It is officially February, which means you are likely seeing advertisements promoting gifts and goodies to give to your loved ones for Valentine’s Day. Well here at Girl Scouts in the Heart of PA, we understand that love is about more than boxes of chocolate and greeting cards. We believe that in order to share love with others you have to give love to yourself first!
So take this February to check-in with the ways you are giving love to yourself. Then talk to those around you about how they are loving themselves. If you are planning for a troop, this might be a great opportunity to work through some of our badges like the Brownie “My Best Self” badge, Juniors “Staying Fit” badge, and Cadettes “Eating for You” badge.
Not sure where to start? Here are three activities that can help you or your troop give yourselves some love:
Activity 1: Body Scan. Our days and lives are so filled with events, activities, and to-do lists that many times we forget to slow down and listen to our bodies! A body scan can help us get out of our head and in touch with our feelings, bodies and create relaxation!
- Here is a nice 3 minute guided body scan that is good for young or wiggly bodies.
- Here is a 30 minute guided body scan with tips for beginners.
Activity 2: What food helps my body? Unfortunately, many times when we talk about food and health there is a lot of focus on fats and calories. A narrative that can often leave us feeling overwhelmed or shamed. It can be much more helpful to look at food in a “how is this fueling my body” way. Instead of looking at food as good or bad. We can ask: is this helping my body or harming my body?
- Check out this Presentation on helpful and non-helpful foods for the body.
- If discussing with young people, you can follow the presentation by creating a food helper! Draw a helper to remind you how to keep your body running its best with the foods that we learned about. You could even try to create a helper out of foods in the kitchen and take a picture!
Activity 3: Stress tool-box. Stress is everywhere, and everyone handles it differently. Sometimes we deal with stress in healthy ways and other times we don’t. The key to dealing with stress is acknowledging it and learning how to manage it.
- First it’s helpful to build some vocabulary around stress and how to we handle it. Below are some important words to understand stress.
- Stress can be caused by both negative and positive events.
- Coping Strategies are the actions we take to face and deal with responsibilities, problems, or difficulties.
- Unhealthy Coping Strategies can feel good in the moment but have long-term negative consequences.
- Healthy Coping Strategies may not provide instant gratification or relief but have long-lasting positive outcomes.
- Now that we have more understanding of stress, we can build a toolbox of coping strategies to help us get through those stressful moments.
- Take some time to draw activities and objects that bring you peace and joy.
- If talking about stress with young people you can have them do a scavenger hunt to find things that make them feel happy or safe. Discuss how those things can be helpful in the future. Make a plan for how to use those objects or activities as tools to deal with stress.
Alright, there you go – 3 activities to help you get started on loving yourself! Remember that part of making the world a better place starts with YOU!
GSHPA Blog 