Kathryn Kennedy 7/28/24 Kathryn Kennedy 7/28/24

#blog: Seven Small Changes to Support Your Mental Health This School Year

| By Kathryn Kennedy |

Originally published with Gale.

It’s almost time to head back to school. How did that happen?! Where did the time go?! I know we ask that question every year, but seriously, summer sometimes feels like an epic time warp! Am I right?! Nevertheless, I hope you thoroughly enjoyed the summer not only with your family and friends but also with yourself.
As we start the school year, you may feel a bit of excitement and perhaps some trepidation stirring inside of you about what the year is going to bring. You’re not alone. That’s totally natural, especially given the unpredictability we’ve all experienced over the past few years. We’ve endured a lot and continue to do so, and healing and supporting ourselves takes time and continuous intentional effort. Healing prolonged stress and trauma does not happen overnight; it’s an ongoing journey, not a final destination.
Before we start back to school, what if we laid some foundational supports for ourselves? I know, I know … oftentimes, once the school year starts, our best-laid plans derail quickly! But what if we start small, using seven strategies that can be foundational for sustaining your mental health and well-being throughout this school year and beyond? And—BONUS—you might already be doing some of these! Here they are in no particular order.
1. Clear your plate.
We as educators, as you know, have a lot on our plates all of the time. What if we take some time before heading back to school to intentionally look at what we have on our plates? Is there anything you can let go of, either personal or professional? Is there anything that you can ask your school leader to take off your plate? Is there anything that’s not absolutely necessary? If so, take it off your plate to make room for things that will help you sustain your mental health and well-being. And make this intentional plate-clearing process a practice every month (if not more often) throughout the year. Look at it as a time to reflect and reevaluate your plate to see if there’s anything that can be cleared.
2. Play every day.
Back in 2019, collaborative research from The Genius of Play and Fundamentally Children found that 75% of children were not getting enough play.1 If that’s the case, can you imagine the percentage of adults? According to Dr. Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play,2 “Play that is based on our inner needs and desires is the only path to finding lasting satisfaction in our relationships and professional work.” There are many benefits of play: it boosts creativity and problem-solving abilities; reduces stress; builds resilience, improves relationships; nurtures community; and much more. Given all of the benefits, it’s important for us to bring play back into our lives. So how do you get started doing just that? The activities that we find fun are unique to each of us. The National Institute for Play encourages adults to:
- Identify what is playful for you.
  Everyone is different, so find what works for you!
- Develop lifelong play habits.
  Habits typically take 40 days to become routine in our lives, so try to incorporate play at least once a day for 40 days to see what sticks!
- Recognize how you feel when there’s not enough play.
  Practicing intentional check-ins to see how we’re feeling is important, and doing specific check-ins on how we feel when we play and not can help us see the benefits of play in our everyday lives.
- Model healthy play habits in your communities.
  Establishing a sense of play and modeling it for others, including the other adults and little ones in your professional and personal lives, can help make play an integral part of our day-to-day lives.
3. Define and establish your safe spaces.
According to trauma and somatic psychology research, to heal ourselves and support our well-being, we need to have a felt sense of safety.3 This means safety in mind, body, and all other critical aspects of our being and lives. As you begin the school year, think about these various elements of your safety and identify ways you can support yourself to feel safe. Just as our students need to Maslow before Bloom, so do we as adults. And safety, inside and outside of ourselves, is priority number one!
4. Build and bolster trusting relationships.
Once we have established a felt sense of safety, we can build and bolster relationships with others we trust. Trusting relationships provide us opportunities for co-regulation. Co-regulation is a way for your nervous system to work with another being’s (human, animal, plant, or otherwise) system to calm and ground. The more relationships we have that support co-regulation, the better.
5. Create and cultivate your supportive communities.
Taking relationships one step further to create and cultivate a supportive community allows for more opportunities to support overall well-being. Each community or network you are part of provides specific support for each component of your well-being. Take some time to reflect on the communities you’re a part of and how they support you, as well as how you support them (giving back is just as important as getting support from others). Are there any communities that you think you’d like to add or even create to provide yourself better support?
6. Learn something new.
Stepping out of our comfort zone and learning something new can spark creative energy, which in turn provides us a chance to reclaim our power and voice, and heal. Each day, see if there’s something small you can learn that is novel to you to help light up your curiosity!
7. Explore and engage in short restoration activities.
We as educators are busy a majority of the time. When possible, take short bits of time to downshift, to rest, to reset, and to restore your mind and body. Perhaps you can check out yoga nidra, restorative yoga, yin yoga, and guided meditations that take anywhere from five to 60 minutes. These restorative activities help to refresh yourself and cultivate renewed energy.
This is definitely not an exhaustive list, but I hope these and other small changes can help support you as you jump into this school year and many more years to come!
1. The Genius of Play. (22 Jul 2019). “75 Percent of Children Are Not Getting Enough Playtime, According to New Research.” PR Newswire.
2. National Institute for Play.
3. Levine, P. (1997). Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.

