Getting Through Blue Monday

Resource highlights include:

A guided movement routine to relieve tension in the back and shoulders.

Some of us don’t have the luxury of a fully kitted out home office and may be feeling the burn from sitting with our laptop on the kitchen table. This can wreak havoc on our back, neck and posture.

Working on a laptop and stress both have a tendency to make us hunch our shoulders. This creates tension in our jaw, neck and shoulders that can give us headaches, impair our breathing and put pressure on our lower back and pelvis.

Also, our heads weigh about the same amount as a bowling ball and our neck vertebrae are the tiniest in our entire spine, so sitting with our head leaning over a laptop is a really bad idea!

So give yourself a break this Monday and try this sequence of movement and stretches. It takes less than 10 minutes and will have you feeling better in no time. And if it doesn’t do the trick, you officially have our permission to spend the rest of the day watching Netflix in the bath.

A guided mindfulness audio

This is perfect for anyone who’s in need of a few moments of calmness today. This short guided sequence is all you need to tap into your parasympathetic nervous system, clear your head and relax the body. A great alternative to opening the gin before lunchtime!

Stress management cheat sheet

This handy one-pager puts all our top stress management tips at your finger tips. This a great one to print out and keep at hand near your desk. While we’re not arguing that throwing your kids’ school work out of the window would be immensely satisfying, we guarantee that these tips will deliver better stress-relieving results in the long term!

Ikigai happiness tool kit

Perhaps, like us, lockdown has got you feeling slightly mad and a little bit lost. The Japanese art of ikigai is an amazing way to reconnect with a sense of purpose in a turbulent world. While there’s a host of books and resources on this topic to check out, we’ve created a simple exercise that will take you through the basics. 

So while you might have started the day wanting to stay in bed, now you can attain enlightenment in the amount of time it takes to finish your morning coffee! (Results may vary…)

And if the Haptivate resource hub doesn’t seem to be doing the trick, we do have one more suggestion that we’re trialling ourselves this week:

Consider putting a dog in charge of your company

Maybe a lockdown Blue Monday calls for something radical? We’re frankly a little overwhelmed right now, so we’ve decided to go for a lie down and place Haptivate in the capable hands of the legendary Steve Frost. Given his boundless enthusiasm and energy, we’re expecting great things from him as a CEO.