Spring 2025 Faculty Day Breakout Session: Bringing Peace & Ease During Changing Times

Spring 2025 Faculty Day

title: Spring 2025 Faculty Day Breakout Session: Bringing Peace & Ease During Changing Times date: 2025-01-15 23:22:39 location: Heritage University tags:

  • Heritage University
  • Breakout Session
  • Faculty Presentation presentation_video: > description: >

Self-care can improve our overall well-being and our ability to be effective at our jobs. As our nation is going through changing times, it is important to come up with effective strategies to bring peace into our lives. Practicing self-care and/or mindfulness is a powerful way to take care of ourselves so that we can effectively teach and support our students.

This session is facilitated as a breakout session for the Spring 2025 Faculty Professional Day at Heritage (Reaffirming the Heritage University Mission: Navigating Together through Changing Times). It was facilitated by:

Jacob Campbell, Ph.D. LICSW (Associate Professor)
Ruby Aguilar, LICSW (BSW Director, Social Work Co-Chair)
Jessica Vega (Practicum Director)

We are providing a couple of handouts during this session. They include:

  • Breathing Exercise Cards

The agenda for this breakout session is as follows:

  • Impact of stress and self-care
  • Developing a self-care plan
  • Practice with self-care activity
  • Ideas for self-care implementation

The learning objectives include:

The breakout session participants will:

  • identify the impacts stress and self-care can have
  • develop connections with their peers and their experiences
  • apply the development of a self-care plan
  • apply the skill of positive imagery
  • gain ideas for using mindfulness and self-care in the classroom

Agenda and Learning Objectives

Our plan for today

Agenda

  • Impact of stress and self-care
  • Developing a self-care plan
  • Practice with self-care activity
  • Ideas for self-care implementation

Learning Objectives

The breakout session participants will:

  • identify the impacts stress and self-care can have
  • develop connections with their peers and their experiences
  • apply the development of a self-care plan
  • apply the skill of positive imagery
  • gain ideas for using mindfulness and self-care in the classroom

Stress Impacts Our Minds and Bodies

The American Institute of Stress (n.d.) describes the negative impact that stress can have on our minds and body.

  • Chronic stress impacts many of our body’s systems:
    • Central Nervous & Endocrine Systems: Controls the “fight or flight” response, involving stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, which rev up your heart and redirect blood to critical areas during a crisis.
    • Respiratory & Cardiovascular Systems: Stress hormones cause faster breathing and increased heart rate, raising blood pressure and potentially leading to heart disease, stroke, or worsened respiratory conditions.
    • Digestive System: Stress can disrupt digestion, increasing the risk of heartburn, acid reflux, and ulcers, while potentially leading to nausea, diarrhea, or constipation.
    • Muscular System: Chronic stress keeps muscles tense, potentially leading to headaches, back pain, and an unhealthy reliance on pain medications or inactivity.
    • Sexuality & Reproductive System: Stress impacts sexual desire and reproductive health, causing hormonal imbalances, irregular menstrual cycles in women, and reduced testosterone or fertility in men.
    • Immune System: Stress initially boosts immunity but weakens it over time, making you more susceptible to illnesses and prolonging recovery from sickness or injury.
  • It can contribute to reducing our overall wellbeing
  • It also can impact our mental health our overall well-being, such as irritability, anxiety, depression, headaches, or insomnia

Reference

The American Institute of Stress (n.d.) Stress affects your body and mind. https://www.stress.org/stress-effects/

Self-Care Impact on Our Wellbeing and Domains

I really appreciate the framing that Posluns and Gall (2020) frame review of the impact that self-care can have on stress.

They were more focused on exploring the stress related to clinicians, but it is helpful for all of us to consider the impact that self-care can have. Their findings show that self-care increases well-being, whereas when we are not engaging in self-care, we are likely to have negative outcomes.

They divide self-care into six domains that we might engage in strategies. These include:

  • Awareness: personal insight, reflection, creativity
  • Balance: work-life, within the context of our life, etc.
  • Flexibility: in our thinking, skills, and way of engaging with our world
  • Physical health: sleep, diet, exersize
  • Social support: both personal and professional
  • Spirituality: spiritual connection, mindfulness, gratitude, etc.