Meet the Author

Kathryn Kennedy has cultivated her two primary passions for 20+ years. She serves as founder and executive director of Wellness for Educators and is the founder and principal consultant of Consult4Ed Group. Her recent publication, The Mind-Body Connection for Educators: Intentional Movement for Wellness, is the first in a four-part book series.

Kathryn Kennedy 8/15/23 Kathryn Kennedy 8/15/23

#blog: 7 Small Changes to Support Your Mental Health This School Year

by Dr. Kathryn Kennedy

Special thanks to Next Generation Learning Challenges for allowing us to cross-post this blog post :-)

Teachers can sustain their mental health and well-being throughout the school year with these seven small but foundational research-based strategies.

It’s almost time to head back to school. How did that happen?! Where did the time go?! I know we ask that question every year, but seriously, summer sometimes feels like an epic time warp! Am I right?! Nevertheless, I hope you thoroughly enjoyed the summer not only with your family and friends but also with yourself.

As we start the school year, you may feel a bit of excitement and perhaps some trepidation stirring inside of you about what the year is going to bring. You’re not alone. That’s totally natural, especially given the unpredictability we’ve all experienced over the past few years. We’ve endured a lot and continue to do so, and healing and supporting ourselves takes time and continuous intentional effort. Healing prolonged stress and trauma does not happen overnight; it’s an ongoing journey, not a final destination.

Before we start back to school, what if we laid some foundational supports for ourselves? I know, I know … oftentimes, once the school year starts, our best-laid plans derail quickly! But what if we start small, using seven strategies that can be foundational for sustaining your mental health and well-being throughout this school year and beyond? And—BONUS—you might already be doing some of these! Here they are in no particular order.

1. Clear Your Plate

We as educators, as you know, have a lot on our plates all of the time. What if we take some time before heading back to school to intentionally look at what we have on our plates? Is there anything you can let go of, either personal or professional? Is there anything that you can ask your school leader to take off your plate? Is there anything that’s not absolutely necessary? If so, take it off your plate to make room for things that will help you sustain your mental health and well-being. And make this intentional plate-clearing process a practice every month (if not more often) throughout the year. Look at it as a time to reflect and reevaluate your plate to see if there’s anything that can be cleared.

2. Play Every Day

Back in 2019, collaborative research from The Genius of Play and Fundamentally Children found that 75 percent of children were not getting enough play. If that’s the case, can you imagine the percentage of adults? According to Dr. Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play, “Play that is based on our inner needs and desires is the only path to finding lasting satisfaction in our relationships and professional work.”

There are many benefits of play: it boosts creativity and problem-solving abilities; reduces stress; builds resilience, improves relationships; nurtures community; and much more. Given all of the benefits, it’s important for us to bring play back into our lives. So how do you get started doing just that? The activities that we find fun are unique to each of us. The National Institute for Play encourages adults to:

Identify what is playful for you. Everyone is different, so find what works for you!
Develop lifelong play habits. Habits typically take 40 days to become routine in our lives, so try to incorporate play at least once a day for 40 days to see what sticks!
Recognize how you feel when there’s not enough play. Practicing intentional check-ins to see how you’re feeling is important, and doing specific check-ins on how you feel when you play and not can help you see the benefits of play in your everyday lives.
Model healthy play habits in your communities. Establishing a sense of play and modeling it for others, including the other adults and little ones in your professional and personal lives, can help make play an integral part of your day-to-day life.

