We hope this blog post finds you and your loved ones safe and healthy. Many of you may be feeling stressed, anxious, overwhelmed, and lonely. It’s our goal here at Juniper Family Health to continue supporting your overall wellbeing, including mental health, especially during these difficult times.
In this article we will be sharing a variety of tools and strategies to support your wellbeing at this time. We hope you find these tips valuable as we all continue to navigate through this pandemic together.
1. Meditation
Meditation can be frustrating as many believe they need to shut off their thoughts completely. This isn’t the case for mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness meditation involves simply being aware of your thoughts without following them down the rabbit hole, and instead bringing your attention back to your breath or another anchor in the present moment.
Benefits of Mindfulness Meditation
✔️Improves stress regulation by decreasing cortisol
✔️Improves psychological well-being
✔️Improves communication skills
✔️Improves concentration
Guided meditation is a good place to start - and there are plenty of apps for that! One of our favourite mindfulness meditation teachers is Tara Brach.
Meditation Apps: Insight Timer, Calm, Headspace
2. Yoga
Mindful movement such as yoga is one way to bring down those stress hormones, get out of your head, and ground yourself. For the anxious type, this can be a good alternative if you're having difficulty with guided meditations.
LOCAL studios providing online classes: One Yoga Victoria, Fernwood Yoga Den, Yoga Lab Victoria, Third Space Movement, MokSana Yoga
Instagram Live stories: One Yoga Victoria, Oxygen Yoga and Fitness Victoria
More Yoga: DoYogaWithMe.com, Yoga With Adriene on YouTube
3. Exercise
✔️Increases endorphins: these are the body’s natural pain killers and mood elevators.
✔️Regulates cortisol: a prominent stress hormone, too much or too little cortisol may contribute to anxious feelings or low energy respectively. Moderate to high intensity exercise increases circulating cortisol levels, while low intensity exercise actually reduces cortisol. Because cortisol should be highest in the morning, this is when you should engage in higher intensity exercise (running, biking) while the evening should be reserved for low intensity exercise (walking).
Resources for you to continue (or start!) your exercise routine from home:
NikeTrainingClub: a free app that provides a variety of exercises allowing you to select workouts based on intensity level and type of equipment you have (or don’t have).
LOCAL studios providing online classes:
- Alive: barre, pilates, yoga
- BPM Indoor Cycling Inc.: HIIT, bootcamp
Instagram: Barreroom, Madeline Moves
Other: Orange Theory Fitness, Fitness Blender, MadFit
Quaran-toning pro tips:
✔️Find a workout buddy and FaceTime together while you sweat
✔️Get outside: walking, running, or biking in a socially distant manner
4. Good Food
Need recipe inspiration? Here’s a list of some of our favourite food blogs:
- Fare and Flourish
- Nourishing Meals
- Oh She Glows
- Minimalist Baker
- Green Kitchen Stories
- Comfy Belly
- Nom Nom Paleo
- Sprouted Kitchen
- Dinner: A Love Story
Sick of cooking? Check out these local restaurants that are delivering grocery boxes that provide easy to make meals:
- V-Unit
- 10 Acres Market
- Nourish Kitchen
5. Entertainment for Kids
Birthday Drive-by (Saanich Fire Department): email fireprevention@saanich.ca to request
Mental Health Resources
Government of BC’s Virtual Mental Health Support: no cost, or low cost virtual mental health resources during the Covid-19 crisis including:
✔️Coaching & skills-building for those with mental health concerns
✔️Virtual community counselling
✔️Peer support groups
✔️Skills courses for coping with stress
✔️Mental health assessment tool
✔️Psychological first aid
✔️Additional support for: frontline healthcare workers, youth, students, seniors, victims of family or sexual violence, and indigenous peoples.
BC Psychological Association Free Mental Health
Trusted COVID-19 Information
1. British Columbia COVID-19 App includes:
✔️Self-Assessment Tool
✔️Latest Updates
✔️BC Statistics
2. Island Health News Releases
Current naturopathic services available through Juniper Family Health:
Telemedicine consultations: Our naturopathic physicians are offering video or phone consults from the comfort of your home. Telemedicine consultations can be directly billed to your extended health plan. Book online
Supplements: We are shipping supplement requests directly to you, to eliminate non-essential contact and promote physical distancing.
Lab testing: We have partnered with a number of functional medical laboratories to provide you with at-home lab tests. The lab kits can be shipped directly to your home, and contain everything that you need to collect the sample. Once the sample is collected, the kit is shipped directly to the laboratory for testing. These tests include blood spot testing for hormones, nutrients, and cardiometabolic markers (ZRT Blood Spot), food sensitivity testing (US BIotek), SIBO testing (SIBO Diagnostics), urine hormone metabolite testing (Meridian Valley), and microbiology stool panels (Doctor’s Data). At this time all non-urgent or non-acute diagnostic testing through LifeLabs will be deferred to a later date. We are hoping LifeLabs testing will be available for non-essential services by mid May.