Tips for Staying Physically and Mentally Healthy in Isolation

Exercise Using Your Couch

You don’t need to be in the gym to do weight training, you can do it at home, and it can be just as effective. You can even do it sitting on your sofa. Get a pair of oven gloves and place them over your calves with a can in each hand compartment. You will then slowly lift your legs up and down. Maintaining leg strength is very important when we cannot leave our homes and get the exercise and movement in our legs that we generally do every day without even thinking about it.

You can also do arm workouts with the cans – doing bicep curls, arm raises, etc., which will also work out your shoulders and back. For a full guided exercise, search YouTube for activities from your couch, and you will find hundreds of videos. You won’t even need weights for some of them, but to challenge yourself a little more, you can use cans from around your household. You can break a sweat doing workouts from the couch. Then when you’re done, you can just sit back, catch your breath and turn on your current Netflix show.

Focus On Body Weight Exercises

You might not be sold on the idea of weight exercises from home to keep you healthy in isolation, and that’s okay because there are other ways to work on your health while in isolation at home. What can you do instead? There are lots of exercises you can do that don’t feel like an at-home workout. Why not have a dance party in your living room? Turn up the music and get your heart rate up with some groovy tunes! If you are in an apartment building, maybe try not to jump around too much.

You could also focus on bodyweight exercises. You could do simple activities such as squats and even use a stable dining chair if you need extra support. This moment could also be an excellent opportunity for you to work on your planking ability. Maybe work on your stretches and bring out your inner ballerina? How about some “Floor is Lava” game, and to get to the other mat, you need to do some jump squats? Use your imagination here because the possibilities are endless. If you focus on games and activities that only use bodyweight exercises, then you in for a fun and productive workout.

Time For Some Sit-Ups

What about some sit-ups? Get those abs when you can resume a healthy life and take that beach holiday you dream about all year long. You can even do these exercises in front of the TV or in between work breaks. You could increase each day by one to five reps and keep trying to beat your previous day’s score. It’s a great way to keep yourself motivated – trying to beat yourself. If you can get friends or family in on this, you could all have a friendly competition. Maybe even a prize for the winner?

Other options for bodyweight exercises are lunges and even advancing to an incline press-up using the sofa as your aid. The only thing is that with bodyweight exercises, you will need to do a few more reps of a task than you would with actual weights. If you want to incorporate some weights, but you don’t have any, try using canned goods or lifting furniture around the house. Just be careful when doing this – you don’t want to injure yourself! If you are getting too tired when doing this, stop and take a break.

Aim For Twenty Minutes

Try doing bodyweight exercises for around twenty minutes. If you can, the ideal amount of activity is three 20-minute rounds of movement throughout your day. This routine could include walking, cycling, yoga, and some bodyweight exercises. You can use your phone to keep track of your distance on walks and try to beat your times each day. You can also find different exercise apps to get a good routine or search for at-home workouts on YouTube. If you don’t meet the 20 minutes three times a day, that’s okay. Just try the next day again.

There are many benefits to exercise, and they aren’t all just about keeping fit and toned. Working out will help to improve your mood and keep up your overall health. It will also help you stay focused, which is essential when you are working from home. Exercising is a great stress reliever, so if you have been experiencing more anxiety or stress recently, try incorporating exercise into your daily routine. It’s great because you can find many at-home workouts online for free, and you can start any day. If you have any concerns about exercises, talk to your doctor.

Work On Your Circulation

When working from home, there is something fundamental to remember: your primary circulation. You need to make sure that you are getting up from your at-home office chair at least every thirty minutes. When working at the office, they probably have better office chairs for you than what you have at home, so keeping in mind your back support and the importance of getting up and stretching is crucial. You can set the alarm as a reminder to get up every 30-60 minutes, and you can follow along with a simple stretching video on YouTube or just stretch on your own.

While you are sitting at your desk, there are also some circulation exercises you can do. This notion includes flexing and rotating your lower leg. Do this a few times in your seat during your 30 minutes of sitting down to get the blood flowing. You can also search for exercises to do while sitting down in a chair – this will give you more ideas of other movements you can do while working from home in your office chair. Search for these videos on YouTube to get a video tutorial that way. You can see how the movement is supposed to be done.

