Sleep Hygiene
Sleep deprivation impacts the stress response system, increases low-grade inflammation, and significantly impairs human functioning.
Circadian rhythm regulates your mood and immune system, so be consistent with your sleep (go to sleep at the same time, wake up at the same time every day).
Sleep enhances immune defense and immunological memory.
Follow the CDC recommendations for hours of sleep per day.
Chronic restriction of sleep to 6 hours or less (in adults) significantly increases cognitive deficits.
Prepare for sleep by relaxing at night, using methods such as binaural beats, Tibetan sleep yoga, Yoga Nidra, Nadi Shodhana, progressive muscle relaxation, autogenic training, and ASMR.
Use the DBT nightmare protocol for when nightmares keep you from sleeping.
Avoid stimulants, such as caffeine, screens, and nicotine, prior to sleep.
4. Stay Connected with the Ones you Love
Bonding with others is the most intrinsic essential survival strategy for human beings.
Reach out to the people in your life. Make phone and video calls to family and friends.
If at home, turn toward your partner. Physical touch increases oxytocin and decreases cortisol levels, improving mood and decreasing stress and anxiety.
Talking exercises elements of our social engagement system: the ventral vagus through breath control, the larynx for sound, auditory pathways for listening, cranial nerve V as the mouth moves to make sound, and cranial nerve VII as our face expresses what we say. Face to face conversation is the most human and humanizing thing we do.
The presence of a trusted and loving adult helps children to moderate their stress response.
A six second kiss with your significant other can improve mood and decrease stress.
Pet your dog and/or cat to decrease cortisol levels to improve mood and decrease stress and anxiety. Research with dogs and their owners has shown that an elevated human heart rate is regulated when an owner is reunited with their dog.
Gottman card decks app may be used to build connection with your significant other
5. Spend Time Outside in Nature
The practice is known as “Shinrin-yoku” in Japan, which translates to ”taking in the forest atmosphere through all of our senses.”
Nature therapy, or exposure to forests, urban green spaces, plants and flowers, and natural wooden materials activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which reduces stress, lowers blood pressure, and decreases pulse rate.
Nature therapy boosts the immune system.
Walking in nature for 15 minutes induces a state of physiological relaxation.
Olfactory stimulation (aromatherapy) by Hinoki cypress leaf oil can induce physiological relaxation.
The color green has a relaxing and calming effect on the human organism.
Exposure to sunlight regulates serotonin and melatonin, which helps manage symptoms of depression and improve cognitive functioning.
The sound of water can be restorative, reduce stress, and enhance well-being.
Spend time at the park, hiking, and in your garden.
Place foliage and floral arrangements around your home.
Spend the first 15 minutes of your day outdoors.
6. Limit Use of Screens
Be intentional with the media you consume. Avoid misinformation by sticking with reliable sources.
Schedule phone and social media time for once per hour, limiting yourself to 10 or fewer minutes per session.
“Light at night” is linked to depression and suicidal thinking. Avoid screens one hour before sleep. Do not invite screens into the bedroom.
7. Be Mindful and Meditate
Mindfulness meditation may show improvements in immune response such as raising T cell count and increasing telomerase activity.
Mindfulness training can reduce symptoms of depression and improve resiliency to stressful events.
Mindfulness can reduce concentrates of cortisol secretion.
Mindfulness can reduce emotional reactivity by decreasing the size of the amygdala.
Resistance on the out-breath and during meditation activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which slows the heart rate and reduces body tension.
Practice mindfulness with the Three minute breathing space, Body Scan, and Thich Nhat Hanh’s mindfulness exercises.
Try out Insight timer, Calm, and Headspace.
The Mindfulness Card Game is a fun and interactive way to teach children the practice of mindfulness.
8. Express Gratitude, Compassion, and Kindness
Show gratitude and appreciation for the gifts that are freely offered and given to us from this world.
Maintaining a daily gratitude journal may decrease symptoms of stress and depression.
Gratitude practice may improve mood, improve sleep quality, decrease cellular inflammation, and improve resiliency.
Write a gratitude letter to someone important to you.
Positive thinking builds new neural structures and actually reduces the power and influence of negative neural nets. Gratitude practice disconnects us from unhelpful thinking patterns and attunes us to more helpful ones.
Loving compassion meditations may reduce stress-induced immune and behavioral responses.
9. Be Helpful for Others
Volunteering increases sense of sense of meaning, self-esteem, and life satisfaction.
Volunteering has been linked to increases in self-efficacy and decreases in symptoms of depression.
Focusing on helping others can buffer the effects of stress on health.
Volunteer work builds a sense of community and connection.
Donate blood to the American Red Cross, provide support to your local Boys and Girl Club, or give to a local food back, volunteer for Meals on Wheels, . Here are some additional opportunities to donate in your community.
Provide companionship to an elderly person through Alone, volunteer as a text line crisis counselor, or help your neighbors purchase groceries and other supplies.
10. Educate Yourself
Shift focus from unproductive worrying toward and engage yourself through online education opportunities.
Learning leads to development of new neural networks and promotes neurogenesis in the Hippocampus, which may help manage anxiety and manage stress.
Crash Course offers a fast paced enhanced learning experience.
Fight Mediocrity summarizes books with engaging whiteboard animations.
Masterclass offers expert teachings from leading experts.
Khan Academy offers free personalized learning.
Minute Physics provides an energetic and entertaining view of old and new problems in physics.
Learn a new language with Duolingo, which offers free, personalized education.
Learn a coding language with The Coding Train.
Try out one of these Educational YouTube channels.
11. Think about your Purpose and Reevaluate your Values
Lack of meaning increases perceived stress and threat response.
Having a life purpose improves mental health, self-regulation, and coping.
Having a sense of meaning is linked to improved physical health.
Viktor Frankl encourages us to transform terrible experiences of suffering into powerful concepts that ennoble the human spirit and empower people to survive.
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way” – Viktor Frankl
“He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how” – Friedrich Nietzsche
Plan goals for the future beyond the present crisis.
Reevaluate your values with the Valued Living Questionnaire.
Explore strengths with the CliftonStrengths assessment.
Explore values with the Values in Action assessment.
12. Have Fun
Intentionally schedule leisure time into your day to cope with stress.
Play relieves stress, builds connection with others, and stimulates creativity.
Channel anxieties and vulnerabilities into creative pursuit such as art, music, and story.
Laughter improves pain tolerance and increases immune cell activity.
Consider implementing a 10-minute laughter meditation.
Smiling increases positive moods (including for those you smile at).
Drumming has been shown to reduce anxiety, improve mood, and boost the immune system.
African dance and Hatha Yoga have been shown to reduce perceived stress and negative affect.
Play board and card games, such as the aptly named Pandemic, Catan, Ticket to Ride, Dominion, Sushi Go, Exploding Kittens, Terraforming Mars, Azul, 7 Wonders, Codenames, Castle Panic, Forbidden Island. Explore recommendations from Board Game Geek for more suggestions.
Try one of these 87 energy bursting indoor games and activities for kids.
