2020 is a year like no other. For speech-language pathologists, no matter what your setting, how we do our work has changed – PPE in healthcare settings for all patients, remote evaluations and treatments for school-based SLPs, cleaning of materials after each patient, and plexiglass dividers in clinics. Perhaps your children are attending school in remote, hybrid, or 100% in-person models, which each have their own stresses and concerns. You may be helping care for older relatives or other high-risk family members.
It is tiring.
It is exhausting.
It can make a Monday feel like it’s a Thursday. Every. Single. Week.
Self-care is important to make sure that you are well-rested in mind, body, and spirit so that you can go out there and do what you have to do. Self-care could be a virtual happy hour with friends. Self-care could be a walk around the neighborhood. Self-care could be taking a few minutes to enjoy a cup of coffee in the quiet of the morning.
One way you can practice self-care is through meditation. Meditation doesn’t mean sitting with your legs all tangled up and chanting om. It can be if you want, but it can also be sitting in a comfortable chair or on the floor and being still. When so many home and work responsibilities are pulling you in different directions, it can be even more important to take some time for yourself.
Enter Headspace, a meditation app that brings guided meditation, unguided meditation, and background music. Meditation has been proven to help people improve focus and mood and decrease mind wandering and irritability with guided meditation, and unguided meditation, background music.
The app gamifies meditation and awards badges when you have meditated daily for a certain periods of time like a month and six months. Another neat feature is that it allows you to meditate with others at the top or bottom of the hour, so you have the sense that you’re meditating with others, even though you’re apart.
If you have an individual National Provider Identifier number, then you can sign up for Headspace Plus at no cost through the end of 2020. If you bill Medicare or Medicaid, then you have an NPI number. If you’re not sure what it is, then look it up here. Headspace Plus is valued at $69.99 offers a library of guided and unguided meditations with different themes like Handling Sadness, Happiness, Navigating Change, and Patience. Sign up here.
For speech-language pathologists in the schools, Headspace offers K-12 teachers, administrators and supporting staff the opportunity to sign up for free through 2020.
Whether it’s meditation or something else, be sure to practice self-care. The in-flight safety briefings tell us to put on our own oxygen masks before helping others. Be sure to practice self-care as you care for others at work and at home.