Videos - The Recovery College

Ways to improve your self-esteem | Mind

c.jones94@nhs.net (Charlotte Jones) — Wed, 15 Jun 2022 13:48:54 +0000

This animation is one of a series of videos to support students with their mental health, produced by Mind’s Mentally Healthy Universities Programme. It focusses on ways to help improve your self-esteem. Don’t worry if some ideas don’t work for you – just enjoy the ones that do.

Tips for Better Sleep - Mind

c.jones94@nhs.net (Charlotte Jones) — Mon, 09 May 2022 11:51:54 +0000

University can be a difficult time, presenting a number of new and unique challenges you may not have faced before. We know that it's a very worrying and uncertain time for everybody, and that you might be feeling anxious about what's happening. We are here to support you.

Coping strategies - Hampshire Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service

kal.dhanda@nhs.net (kal dhanda) — Wed, 21 Jul 2021 10:46:47 +0000

An animation showing the A to Z coping Strategies brought to you by Hampshire Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service.

Mindfulness of the breath exercise (BCHFT)

kal.dhanda@nhs.net (kal dhanda) — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 18:59:10 +0000

Mindfulness of the breath and body exercise (BCHFT)

kal.dhanda@nhs.net (kal dhanda) — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 18:58:21 +0000

This exercise can help us to come back to this moment by initially focusing on the breath. It’s not necessarily used to prevent the mind from wandering but to become more intimate with its patterns. It is specifically helpful in allowing us to see the connection among thoughts, feelings, and body sensations, and behaviour. It also helps us to accept the times when our minds have wandered and to gently reconnect with our breathing.

Mindfulness of the breath, body, sounds and thoughts (BCHFT)

kal.dhanda@nhs.net (kal dhanda) — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 18:57:11 +0000

This exercise can help us to see thoughts in the same way as any other passing event in our mind. The exercise begins with bringing our awareness to sounds, arising and passing, allowing sounds to come and go and resisting the natural tendency to label them. The invitation is to explore relating to thoughts in just this way, as events passing through the space of mind. This is a challenging practice it can also help us to realise that our thoughts are simply thoughts, they are not facts. Through continual practice, it can help to become more familiar with the habits (mode of mind) we can get into and will allow us to see more easily what to let be and want to respond to.

Inviting difficulty in exercise (BCHFT)

kal.dhanda@nhs.net (kal dhanda) — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 18:56:21 +0000

During this exercise you are encouraged to bring a current difficulty to mind, either from within the practice or a difficulty being experienced in everyday life. Although initially this can be a difficult meditation, it can help reduce ruminating and heightened emotions by enabling us to ‘ride the waves’ of powerful internal experiences, while neither being overwhelmed nor suppressing them. The intention is to open the possibility to choose to respond to unpleasant reactions in a new way-with acceptance rather than struggle.

Band of light exercise (BCHFT)

kal.dhanda@nhs.net (kal dhanda) — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 18:55:31 +0000

This exercise will help you focus more on the present moment. It will help you be more aware and mindful of the physical sensations in your body. This can also help us use our bodies to ground ourselves, and also notice how our emotions, thoughts and bodily sensations interact.

Judgment diffusion exercise (BCHFT)

kal.dhanda@nhs.net (kal dhanda) — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 18:54:08 +0000

The purpose of this exercise is to help you release or ‘let go’ of your judgements and other intrusive thoughts by visualising your thoughts or judgements, either as pictures or words floating away from you, without analysing or engaging in the thoughts in any way. It may be helpful to choose a scenario before you start this exercise. For example, you can: • Imagine sitting in a field watching your judgements float away on the clouds • Picture yourself sitting beside a stream with your judgements floating away on leaves • Picture yourself in a room with two doors, then watch your judgements enter through one door and leave through the other. This exercise is very helpful in developing the capacity to stop ourselves getting carried away with judgemental thoughts and the negative effects they have.

Eating raisin exercise - (BCHFT)

kal.dhanda@nhs.net (kal dhanda) — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 18:52:51 +0000

The first steps to becoming aware of the difference between mindful awareness and automatic pilot. Serves as an example of everyday, informal mindfulness and demonstrates how ordinary daily activities can become a mindful experience. It requires you to focus your mind on the present moment using all your senses - what you can see, hear, smell, taste and touch. Living mindfully can be incorporated with anything you care to experience day by day. This practice also demonstrates how much we miss when we are on automatic pilot.

