"Do Yoga with Me is one of my personal favourite sources for good home workouts, obviously of the yoga variety! Many of their classes are filmed outdoors in beautiful British Columbia, Canada. The level of instruction is top-notch and there are videos that focus on pretty much every part of the body (e.g. hips, hamstrings, back, etc.), so you can target the area that you need to work on most."

Any video with a plus symbol in an orange/yellow circle requires a subscription but all others are free to access. You can use the filters at the top of the page to filter your search.

Plan for the Unexpected and Help Relieve Stress
Having to cover a class last minute? Need an emergency sub plan? Check out these easy, FREE activities from the CharacterStrong curriculum! Amidst this crazy time, the resources will help you pre-plan for the uncertainty of an educator absence or staff shortage.
Includes resources for:
- Prek-2
- 3-5
- 6-8
- 9-12

These fun workout videos include dances to Disney tunes and all other sorts of fun music.
Move. Get Fit. Have fun!

Asking for help for mental health support and stigma's attached. Building Your Support Team. Psychaitrist, Family Doctor, Psychologist and counsellor, community health organizations

It is important to think about all of the things in our life that we can be grateful for. So often we tend to focus on the negative things in our life and forget about all the blessings we have each and every day. Our blessings do not need to be huge to make us appreciate our lives. They can be as small as: a smile from someone, hot chocolate, our pet greeting us at the door, a cozy blanket, a visit from a friend.
Focusing on the good things we have in our life, instead of the challenges we face, can change our perspective to being more positive. When we have a positive outlook on life, life is automatically better!
Some things we can do to help us see the positives in our life are:
- Write in a Gratitude Journal - Take a few minutes each day to write down 4 or 5 good things about your day.
- Write a letter - Think about someone who is important in your life. Write down all of the things that you appreciate about them. Then deliver the letter to that person and enjoy their reaction.
- Visit Someone you Appreciate – Spend some time with someone you like and let them know all the reasons why you like them.
- Use Your Manners – Being polite to others by saying “Thank you,” “Sorry,” “Your welcome” or “That was nice of you” can drastically change how others feel about you, and thus make you feel better about yourself. Being kind to others is as important as being kind to ourselves.
- Take a Gratitude Walk – Go for a walk and make a special effort to appreciate everything you see, hear, smell, taste and touch.

The following is a journal for gratitude. It can be printed off for students to fill out. It includes gratitude, happiness, being grateful, etc.

What is Grief? What can I do about? How can I help a loved one?

Give your eyes a break with this audio-only Digital Wellness Break. Follow along as teacher Stephanie's voice guides you step-by-step through "Tense and Release," a mind-body-breath integration that's designed for children and effective for all ages.

TODAY’S MINDFUL MOVEMENT
🦦 TENSE AND RELEASE 🦦

“It’s the end of a very long day. Back-to-back-to-back meetings. You sign-off from work, gather your belongings, rush out the door... only to get stuck in traffic. Tension rises.

A busy lifestyle with no time to relax can lead to frustration, tension, and chronic stress.

Making time in our busy days to mindfully unwind can help. Tense and Release is one of our favorite relaxation exercises to do just this. By consciously tensing and releasing our bodies, we are able to tune out what is going on outside and tune in to what’s going on inside. And in tune, consciously let go of the tension and stress we carry.

This audio-only relaxation will allow you to return to a state of balance. Just hit 'play' and give your eyes a rest for the next four minutes.” (Yoga Ed.)

What Is It?

Practicing mindfulness can help relieve the stressors of school, work, and life. As an educator, you may not know where to start. How can you make time for self-care to protect your own mental health? How can you incorporate mindfulness exercises into meetings with colleagues and/or interactions with students?

In this guide you'll learn how to develop a personal mindfulness practice (complete with a sample breathing exercise!), and how to get started cultivating mindfulness skills in students or other adults. You'll walk away with simple ways to work mindfulness into your daily life. In the guide you will learn more about:
I. Benefits of Mindfulness for Educators
II. Practice a Mindful Breathing Exercise
III. Sample Mindfulness Exercises
IV. Tips for Facilitating Mindfulness Exercises

Professor Sonja Lyubomirsky - one of the world's leading Positive Psychology experts - shares the latest insights from her ground-breaking work on happiness....