Get Up And Stretch

When you’ve been sitting for thirty minutes, get up, and have a good stretch. Follow this idea by taking a walk around the room. Also, you can go to the kitchen for a refreshment or outside for fresh air. It’s good to have a routine for your day – but you need to remember to incorporate breaks. That’s why it’s the law to have a break period for employees after working for a certain amount of time. A good starting point would be for every half an hour, give yourself at least five minutes for a break to get up, use the washroom and get a drink. If you can give yourself a more extended break, that’s great too.

If you forget to do this, you can set the alarm on your phone to remind you to do this. Your body will thank you for taking the time to refresh it, and you will be ready to sit down and focus for another thirty minutes. It’s a good idea to even set the alarm for breaks so that you don’t get distracted and forget to go back to what you were supposed to be doing. It’s an easy habit to get into, so it’s best to try and keep yourself on track.

FaceTime Your Friends

You might be someone who enjoys exercising with your friends or family. This concept may be something you are unable to do at the moment, but that shouldn’t stop you from working out, and there are ways to recreate this thanks to technology. You could both watch the same videos on YouTube and get a great home workout in. Share your favorite routines with your friends and family, and encourage them to get active as well. You could also use a map app to track your walks or runs if you can go outside.

During that time, you would go walking with a friend, call them on FaceTime, and have a conversation while you wander around the house or the garden. You could even just march on the spot while talking to them. Apps and watches like Fitbit track your daily exercise, and you’re able to add friends to your account. You could have some friendly competition with your friends on who can get the most steps in one day, or the most calories burnt. It is a good motivator for your friends and yourself as well, and the app makes it easy to keep track.

Get Creative With Your Exercises and Socialization

Just because we have to distance socially doesn’t mean you can’t find ways to socialize still. We just have to be a bit more creative and think outside the box. This idea will not only help your physical health but, most likely, your mental health as well. We can get creative by doing things “together” virtually when we can’t be together physically. When we make an effort to do things together, it gives us a feeling of being connected, which is excellent for our mental health. Encouraging each other to do exercises together virtually is an excellent motivator for everyone.

Schedule a time with your friend or family member for the walk and talk, and you can both do it simultaneously. If you can walk in the garden, you can show them what you are seeing, so it feels like you are experiencing the walk together. Alternatively, if there is a great walking path with a view of the lake – show your friend or family member what you’re seeing! A great way to incorporate exercise and socialize, especially if you both live in different areas, could experience coast to coast views.

Don’t Feel Isolated

If you live on your own, communicating with people is essential. You can start to feel isolated if you are unable to see people, which can take a toll on your mental health, which will affect everything else in your life. If you have neighbors, you can check in on them because maybe they don’t have anyone in their lives. You can still social distance while checking in – it could go a long way for that other person, and it helps your mental wellbeing as well. Maybe you could offer to help pick anything up if you feel it’s safe to do so – like getting something from the grocery store for them.

Also, you should include socializing in your daily routine so that you have something to look forward to. You could make a time slot during your lunch break to call someone different each day and check in on how they are doing. Not only does this help with your own routine, but it helps others. If there are people you know who don’t speak to their family, you could reach out to them as well. It doesn’t hurt to check-in, and when you check in on others, others may start to check in on you as well, which is a nice feeling.

Put In The Extra Effort

Make an extra effort with your loved ones during this time because you never know who might be feeling lonely, and your phone call could make a big difference. Talking to others will help you to maintain cognition as well as keeping your mood up. If you give them the steps over the phone, you could even have group calls and video calls with your loved ones. You could take your old routine of having Sunday dinner together and do it virtually! You can also play games virtually or just catch up and check-in with them.

If you have older people in your family, make sure that you are keeping in contact as they will have been isolated for a lot longer than you. Check-in once a day over the phone or message them throughout the day. Not only is it something for you to look forward to and put into your routine, but it’s also something for your loved one to look forward to as well. Be patient if you are trying to teach them how to do something virtually over the phone – it may be something completely new and intimidating.

