April is Stress Awareness Month! Daily stress can seriously impact both our mental and physical health. Taking control of our stress is key to living a balanced and healthy life. MSU offers a variety of resources designed to help you manage and reduce stress:
Activities
- Campus Meditation Map: Beal Scholar Anhad Viswananth created this incredible meditation map to highlight the best spots to meditate around campus.
- Staying Active: Watch your stress dissolve as you become more active this spring. Warmer weather is on its way, and it’s the perfect time to get outside and run, kayak, walk, or swim. Join a biking group in the Greater Lansing area or an MSU Recreation group fitness class to stay motivated.
- Finals Flex Midday Movement: Stop by the MSU Main Library to wind down from the school year and de-stress. Bring a mat or a towel, and get ready for breathing, stretching, and mobilizing exercises.
- Desk Decompress: Tuesdays and Thursdays from January 7 to May 1, join this 15-minute virtual class to relax and decompress while stretching and strengthening the wrist, shoulders, and spine. Register here for Desk Decompress for a midweek pick-me-up!
- Walking at MSU: There are many things to see and do on MSU’s 2,100-acre campus. Follow these various MSU campus walking tours to make the most of our beautiful campus and gardens.
- On April 5, join the Red Cedar River Environmental Walking Tour and learn about the environmental history of the river at the heart of MSU’s campus. This 1.2-mile round-trip walk will start at the MSU Main Library and describe some interesting historical and environmental features of the river.
- On April 10, join the Beal Botanical Garden for a Sensing Spring tour to learn about the science of nature exposure benefiting physical and mental wellbeing and how plant communities support each other, plus some ways we can be supportive in return.
- On April 23, join Beal Botanical Garden and Campus Arboretum for lunchtime guided walking tours on the fourth Wednesday of each month, April through October.
- On April 25, join IPF and Landscape Services for Arbor Day and help install native plant material along the riverbank, creating a new pollinator garden along the banks of the Red Cedar River.
- Rest with Music: Music can heal, calm, and regenerate our mind, body, and spirit. Hosted by Health Promotion and Engagement, Abrams Planetarium is holding Rest with Music – live musical performances featuring a variety of musical styles and genres. Visit the website for dates and times available for you.
Learning Resources
- Breaking Free from Stress Course: This course will help you become aware of how your own thought world operates to bring you your personal reality of your work and personal life. Learning the basic principles presented in this course will help you see how to be less reactive to other people and events and how to live your life from a deeper perspective of common sense and wisdom. Eligible employees may use their Educational Assistance funds for this course.
- Spartan Resilience Education Programs: University Health and Wellbeing provide opportunities for any Spartan, anywhere, to develop or strengthen the skills needed to effectively respond to their unique collection of challenges. Through a variety of media and teaching formats, they seek to ensure that resilience education is accessible, inclusive, and ever-present as part of the “Spartan Experience.”
- How to Disconnect from Work: Taking time away from work, in the forms of breaks, vacation time, or strengthening boundaries around employees’ workdays, is important. View these resources to learn more about balancing your time and work schedule.
- Stress Reduction: MSU Health4U has plenty of resources to help you reduce your stress levels. Learn more in their Stress Reduction series of articles.
- Employee Assistance Program: The Employee Assistance Program (EAP) is a confidential short-term counseling and referral service provided at no cost to MSU faculty, staff, graduate assistants, retirees, and their insurance-eligible dependents who are located within the state of Michigan. Classes and resources to help reduce stress are updated on the EAP website often.
- Avoiding Burnout: This article will help you learn how to avoid burnout and what to do if you’re experiencing it.
Stress can look different for each individual, so take care of yourself using these resources and beyond. Have another resource you’d like to add to the list? Let us know in the comments!
Opening photo of the Beal Botanical Gardens by MSU University Communications.