Try any every day activity in a similar way.

Loving kindness to others exercise (BCHFT)

kal.dhanda@nhs.net (kal dhanda) — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 18:51:50 +0000

Loving kindness to others (LKM) The goal of LKM practices are to induce a positive mood state associated with social safety. Research has demonstrated this script to be the most useful for people participating in Radical Open Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (RO DBT) skills classes. This practice will help when in social interactions by increasing positivity and social connectedness toward others, ultimately activating the social safety system.

Loving kindness to self exercise (BCHFT)

kal.dhanda@nhs.net (kal dhanda) — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 18:50:50 +0000

Loving kindness to self: Experiencing anger, hate, hostility and ill will toward ourselves can be emotionally painful. Practicing loving kindness can help to cultivate compassion and loving feelings and to boost well-being and reduce stress. Regular practice of loving-kindness meditation can help increase capacity for forgiveness, connection to others, self-acceptance.

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Mindful walking exercise (BCHFT)

kal.dhanda@nhs.net (kal dhanda) — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 18:49:46 +0000

Mindful walking (meditation in motion): Walking meditation is more than just strolling about. This practice enables us to become more aware of our body and physical sensations as we move. It can easily be integrated into our schedules since walking is something most of us do every day.

Mini meditation breathing space exercise (BCHFT)

kal.dhanda@nhs.net (kal dhanda) — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 18:48:53 +0000

3 minute breathing space (3MBS) : This mindfulness practice enables us to move our awareness with intention in specific ways to help us free ourselves or to get unstuck from some of these automatic and habitual routines. If you are in the middle of an automatic pilot or find yourself multitasking, it demonstrates there is a place that you can move your mind to that allows you to step out of these routines and the demands they place on our attention. The 3MBS can also be utilised as a mini meditation and can help in achieving some grounding.

Mini meditation breathing space with extra guidance exercise (BCHFT)

kal.dhanda@nhs.net (kal dhanda) — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 18:48:17 +0000

Whenever you feel troubled in body or mind, the first step is always to take a breathing space. This practice can be helpful to take a step back to enable us to have the chance of seeing problem’s clearly rather than getting caught up in them. Stepping out of automatic pilot and bringing awareness to the whole package of thoughts-feelings-body sensations that automatically arise before shifting attention to the breath can be extremely effective.

Progressive muscle relaxation BCHFT

kal.dhanda@nhs.net (kal dhanda) — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 17:41:24 +0000

Progressive muscle exercise (tense and release): Progressive muscle relaxation is a mind-body technique that involves slowly tensing and then relaxing each muscle group in the body. This exercise will help you to lower your overall tension and stress levels, and help you relax when you are feeling anxious. It can also help reduce physical problems such as stomach-aches and headaches.

Safe place exercise (BCHFT)

kal.dhanda@nhs.net (kal dhanda) — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 17:40:29 +0000

The purpose of this exercise is to relax your mind and sooth yourself by imagining your own peaceful, safe place. This place can be a real or imaginary place that you can visualise to help calm and relax your mind when you are feeling anxious or overwhelmed, or when you have difficulty focusing on the here and now. Research shows that our minds react to what is in our imagination as much as it does to what is in our reality. It may be helpful to choose your safe place scenario before you start this exercise.

Sensory Awareness exercise

kal.dhanda@nhs.net (kal dhanda) — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 17:39:33 +0000

This exercise is aimed at centering oneself to enhance a sense of calmness and peace. It involves focusing attention on various sensations that we may have.

Stretching and breathing meditation (BCHFT)

kal.dhanda@nhs.net (kal dhanda) — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 17:38:30 +0000

The task here is to simply pay attention to the contrasts between experiencing the tension in muscles when stretching and the relaxation experienced following the sequence of stretching throughout the body. This is another opportunity to become aware of the body; however it is a little easier because the body is moving. Be careful if you have any problems with your back and as best you can be gentle and honor the messages from your back.

Sense of Sound (BCHFT)

kal.dhanda@nhs.net (kal dhanda) — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 17:36:43 +0000