I hope that you’re feeling healthy, happy, and safe. Over the past few weeks, we’ve all been consumed by the spread of the COVID-19. Initially focused on accumulating supplies, many of us are now dealing with the day-to-day stressors of working from home, managing our kids’ schooling, and living with social distancing. Here is a curated and annotated list of FREE resources to help us live easily and meaningfully, even as we’re confined to our homes. As you might expect from us at the SoHo CBT + Mindfulness Center, most of these resources focus on mindfulness and meditation... :-)
Meditation Websites
Ten Percent Happier has a “Coronavirus Sanity Guide” with many meditation recordings.
Mindful magazine also has made many resources available for free, including its course, “Find Calm and Nourish Resilience.”
Many folks love Calm, a meditation app with a companion website. It’s offering a variety of meditations and exercises to help us all calm down.
Live, Group Meditation
Bill and Susan Morgan of the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies offer a daily meditation. I’ve been participating in their sits, and it’s been nice to be part of a 100+ group of people dedicated to meditating together.
Monday – Saturday, 8 – 8:35 am EDT
Monday – Saturday, 6 – 6:35 pm EDT (except Tuesday)
Jon Aaron and Upayadhi offer twice daily, live meditation sittings on most days of the week. I took an MBSR course with Jon a few years ago and he was an excellent teacher.
Meditation Apps
My personal favorite app is Insight Timer due to the incredible variety of its guided content and ease of using a simple timer. Unfortunately, its greatest asset (i.e., the diversity of its content) makes it difficult to navigate for beginners who do not know what they’re looking for. So, I’d advise sticking initially to well-known teachers, such as Jon Kabat-Zinn and Tara Brach.
Liberate is a relatively new meditation app for people of color. It includes talks and meditations led by fabulous teachers, including Ruth King, Gina Sharpe, and Sebene Selassie.
If you’re a health care worker, Headspace graciously made its app free for you for the remainder of the year.
Specific Guided Meditations
The acronym of RAIN—Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Nurture—has been used as a model for meditations to help us deal with difficult emotions. We have a version on our website (it’s the “Meditation on Difficult Emotions”).
Last week, Tara Brach led a tender RAIN meditation related to fear amidst the pandemic. Tara also has made her Udemy course, “Mindfulness for Anxiety and Sleep,” free if you sign-up today.
Mindfulness & Kids
Mindful Schools is offering a daily mindfulness class for children on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursday at 1 pm EDT.
Therapy-Related Help
The app, The ACT Companion: The Happiness Trap, will be available for free for the next few months. One of the creators is Russ Harris who is a very respected ACT therapist in Australia. Just use the code “TOGETHER” on the subscription page. (ACT stands for “Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, a relative new form of CBT that we practice a lot in our office)
My friend, Dr. Bob Leahy, has been writing several helpful blog posts about how to manage depression, anxiety, and stress during this time.
Last week, I participated in a webinar with Drs. Anne Marie Albano, Dean McKay, and Rebecca Sachs—all amazing colleagues and CBT therapists! We covered many topics to help assuage anxiety and help our kids and families.
While you’re at home, perhaps there’s a something that you’d like to explore, like learning a new skill or deepening one that you already have. Here are a couple suggestions:
Go deeper into Buddhist Mindfulness and Meditation
Hundreds (thousands?) of Dharma talks available on Dharma Seed.
You might read Bhikkhu Bodhi’s excellent overview the 8-Fold Path or Bhikkhu Analayo’s superb, scholarly review of the Satipatthana Sutra in the Pali Canon.
Wisdom Publications is offering an online course on meditation in the Abidhamma. I haven’t taken it yet, but it’s on my list.
Social Justice
Now is a great time to continue our social justice work. Currently, I’m reading the book “Me and White Supremacy,” which is a helpful workbook to address privilege and promote racial literacy.
An Associate Professor at NYU, Dr. Doris Chang is urging people to attend this town hall event on anti-Asian racism on Saturday, March 28 (today!), from 6 – 8 pm EST. Dr. Chang also works as a psychologist in our office.
Other Options
Dr. Jillian Rosati in our office recommends this crowd-sourced list of activities and resources. It’s hosted by the folks at the Death, Sex, and Money podcast.
She also suggests this comprehensive list of complimentary, at-home fitness options.
Or maybe just read a coronavirus-related poem by Lynn Ungar, which invites us to connect with our hearts during this time.
Spotify Playlist
In hard times, I find great solace in listening to music. On Spotify, I made a Social Distancing & Coronavirus Playlist that’s filled with lots of nostalgic hits from the 80’s. If you’re needing a throwback fix of a Phil Collins duet, then this will be your jam. :-)
That’s all of our recommended resources for now. Here at SoHo CBT + Mindfulness Center, we remain committed to maintaining the health and wellbeing of our patients and the larger community. Please feel free to forward and circulate this email to anyone who might benefit from these resources. May you be happy, healthy, safe and live with ease.