Resources for Challenging Times: COVID-19 Pandemic

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GUIDED MEDITATIONS/ MINDFULNESS PRACTICES

The Silence that is Listening, Meditation, Tara Brach (20 Minutes)

iRest Yoga Nidra, Richard Miller(20 Minutes)

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Body Scan, Steven Hickman (20 Minutes)

Lovingkindness Meditation, Tara Brach (20 Minutes)

The 8 Brocades Qigong Practice, Mimi Kuo-Deemer (20 minutes)

Therapeutic Yoga, Dr. Arielle Schwartz

FREE LIVE MINDFULNESS PRACTICES

John Kabat Zinn-Cultivating Mindfulness at this Critical Moment

Ten Percent Happier LIVE Daily Interviews and Guided Meditations without Dan Harris and some of the worlds best meditations teachers

APPS

Insight Timer: Free app for sleep, anxiety, stress

The COVID Coach App

ON COPING AND FINDING MEANING DURING TIMES OF ADVERSITY

(PODCASTS EPISODES)

Psychologists Off the Clock: Jenna Lejeune, PhD on Building a Meaningful Values Based Life

Ten Percent Happier: The profound Upside of Mortality with Nikki Mirghafori, PhD

Psychologists Off the Clock: Taking in the Good with Rick Hansen, PhD

Psychologists Off the Clock: Bearing Unbearable Loss: A Conversation about Grief with Dr. Joanne Cacciatore

Fostering Personal Growth through Adversity: Reflections on the Pandemic

(BOOKS)

A Liberated Mind: How to Pivot Toward What Matters By Steven C. Hayes

When Things Fall Apart By Pema Chodron

Man’s Search For Meaning By Viktor Frankl

The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life that Matters (book) by Emily Esfahani Smith

The Posttraumatic Growth Workbook: Coming Through Trauma Wiser, Stronger, and More ResilientBy Richard Tedeschi, PhD and Bret Moore, PhD.

The Self-Care Prescription: Powerful Solutions to Manage Stress, Reduce Anxiety & Increase Wellbeing by Robyn Gobin

(ARTICLES)

Things Keep Getting Scarier. He Can Help You Cope By David Marchese (NYT Article, Jack Kornfield on Coping with COVID-19)

Article on Tragic Optimism during Lockdown (NYT article) by Emily Esfahani Smith

There’s More To Life Than Being Happy (Atlantic article), by Emily Esfahani Smith

THRIVE acronym from Stephen Joseph:  Taking stock, Harvesting hope, Re-authoring, Identifying change, Valuing change, Expressing change in action

FOR PARENTS

Dear Parents, It’s Okay to Call Buls&!t By Lisa Coyne, PhD. (On Parenting in the Time of COVID-19)

Permission to Feel by Marc Brackett Ph.D.

Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child by John Gottman, Ph.D.

The Whole Brain Child by Daniel Siegel, M.D. .& Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D.

FOR children/Teens

After the Fall: How Humpty Dumpty Got Back up Again, By Dan Santat

Your Life, Your Way: Acceptance Commitment Therapy Skills to Help Teens Manage Emotions & Build Resiliency by Joseph Ciarrochi, Ph.D. & Louise Hayes, Ph.D.

FOR RELATIONSHIPS

Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love

36 Questions: How to fall in Love with anyone

Psychologists Off the Clock: Narcissism with Dr. Avigail Lev and Dr. Robyn Walser

ON EMOTIONS/empathy

Alfred and Shadow: A Short Story about Emotions

Brene Brown on Empathy

POETRY FOR CHALLENGING TIMES

The Peace of Wild Things Kindness

By Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Kindness

By Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

When I am Among the Trees

By Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”



CRISIS RESOURCES

National Domestic Violence Hotline [1-800-799-SAFE (7233)]

National Suicide Hotline [1-800-275-TALK(8255)]

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