Self-Care

Introduction
Hey, we’re Goose and Re and this is our workshop about Self-Care! The workshop is divided into two sections; Physical Self-Care and Mental Self-Care. Both of them are incredibly important, so we hope you read carefully through it and you enjoy it! <3

Physical Self-Care
written by Goose (@gooseful)

This sector of the workshop is focused on physical self-care! Physical self-care is defined as: ‘activities that improve your physical health, such as exercise and sleeping.’

Physical self-care contributes greatly to your overall mental health, as if your body is working properly, your mind is, too. There are many activities that fall under physical self-care, and I’ll be explaining the benefits of six of these activities!

Water Intake:
Water is so important. In fact, water has many health benefits that you might not even realise: water carries oxygen around your body and aids digestion, two perks that aren’t easily noticeable. It is recommended to drink six glasses of water a day to normalise your body’s usage of water. Water can make you feel refreshed and is the healthy alternative of energy drinks, which mostly contain huge amounts of sugar. Please hydrate – it's so good for you.

Sleep:
Now, here comes the self-care act that targets certain SWCers. Sleep! Sleep is essential to having an excellent day – how are you going to concentrate without eight hours under your belt? It is recommended for people between the ages of 9-18 to have at least eight hours of sleep a night, the happy medium being nine. Sleep has so many benefits, too: you get sick less often, you make better decisions, and it reduces stress. However, just as important it is to have eight hours of sleep, it is as important to have a regularised sleep-schedule. Sleeping for eight hours during the day and then eight hours the next night isn’t going to help your body as much, and therefore if you go to sleep and wake up at the same time every day, your body will get more benefits out of your sleep. So, even if it is cabin wars, try and get some sleep at night. You’ll be thankful the next day!

Skincare/Sleep Routine:
Some people may not do this, and that’s quite reasonable! Personally, I find that I sleep better if I know that I’m clean: whether it may simply be from having a shower to brushing my teeth and doing an elaborate routine. Skincare is defined as ‘the practices that encourage your skin’s health’. By washing your face and making sure that it is genuinely clean, you’ve taken another step towards a healthy body. Sleep routine involves anything that you’d do before sleeping, though in this case it is centered around what you do for your body: brushing your teeth and having a shower are two main points in this section of the workshop. These little things don’t have as many health benefits, but they improve your hygiene, at the very least.

Exercise:
Exercising is another staple for healthy physical self-care! Luckily, merely an hour of moderate-vigorous activity is advised to keep healthy – and that can be broken up into small sectors, if you find that you can't stomach a full hour of exercise at once. Whether it is raining or sunny, there are more than a handful of easy exercises that can leave you feeling healthier and further in control of your life and self-care, and I highly recommend checking some out!

Healthy Eating:
Eating healthily is an important staple in self-care, and it is commonly referenced with many benefits, these including reducing health problems, giving energy and helping with the body’s functions. Water and exercise boost the maintaining a healthy weight and heart, and eating a variety of food can reduce the risk of disease. A tip you can use in relation to healthy eating is not eating huge amounts of sugar at once. This will lead to an energy crash, which will make you feel worse than before you ate the sugar. Another tip that doctors may advise is not to skip breakfast. Breakfast fuels your energy for the rest of your day, and different nutrients that you ingest then can make all the difference in how tired you are when you get home. All in all, though, all foods have a purpose, some benefits, and a place in people's diets. It's up to you as to what you perceive as healthy eating!

Sunlight:
Getting sunlight is such a simple thing to do to feel better about yourself. On average, it’s recommended for health reasons that you get 10-30 minutes of sunlight, several days during the week. This carries so many health benefits with it, and chances are that you’ll feel refreshed and productive afterwards! Sunlight is easy to get, too – you could read, write, or even do exercises while getting an adequate amount of sun! Please don’t go outside, though, if it is dangerous to do so. There are other ways (previously mentioned) to physically care for yourself.

Mental Self-Care
written be Re (@RLove10)

Taking care of your mind is just as important as taking care of your body. Your body may rest a lot of times in the day, but your mind is something you use almost all the time. Just as much as you need to focus on school, extracurricular activities, and other stuff, focusing on yourself is important.

What are some things that affect your mental health?
There are a thousand things that take you away from taking care of your mind, and there are also a lot of things that affect your mind. For example: stress. We all deal with stress in our daily lives, whether it’s because of school or any other thing. Your environment also affects you! Maybe you are not stressed but the people around you don’t have a good vibe. Or you are in a place that doesn’t make you feel comfortable. These things affect your mental health.

What are some things you can do to take care of your mind?

Give yourself breaks from everything everyday or every two days.
You may be pretty busy and can’t do this everyday, but maybe every two days you can take half an hour off from homework or other activities. So you can take a break to do things that relax you. This can go from watching TV and reading, to meditating, or just doing nothing and laying in your bed. But little breaks between things help just as much as a big break and they are really important for your mind not to overwhelm itself.

Listen to music.
Music is scientifically proven to help with many mental issues, as it helps with processing emotions. Taking care of yourself also means expressing what you feel. While you do homework or other activities you can plug your headphones and listen to music you enjoy.

Reading
I know a lot of people don’t like to read, but reading can really clear your mind. Sometimes just opening a book and diving into a whole different world can be helpful. Then again, science confirms that reading can reduce stress, and it can be really calming sometimes (unless you join a fandom and enter the glorious chaos).

Write your thoughts down
Every day we have to think about a thousand things, and sometimes our thoughts are all mixed and it’s just a bunch of stuff without head or feet. Writing down the most important or most random thoughts can help you clear your mind, and have less of a rumble.

Turn electronics off
Electronic devices as well as social media have become a “basic” thing in our lives. But they can be extremely tiring and time consuming. We all know occasionally our minds need to rest from being constantly looking at information on a computer, or just scrolling through social media. Social media can bring a lot of stress and anxiety, and a lot more issues. So don’t be all day in front of a screen and let your mind rest, from all the stuff going on in the internet. Concentrate on being where you are and on taking care of yourself.

Spread affection
Not everyone, but some people feel better after making someone else feel better. Maybe you are one of those. Give yourself some time in the day to go and spread affection, tell someone how much you love them, be thankful, or just smile and say hi to someone you encounter in the street. These little actions can make both your and their day better.

Please take in consideration that these methods do not work for everyone, and you need to find one that helps YOU. You won’t find a method in one night, it takes time. We just hope you find the method that works for you.

Both physical and mental health are extremely important, and looking after both can be a daunting task. However, most acts of self-care that you do to improve one may improve the other. For example, by exercising outdoors, you are breathing in fresh air, giving your body the workout it needs, and clearing your mind. In another instance, turning off electronics can clear your brain and make you feel much healthier physically as well as mentally. In fact, many of the things on these lists may improve both physical and mental health! Keep that in mind next time you want to treat yourself to some worthy self-care. Hopefully, it makes these activities a little easier!

Activity
For this activity, we want you to write a checklist of self-care activities you’ll do for 3 or 4 days, and a small persuasive piece (250 words) explaining why you should do one of these activities.

Conclusion
That wraps up our workshop on self-care! We hope that you learnt something new about different acts of self-care and how to be mindful of your mental and physical health, and perhaps even found an activity you would like to incorporate into your day-to-day life.

this is wonderfully written! <333