Keep Your Mind Healthy Too

Besides keeping physically active, you need to stay healthy in your mind, which means keeping mentally active. There are so many unique activities you can do – you could even binge a quiz based program! Try and answer the questions that are being asked – it will be a lot of fun. If you live alone or don’t have friends and family who can visit, keeping your mind active is vital and will keep you happier at home. If you’re not into game shows, try to find a fascinating documentary to watch or listen to an educational podcast.

Think of keeping your mind healthy the same as exercising your body. You need to exercise your brain as well because it’s a muscle. It can be a lot of fun and done in many different ways. You could take a new online course, learn a new skill, or try downloading an app like Duolingo and learning a new language! That not only exercises the mind but can also be super beneficial in your daily life. Learning a new skill or language could help you land a new or better job, or can make your everyday life easier as well.

Pick Up A Hobby

A great tip to have a healthy isolation period is maintaining the hobbies you used to do before it or maybe even taking up a new one. Hobbies are a great way to lift your spirit and make you feel like your life is somewhat expected. You can even block times for your hobbies as well, so that way you’re making a routine for your day. That can be beneficial to not feel like your “wasting away” your day and also have a feeling of structure. Give yourself hour blocks of time to work with throughout the day.

Knitting is an excellent activity for you to do. This activity is suitable for people with arthritis and also helps to improve your dexterity. It will help loosen your joints, and it serves as something to keep you busy as well. You can knit while listening to a podcast – get two things done at once: knitting and learning catching up on a podcast! Many people also watch TV while knitting too, though this can take a bit more practice for beginners. Knitted items make great gifts, give us something to look forward to, and make us feel good.

Bake a New Recipe

If you aren’t a fan of knitting, there are loads of other activities you might enjoy doing. You could sew, crochet, or feel adventurous, try to restore and recover some furniture that could use an update. Another hobby many people find therapeutic is coloring. You can find adult coloring books that are beautiful and range from simple designs to intricate art pieces. Doing any kind of art is therapeutic and is ideal for times in isolation. If needlework isn’t in your wheelhouse, you could follow some online origami tutorials or try your hand at baking.

Find a recipe that you have always wanted to try out and do it. The best thing is if you’re isolated on your own, you can have your cake and eat it. A great thing about baking is that there are steps to follow, which is your not an artistic type might be more satisfying and therapeutic for you. There are many simple baking that you can do that only require a few ingredients or take on a more significant challenge and go for a more complicated recipe. You get to reap the benefits of your baking afterward, too!

Reflect On Your Anxiety

If you have found that you are struggling with anxiety during this period, you can do things to relieve yourself. Something that might be helpful to practice in isolation is your breathwork and meditation. Both of these will help you to work through those feelings and get you to a better headspace. These activities will help train your mind to enjoy a state of mental clarity and help you relax and have a moment of peace. This movement will then reduce your anxiety and help you cope with stress and become less stressed overall.

When you reflect on how you felt when you had high anxiety moments, you can learn the triggers you have for yourself. Maybe thinking about our country’s state for too long is a trigger, or having the news on for too long. Would just reading the information you need be better than watching an entire broadcast about it? Once you reflect and think about what was happening when these triggers affected you, you will better realize when high anxiety is coming. Then, you can either stop it from happening or lessen the anxious feelings because you’ll be more prepared.

Search For Online Meditation Guides

If you aren’t sure where to start, there are so many meditation resources available online. Yoga practice goes hand in hand with this, and a combination of the two activities could prove beneficial to you in isolation. It is a great workout and can be great for beginners and people with more experience working out. Did you know that it is about really listening to your body and focuses on your breathing? That is a primary focus for meditation. There are many free resources on YouTube as far as yoga routines, and it may take several videos before you find one you like.

There are even apps you can download, such as Headspace. This app is currently the world’s biggest meditation platform. It has lots of different content for you, and you can tailor-make your mediation experience, and you will be guided through it. There are meditations for your morning and evening routine, and there are meditations for when you have those anxious feelings as well. You can download the app for android or apple devices, and it is free to download. Get started with it today and become familiar with the app so you can use it whenever you need to.