3. Define and Establish Your Safe Spaces

According to trauma and somatic psychology research, to heal ourselves and support our well-being, we need to have a felt sense of safety. This means safety in mind, body, and all other critical aspects of our being and lives. As you begin the school year, think about these various elements of your safety and identify ways you can support yourself to feel safe. Just as our students need to Maslow before Bloom, so do we as adults. And safety, inside and outside of ourselves, is priority number one!

4. Build and Bolster Trusting Relationships

Once we have established a felt sense of safety, we can build and bolster relationships with others we trust. Trusting relationships provide us opportunities for co-regulation. Co-regulation is a way for your nervous system to work with another being’s (human, animal, plant, or otherwise) system to calm and ground. The more relationships we have that support co-regulation, the better.

5. Create and Cultivate Your Supportive Communities

Taking relationships one step further to create and cultivate a supportive community allows for more opportunities to support overall well-being. Each community or network you are part of provides specific support for each component of your well-being. Take some time to reflect on the communities you’re a part of and how they support you, as well as how you support them (giving back is just as important as getting support from others). Are there any communities that you think you’d like to add or even create to provide yourself better support?

6. Learn Something New

Stepping out of our comfort zone and learning something new can spark creative energy, which in turn provides us a chance to reclaim our power and voice, and heal. Each day, see if there’s something small you can learn that is novel to you to help light up your curiosity!

7. Explore and Engage in Short Restoration Activities

We as educators are busy a majority of the time. When possible, take short bits of time to downshift, to rest, to reset, and to restore your mind and body. Perhaps you can check out yoga nidra, restorative yoga, yin yoga, and guided meditations that take anywhere from five to 60 minutes. These restorative activities help to refresh yourself and cultivate renewed energy.

This is definitely not an exhaustive list, but I hope these and other small changes can help support you as you jump into this school year and many more years to come!

Dr. Kathryn Kennedy (she/her/hers): With one foot in digital and online learning and the other in mental health and wellness, Kathryn has been cultivating two primary passions for over 20 years. She serves as founder and principal consultant of Consult4ED Group and founder and executive director of Wellness for Educators. She is author of the forthcoming book The Mind-Body Connection for Educators: Intentional Movement for Wellness (expected publication date: March 28, 2023), which serves as the first in a four-part book series.She lives in Ithaca, New York. You can follow her on Twitter at @Kathryn__EDU and @well4edu.

Kathryn Kennedy 7/10/23 Kathryn Kennedy 7/10/23

#blog: How Teachers Can Unwind and Recharge after the School Year

by Dr. Kathryn Kennedy

Special thanks to Next Generation Learning Challenges for allowing us to cross-post this blog post :-)

Mental health research shows that we are not equipped to sustain good health when dealing with ongoing stress, and teachers have had little time to rest and recharge lately. Three practices can help.

Final assessments complete—check!
Cleaned up learning space—check!
Bulletin boards taken down—check!
Organized digital files—check!
Packed up Marvin (the class bearded dragon) and his cricket and spinach treats—check!
All of the end-of-school-year tasks are complete—check!

You’re ready for summer! All systems go! Full speed ahead!

But wait…

Have you been in GO mode, or even SUPER GO mode, since the beginning of the school year with little time to rest and recharge? Do you feel like a human doing instead of a human being? The majority of educators like you were under a lot of pressure and stress already, and then the pandemic hit! You were forced into overdrive and had to stay there to take care of everyone around you like you usually do and not have enough time to care for yourself. The difference with the pandemic and the stress and overwhelm caused by it was that the high-speed mode you were in never let up; instead, it increased and sustained for over three years.

