Five Ways to Stay Mindful While Keeping Cool Indoors

The heat can be beyond distracting. It can be downright depressing, too, making it hard to function like your normal self. While some summer days are great for getting out and having picnics and barbecues, some days are made for sitting around and doing just… whatever. What we don’t often think about is that “whatever” can also be an opportunity for practicing wellness. Here are five ways to practice mindfulness and wellness while stuck indoors.

The Good Kind of Avoidant Behavior

There’s a lot of shows to catch up on out there, and binge watching makes it oh so tempting to watch the whole thing from beginning to end, but avoiding screens, even for just a part of your day, can be the self care you need in addition to the little extra screen time you’re perfectly fine for indulging in. Just don’t make it your whole day, and allow yourself time to meditate.

Be Mindful of Your Diet

Another thing about the opportunity to hibernate – we don’t always eat well when we’re stuck inside. We have plenty of thoughts on how to hydrate and eat well, but a good plan of attack is to only eat when you’re hungry, especially if you’re going for a day of screen time. Snacking should mean healthy, light snacks, and try to avoid dehydrating yourself with caffeine. You’ll feel more alert that way, too.

Use Mindfulness Apps

Okay, so that screen time thing was just a guideline, but some screen time can be okay, especially if its an app designed to help you look inward, relax, and get healthy. One very popular such app is Calm, which is available on all the app stores and gives you options for mindfulness you might not have otherwise considered. Also, apps tend to “gamify” behavior, so why not find something healthy to turn into a game?

Journaling

Looking inward, among other wellness concepts, can pay off in spades if you have other ways to reflect on it. Sometimes that might be talking with a professional or a loved one, but another way to do it for just yourself is to journal. It’s easy to be turned off by this idea, because we’re often conditioned to think of any expression as over-expression, when in fact journaling is a healthy way to not just get our thoughts on paper, but a way to look at how we examine our own thoughts. You’ll find tomorrow that today’s feelings in today’s words will be like reading the words of another person, and allow you even more insight into yourself.

Telehealth

Therapy is a great option if its available to you, and telehealth can be the perfect option for someone who can’t or doesn’t want to go into an office. Usually app-based, these solutions are great and cut out commute time for users.

Summary

Staying indoors doesn’t have to be useful time, but it can be. Finding methods to keep your brain active in a healthy way are usually just a few simple steps away.