Try Out The Headspace App

An app like Headspace will help you to understand anxiety-inducing thoughts as well as storylines. The mediation will help you learn a new perspective, and with this, your relationship with anxiety will begin to change. You can learn your triggers and what you can do to prevent or lessen the anxious thoughts and feelings. Doing these exercises now can help in the future when you are in a situation where you can’t stop and meditate. You’ll be able to deal with real-world scenarios much more effectively, reducing anxiety and stress in your day to day life.

Meditation helps bring awareness to our minds and bodies and provides you with techniques that you can use whenever you start to feel that awful feeling of anxiety, making its way into your mind. Taking time to practice these techniques is essential, and an app like Headspace makes it so much easier. You can use it multiple times a day if you want – and you can use it alongside other stress reducers like journaling or physical exercise. Headspace is available on both Android and Apple devices so that you can get it on your phone or tablet.

Focus On Your Breathing

Then you can turn your attention to the movement of your body. See how your chest, ribs, and belly are moving. Focus on your breath without feeling the need to control how fast you breathe or how intense you are breathing. You can start with a five-count breath in, hold for one second, then a five-count breath out. As long as your breathing is steady and even, you should start to feel calmer and notice how your body feels better with more oxygen going into your blood – flowing through your body from head to toe.

If you find that your mind is starting to wander or get distracted by things surrounding you, bring your attention back to your breath. Your breath is your safe space when you are meditating. It is okay if you need to count again; five seconds in, one-second pause, five seconds out. You can change this to any variation you need, but it is good to pause for a moment at the top of your inhale. Do this for two to three minutes, or however long you need. Meditation is not an actual practice, so you can tailor it however you want to.

Get A Good Night’s Sleep

If you are having a hard time, make sure you are getting a good night’s sleep. Sleep is a natural way to help your mental health. It is important to make sleep a priority in your life as it’s hard to face a new day if you are tired and stressed. Stick to your usual bedtime routine in isolation and maybe try and include some extra relaxation time for yourself to ensure that you are getting the best chance at a good night’s sleep. This opportunity would be a great time to meditate as well.

An excellent way to start getting a good night’s sleep is to establish a nighttime routine. Nighttime routines can begin with having a shower and doing your skincare routine – there are many simple nighttime skincare routines on YouTube to get you started. Nighttime is a good time to journal as well – write down how you are feeling, then follow up with mediation and reflecting on what you wrote down. You can end the night in bed with some reading as well. It’s not a bad idea to set the alarm for the morning if you oversleep as well – too much sleep can be just as inadequate as too little sleep.

Try To Avoid Conflict

If you live with other people, you can live a better life in isolation or during lockdown to do your best to avoid conflicts. Everyone is stressed out at the moment, and it could cause unnecessary fights or arguments. If you find you are getting irritated or annoyed, try to remove yourself from the situation and take some time out and relax. When you feel calmer, try to discuss any issues in a relaxed way while returning to the group or person. Keep healthy, and you’ll make it through isolation a better person!

It’s not only about keeping healthy physically, but mentally as well. Find things that help calm you down – finding a new hobby like painting, listening to calm music, or going for a walk are excellent ways to destress. Once you start practicing these things, you can handle conflict better and be calmer in the situation. When you’re calm, it will help the people around you be calm as well. It’s okay to take breaks during arguments if things are getting too heated – take 10 minutes to reflect, then come back. The conversation should be easier after doing that.

Sources:

https://yogagardenwp.com/2020/03/05/stay-calm-yoga-on-healthy-tips/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-8119167/Must-read-tips-survive-self-isolation.html

https://www.gaiam.com/blogs/discover/meditation-101-techniques-benefits-and-a-beginner-s-how-to

https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/uk/health/health-advice/a31697332/staying-fit-healthy-self-isolating/

https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-magazine/wellbeing/how-to-keep-healthy-while-you-cant-go-out