The field of mental health tells us that some amount of stress is good for us and that we have the ability to deal with short-term stress by using healthy coping mechanisms, such as sleep, boundary setting, deep breathing, and emotional release, among others. However, we are not equipped to sustain good health when stress continues for an extended amount of time.

According to research, when we are in a state of prolonged stress for over six months, and we can’t or don’t slow down to take the time to heal and work through the emotions associated with our stressful and/or traumatic experiences, we can succumb to burnout and in some cases experience symptoms of anxiety, depression, and even post-traumatic stress disorder. In these prolonged stress states, our ability to learn and function can go completely offline (see Dr. Stephen Porges’ The Polyvagal Theory and Dr. Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score.)

The fields of neuroscience and neurophysiology have found that prolonged stress or trauma (using Dr. Peter Levine’s definition, “Trauma is anything that our system can’t handle or process,” anything that puts us outside of our ability to cope) is not only a cognitive experience, but also a bodily experience. Research from Dr. Stephen Porges and Dr. Bessel van der Kolk explains how the body stores the majority of these stress and trauma experiences that eventually lead to aches, pains, and illness in us. This is why it’s vitally important to take the time to heal. Van der Kolk and other neuroscience and neurophysiology researchers also talk about hypervigilance arising when your mind and body are on high alert for an extended time; this leads to our nervous system getting used to that overwhelmed state and consequently staying there if we don’t take the time to downshift and heal.

So instead of jumping into summer and continuing in “GO” mode, what if we slowed down a bit to reset, to downshift into a calmer state of being? After a time when stress has set up camp in our minds and bodies for an extended stay, we can choose to take the time to heal. What can you do to downshift and heal your prolonged stress and/or trauma? Here are three ideas:

1. Guided Meditations

These practices have been used for thousands of years in a variety of cultures and disciplines and can support healing on a cellular level. Research on yoga nidra, or “sleep with a trace of awareness,” has been shown to have a significant impact on stress, sleep, and overall well-being and the feelings of sleeping for three to four hours when only practiced for 45 minutes. Below is an example from the Wellness for Educators’ Wellness Library. This practice involves a bit of storytelling, where you go on a journey to a forest. For this practice, I suggest listening to the audio recording available:

Educator Wellness Roundtable · Yoga Nidra - 40 Minutes

To fully reset the nervous system, enjoy guided meditation once a day for at least a week.

2. Artistic Expression

In its many forms, art can support the healing process and your nervous system in general. Art, such as painting, drawing, and coloring, has been shown to raise serotonin levels; impact brain wave patterns, emotions, and nervous system; interpret, express, and resolve emotions and thoughts; and allow for nonverbal communication of emotions and experiences. Sound or music can release dopamine, a naturally occurring happy chemical in our brains. If you’re not a fan of singing, humming and/or listening to music also help to support the vagus nerve, which in turn can help support the nervous system. Dance and movement practices also provide opportunities for nonverbal communication and release of emotional energy. Through the use of journals, gratitude notes, and poetry, to name a few, writing can also be a healing support. Writing can ease emotions attached to trauma and prolonged stress and can offer another form of unspoken expression.

3. Intentional Movement

Movement is important, but in the healing process, it helps to intentionally check in with the cognitive side of how the body is feeling and what emotions might be arising as we move. As you’re engaging in movement, ask yourself the following, observing without judging:

What do I notice in my mind?
What do I notice in my body?
What do I notice in my feelings?
What do I notice in my thoughts?
What do I need at this moment to feel supported? (Observe without judgment and give yourself what you need to feel supported.)

This last bullet is especially important because as educators and human doings, we tend to bypass our body and mind’s requests for us throughout the day and throughout our lives. In this practice, you can choose to make a conscious shift to listen to and support yourself.

You can learn more about intentional movement in my recently published book called The Mind-Body Connection for Educators: Intentional Movement for Wellness.

The suggestions for healing prolonged stress and trauma shared above are definitely not an exhaustive list of supports. I encourage you to find what supports work best for you and add those to your day-to-day living.

So before you dive into the hustle and bustle of the summer, set aside some time to downshift. Enjoy your summer, and come back even more refreshed for a new school year in the fall!