She focuses on three main habits in this webinar...
1. Gratitude
2. Acts of Kindness
3. Social interactions and connections

The purpose of us feeling anxiety in our bodies is so that we will ‘DO SOMETHING’ to try to eliminate the event, situation or thing that we are worried about. This is a primitive and basic survival instinct that we still have deeply embedded in our brains. The problem is…we don’t need to run away from saber tooth tigers anymore!

However, instead of having the idea of “I need to get rid of this feeling” we need to change it to “whatever is happening right at this moment, I CAN HANDLE that.”

What we need to do is learn about anxiety and how it works in our bodies and then break anxiety down into small pieces, and take it step by step. It may start with learning about how anxiety works and feels in our bodies; the sensations we get from anxiety. Starting with what happens in our brain and body when we are anxious. Then we need to learn what we can do with those sensations to lessen them and our anxiety. Then we work on our anxious thoughts and work to change the dialogue we have in our heads about anxiety. Essentially we break anxiety down into small chewable bites. This is in order to give you some success.

This infographic from Homewood Health provides tips for people (including students) working from home and staying productive.

This resource provides information and resources about Sun West iLearn's and SWTA's 2020 Keynote Speaker Trina Markusson and her presentations. You will find Trina's notes for the iLearn session.  This Mindfulness Handout includes information about breathing, presence, body scan, gratitude, self talk and self care. You will also find a link to download her mindfulness app - Release.Lastly, you'll find a link to her website where you can find further information about her services and resources. 

"Workouts provided on the Live Strong YouTube video channel will definitely help you improve your strength, flexibility and fitness. Celebrity trainer, Nicky Holender instructs most of the online workouts you’ll find here. He knows his stuff and tailors these at-home workouts for busy people who want a quick exercise fix."

As a comedian and performer, Jordan Raskopolous does not suffer from stage fright, but away from the lights it’s a different story. In this compelling and funny talk, she shares her insights into what it is like to live with high functioning anxiety and how people like her can be perceived - to be both shy and loud at the same time. A talk many will relate to and one that offers strategies for dealing with it.

Jordan Raskopoulos is a comedian, musician and digital content creator. She is best known as the lead singer of The Axis of Awesome, a world renowned musical comedy group and YouTube Juggernaut. She is the creative director of Press Start Productions. Press Start is currently producing Insert Coin, an ongoing web series about video games. Jordan is also host of This is About, a narrative non-fiction podcast on ABC RN. In 2016 she came out as transgender in a viral video called ‘What’s Happened to Jordan’s Beard’. Since then Jordan has become an inspiration to young LGBTQIA+ people by living her genuine life, openly and publicly and using her platform and profile to promote awareness and understanding to a broad audience through humour.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

A FREE Psychological First Aid Guide from the Canadian Red Cross
The likelihood that a sudden crisis event might affect you or someone you know is higher than you think. That is why it’s critical that you take the steps to learn Psychological First Aid and prepare yourself to handle the extreme stress that a crisis event can cause.

The guide will teach you:
How to create your own self-care plan
The Look, Listen, Link, Live Cycle
How to provide Psychological First Aid to others
The Do No Harm Principles

Mental health is key to our well being. We can't be truly healthy without it. Build a healthy self-esteem, build positive support networks, get involved, build resilency, recognize your emotions and Spiritual well-being

1 in 5 Canadians Experience Mental Illness in Any Given Year. We All Know Someone.
And yet, one of the biggest issues in our health care system – and society at large – is that mental health is not taken as seriously, and treated as urgently, as physical health. But when you hear the stories, and see the impact mental illness has on the lives of so many around us, it's hard to stand idly by. Together, we can and must change the way mental health is treated not just in Canada, but around the world. We invite you all to join the movement. Watch the videos. Share the content. Donate now.

#MentalHealthIsHealth