Search the Community

Top 5 Stress Relief Games in 2020 Posted by Yana Yelina | Apr 15, 2020 Source: Mental Health Matters You certainly feel stressed from time to time: negative emotions and fatigue quite often come while you’re at work, and it seems really difficult to get rid of them, distract, and relax a little bit. To provide some examples, 80% of workers are stressed while managing their daily activities (especially those in the USA and China), and almost half admits they need aid in reducing stress and anxiety. Beyond that, according to the statistics, 75% of adults encounter moderate or high levels of stress during few months, with 1 out of 75 persons experiencing panic disorder. Stress is also a top health concern for US and Australian teens. There are several ways to cope with stress from reading a book to yoga. This article explains how you can use stress relief games to help manage your stress. 1. Bubble Wrap Bubble Wrap is a great game for reducing stress. Bubble wrap popping beloved by many people is now available virtually. Just press the bubbles with fingers and make them explode, thus, getting rid of destructive emotions. This free mobile app is also a time killer: you can play it while waiting in a queue or during a long and tiring trip. There’s an option to pop bubbles as long as you desire, or opt for a mini-game (Blitz Pop: the number of bubbles popped within a minute; Pop 500: the speed at which you pop 500 bubbles; Pop All: how fast you’ll be able to pop the whole sheet that includes 2,000 bubbles). The app offers a range of colors, pleasant sounds and allows users to change the bubble size. 2. Color Break Color Break grants a marvelous opportunity to relax and make fun. Try digital painting using your fingertips or stylus and relish an amazing variety of patterns. This app will help to encourage your creativity and forget about a tough day. This stress reliever game boasts an unlimited number of colors and lets users share finished works with friends via emails. This is a great “quiet” game that you can play at work without drawing too much attention your way! 3. Personal Zen Personal Zen is another game for handling stress and anxiety. The app was created with the assistance of neuroscientists, and it’s clinically proven to help people to battle painful emotions and exercise the brain for better wellness. Researchers say it is a bright idea to play Personal Zen a couple of times a week for about 5-10 minutes. However, the longer you play, the better influence on your well-being you experience. Furthermore, the game trains your brain so that you can concentrate on positive things in your life and throw away negatives. Just accurately follow the path of a friendly sprite on the screen without allowing the evil one to distract you. Mediavine 4. Paper Toss Paper Toss is a nice app to use during a break at work. Whenever you feel exhausted and need to relax, take a crumpled piece of paper to make it in a trash basket on your mobile phone. The game offers an automatic count of balls that reached the target, 7 levels of difficulty, stunning graphics, great flick control, natural sounds at the office with comments from angry co-workers, varying speed of the paper flight, and more. So, feel free to have a short break and rest with the Paper Toss app. 5. Relaxing Puzzler Relaxing Puzzler represents a meditative puzzle game with which you’ll be able to take your time and have a rest. Hypnotic soundtracks by Winterpark will give you an opportunity to meditate and reach the state of serenity without noticing the change. The app, inspired by meditative art styles, is easy to use: you just guide the energy by moving rocks around the mystic garden and relax to the full. Read Full Article This pandemic has been incredibly hard for our world. It hit like a ton of bricks and has lasted a great deal of time. It may even seem to most of us that it will never end. The truth is, our world has survived many events that were similar in a lot of ways. In this case, the 1918 Pandemic parallels the struggles that we are facing now. Thankfully, we have made great advancements in our knowledge, skill and understanding and that offers us some relief and tools that were not present in 1918. However, the fear, emotion and disbelief were the same for the people experiencing these events as they are for us. We are never alone in our experiences the way we tend to sometimes feel. The NY Times gathered some excerpts from survivors of the 1918 Pandemic and their insights and thoughts echo much of what can be heard today during this Covid 19 Pandemic. While it is devastating to endure, perhaps we can take heart in the fact that others have gone before us and have come out the other side. Things are ever changing and while this may feel permanent, it will eventually morph into something different. Things will eventfully settle and security will return one day. Below are some of the excerpts from the NY TImes article for you to read and even share with your residents. The full article is linked below it. Memories of the 1918 Pandemic From Those Who Survived Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/us/spanish-flu-oral-history.html Nearly everyone who survived the 1918 flu pandemic, which claimed at least half a million American lives, has since died. But their memories, preserved in oral history interviews, shed light on its indelible impact. Bustling major cities and rural towns were brought to their knees, as transportation, law enforcement, commerce and civic life were wiped out. On the scale of death “They were stacked up in the cemetery and they couldn’t bury them. I was living on 31st Street. then. And that was a two-way street then, you know, and it’s one-way now. But people that died over this way had to be buried over this way and they used to have a funeral procession coming this way. And they used to be crossing. You had, they had to come to this bridge, coming one way or the other. And people would be there. And I would be laying in there and I says, I looked out the window and says, ‘There are two funeral processions. One going one way and one going the other way meeting like that.’ And that’s the way it was. There wasn’t a lot of comforts in those days. But it didn’t worry me. I was taking care of myself. What I mean, I wasn’t thinking about it. I wasn’t knowing whether I was going to die or what. I was just figuring it’s got me, and everything else is going on.” — Clifford Adams, Philadelphia, 1984 On fear of the contagion “That was the roughest time ever. Like I say, people would come up and look in your window and holler and see if you was still alive, is about all. They wouldn’t come in.” — Glenn Holler, Conover, N.C., 1980 On the human cost “They were dying — many families losing one or more in their family. It was getting so bad, the deaths, they even, they had to use wagons drawn by two horses to carry people to the grave. I remember seeing them past the house, seems like to me now it was every day. … At that time, when the phone would ring, when my mother or my father wanted to listen in, and they would turn to us, and they would name the person they just heard had died. It was night and day that you would hear about these people dying. My father never got the flu but he would go to town and buy groceries for the neighbors and take it to the front porch. And we didn’t get the flu at all in our family, but it was terrible.” — Robert McKinney Martin Jr., 1996 Read Full Article You are what you eat. Scientists have fast been connecting nutritional intake and food sensitivities with mental illnesses and behavioral issues. There is no way around it, what you fuel your body with needs to be clean and recognized as real food. This is especially important during times of great stress or when a strong immune system is pertinent. If stress is not managed, it may wreck havoc on your health down the road in the form of physical symptoms. According to Eating Well, there are a several foods you should consider throwing into your diet, and perhaps your food cart, that can specifically help with stress relief. 7 Foods for Stress Relief Source: Eating Well Stress can take a toll on your body’s natural defenses, but eating the right foods can offer relief. 1. Snack on Nuts 2. Add in Red Peppers 3. Serve Salmon Twice a Week 4. Bust Out the Spinach 5. Fill Up on Oatmeal 6. Indulge in Dark Chocolate 7. Sip Tea Read Full Article Activity Starter Create a Tea Cart with a variety of stress relieving teas and some dark chocolate. Pick approximately 3 different tea types and provide disposable cups, hot water, honey and lemon slices. Some good stress relieving teas are: Chamomile Lavender Peppermint *Kava (*this one has one of the strongest sedative effects.) Passionflower The Stress Diet This diet is designed to help you cope with the stress that builds during the day. Breakfast ½ grapefruit 1 slice whole wheat toast (dry) 8 oz. skim milk Lunch 4 oz. lean broiled chicken breast 1 c. steamed spinach 1 c. herb tea 1 Oreo cookie Mid-afternoon snack Rest of Oreos in the package 2 pints Rocky Road ice cream 1 jar hot fudge sauce Nuts, cherries, whipped cream Dinner 2 loaves Garlic Bread with cheese Large deluxe pizza 1 large pitcher of Beer 3 Milky Way candy bars Late evening snack Entire frozen cheesecake (eaten from freezer) Rules for this Diet: If you eat something and no one sees you eat it, it has no calories. If you drink a diet soda with a candy bar, the calories in the candy are cancelled out by the diet soda When you eat with someone else, calories don’t count, if you don’t eat more than they do. Food used for medicinal purposes never count, such as hot chocolate, brandy, toast and cheesecake. If you fatten up everyone else around you, then you look thinner. Movie-related foods, such as Milk Duds, buttered popcorn, Junior mints, Red Hots, and Tootsie Rolls, do not have additional calories because they are part of the entire entertainment package and are not part of one’s personal fuel. Cookie pieces contain no calories. The process of breakage causes calorie leakage. Things licked off knives and spoons have no calories if you are in the process of preparing something. Foods that are the same color have the same number of calories, Examples: spinach and pistachio ice cream; mushrooms and white chocolate. Note: chocolate is a universal color and may be substituted for any other food color. - Author Unknown Courtesy of: Allison Bennett, AD-TXC Enroll Now Over 90 Graduates last Month - NAAPCC.net "The Most Trusted Credentialing Body in the Industry." Activity Directors Network was founded in 1996 on the idea that we could help create elderly care that dramatically improved the lives of those we all serve. We envision facilities that feel like homes and that celebrate our resident’s individuality and allows them to live with dignity, purpose and joy. We believe the exchange of education and wisdom between the most talented teachers and passionate students is the way to make an impact. Each and every single one of you are the revolution that is changing everything. Thanks for being a part of The Network. Copyright © 2020 Activity Directors Network, LLC All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: 2010 US HWY 190 W Ste 120 Livingston, Texas 77351