Wellness Information
Wellness
Wellness is an active process of becoming aware of and making choices toward a healthy and fulfilling life. Wellness is practicing healthy habits on a daily basis to attain better physical and mental health outcomes, so that instead of just surviving, you're thriving.
Here at Sam Brannan Middle School, our goal is to help students thrive by practicing self-care, gratitude and by encouraging them to develop a growth mindset.
Self-Care
Care provided "for you, by you." When you take care of yourself, you first identify a need and then you take the steps necessary to meet that need. Self care is about taking proper care of yourself and treating yourself as kindly as you treat others.
Self-Care Techniques:
Stress Management Plan: For Teens
Box Breathing: Stress Management Technique
Mindfulness
Mindfulness means maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment.
Mindfulness also involves acceptance, meaning that we pay attention to our thoughts and feelings without judging them-without believing, for instance, that there's a "right" or "wrong" way to think or feel in a given moment. When we practice mindfulness, our thoughts tune into what we're sensing in the present moment rather than rehashing the past or imagining the future.
Activities for children and teens
Gratitude
Robert Emmons, perhaps the world's leading scientific expert on gratitude, argues that gratitude has two key components: "First, it's an affirmation of goodness. We affirm that there are good things in the world, gifts and benefits we've received."
In the second part of gratitude, he explains, "we recognize that the sources of this goodness are outside of ourselves...We acknowledge that other people...gave us many gifts, big and small, to help us achieve the goodness in our lives."
Why is gratitude important?
"Gratefulness is the key to a happy life that we hold in our hands, because if we are not grateful, then no matter how much we have we will not be happy - because we will always want to have something else or something more." Br. David Steindl-Rast
How Gratitude Changes the Brain
Nutrition
Exercise