Full Table for Reference:

| Self-care domains | Self-care strategies | | —————– | —————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————– | | Awareness | Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Mindfulness and meditation training
Self-reflection
Creative writing | | Balance | Leisure activities
Varied work activities (e.g., teaching)
Non-work related passions
Non-work related relationships
Holistic approach to health
Professional and personal boundaries
Time management
Taking breaks
Flexible work hours and locations
Realistic work goals | | Flexibility | Effective coping strategies
Attitude of openness
Adaptability
Realistic self-expectations
Cognitive reappraisal
Self-compassion and acceptance
Setting and reappraising goals
Expressive writing and journaling
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Professional development | | Physical health | Sleep hygiene (e.g., self-monitoring sleep habits)
Balanced diet and hydration
Exercise | | Social support | Personal:
- Family
- Friends
- Personal psychotherapy
Professional:
- Individual or group supervision
- Professional associations
- Colleague assistance programs
- University faculty
- Mentors/advisors
- Peer consultation | | Spirituality | Spiritual connection
Prayer
Mindfulness
Spending time in nature
Practicing gratitude
Meaning-making:
- Positive reappraisal
- Engaging in meaningful work
- Setting goals with life purpose
- Spiritual beliefs and activities (e.g., ultimate meaning of work) | Table Self-care strategies for mental health practitioners quoted from (Posluns and Gall, 2020, p. 12)

Reference

Posluns, K., & Gall, T. L. (2020). Dear mental health practitioners, take care of yourselves: A Literature review on self-care. International Journal for the Advancement of Counseling, 42(1), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10447-019-09382-w

Whole Group Discussion - Impact of Stress and Wellbeing

I am hoping that we can be a bit vulnerable here, and talk about what stress and self-care looks like for us and our students.

[Whole Class Activity] Engage group members in discussion focused on:

  • What are some of the things that might cause stress in our lives?
  • What do you do to take care of yourself and manage your stress?
  • How does stress impact students?
  • What are the barriers that we or students might have in managing our stress?

Developing a self-care plan

-> Jessica

[Whole Class Activity] Discuss how to develop a self-care plan

Practice with self-care activity

-> Ruby

Pleasant Imagery, Happy Gilmore Style

Think about a place where your mind can go when you have too many thoughts. The more specific and connected to our senses, the more engaging the space.

[Whole Class Activity] Have draw a happy/safe place incorporating all senses share examples

Implementing Mindfulness in the Classroom

Social work lends itself to incorporating self-care. The idea of self-care is even in our code of ethics. We have a number of examples of embedding it into our classroom environment and sharing, especially mindfulness.

We wanted to share some of the types of examples we have engaged in:

  • Guided meditations and visualizations (whether it is me guiding the activity or something like the wheel of awareness)
  • Breathing exercises (consider box breathing, tracing hand, belly breathing, etc.)
  • Physical activity (POI spinning, progressive muscle relaxation)
  • Mental techniques (Activities like this pleasant imagery, reminders, cognitive restructuring, recognizing distorted thinking, grounding etc.)
  • Focusing on senses (five senses, experiencing taste, uncomfortable feelings, etc.)

[Whole Class Activity] Discuss the following:

  • Do any of you include mindfulness or grounding activities in your curriculum and coursework? What, how, when?
  • What are the challenges and benefits of doing this type of thing

System-Wide Self Care

A few years ago, I read Jolivette et al. (2019), who made a comprehensive focus how staff in juvenile correctional facilities could embed staff self-care. They framed it in a MTSS model:

Tier 1:

  • Employer health and wellness program
  • Staff safety plans
  • Mindfulness exercises and post-incident-processing Tier 2:
  • Mindfulness workspaces (where could go as needed)
  • Creating self-care plans
  • Embed gratitude-focused self-are practices
  • Workplace self-care groups Tier 3:
  • Self-care assessments and action plans
  • Supervisor-recommended health and wellness program activities

We don’t have the same kind of incidents and challenges as a juvenile system, but I think it might be helpful to say how this could be more system-wide at Heritage.

[Whole Class Activity] Discussion:

  • In what ways can self-care be embedded into Heritage as an organization?

Reference

Jolivette, K., Swoszowski, N. C., Kumm, S., Sanders, S., & Ansley, B. M. (2019). Embedding staff self-care into the MTSS framework for those working in juvenile correctional facilities. Journal of Correctional Education, 70(1), 2-19. https://doi.org/10.2307/26864119

Reference

American Institute of Stress (n.d.) Stress affects your body and mind. https://www.stress.org/stress-effects/

Jolivette, K., Swoszowski, N. C., Kumm, S., Sanders, S., & Ansley, B. M. (2019). Embedding staff self-care into the MTSS framework for those working in juvenile correctional facilities. Journal of Correctional Education, 70(1), 2-19. https://doi.org/10.2307/26864119

Posluns, K., & Gall, T. L. (2020). Dear mental health practitioners, take care of yourselves: A Literature review on self-care. International Journal for the Advancement of Counseling, 42(1), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10447-019-09382-w