Remote (Free) Wellbeing & Ways to Help the COVID-19 Response

Remote (Free) Wellbeing & Ways to Help the COVID-19 Response

As COVID-19 forces more people home, tech-enabled workouts and new approaches to wellness are becoming increasingly important.

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Finding Ways to Wellness, Together
We hope this finds you staying safe and feeling well. This week, we’re considering ways to care for your physical, emotional and mental wellbeing during these extraordinary times.

We’ve put together a list of free, at-home offerings (by Nike, Peloton, Barry’s and others), and tips to create daily structures and consistency to match your lifestyle. We are also listing ways to help support state, local and global COVID-19 responses.

We’re also considering big thinkers’ opinions on how COVID-19 will change the world in the longer-term, learning about a YC-backed startup that wants to replace antibiotics with programmable viruses, and looking at how homeware rental is changing a previously near-exclusively ownership-based industry.

We’ll conclude by noting the rise of anti-Asian-American acts. To share a personal story, in the span of the past week, I have been subject to several racially-driven incidents. It’s incredibly difficult to write this in the context of a newsletter about innovation, but I’m sharing this so our communities can be aware of the challenges being faced by specific groups. We’re calling upon the better angels of our nature during these extraordinary times.

We hope you’ve been enjoying this newsletter and would love any feedback (erica@nycmedialab.org). We wish you and your community safety, calm and solidarity as we support each other. Thank you again for reading.

All best,
Erica Matsumoto

For many of us, physical activity is an important part of our lifestyles. However, as the COVID-19 pandemic has forced 200+ million people across 21 states and 14 cities to stay home, going to the gym is out of the question. With this in mind, we’re rounding up resources and tools to support at-home workouts.

SWEATING OUT THE STRESS

There are numerous free at-home workout apps (some of which are usually paid, but which have been made free through extended trial periods during the COVID-19 pandemic) that you can take advantage of to stay active and vary your workouts:

• Nike has eliminated the subscription fee for its NTC Premium service, which offers streaming workout videos, training programs and expert tips from trainers
• CorePower Yoga, which, like many yoga studios, has shut down all its locations, is offering free yoga classes to everyone — including nonmembers — through March 30 (and possibly beyond if its studios stay closed)
• Peloton is currently offering a free 90-day trial of its workout app (which is usually $13/month), which doesn’t require a purchase of the company’s treadmill or bike to use. The company — like many others — is experiencing some COVID-19-related challenges, so if you’re a Peloton die-hard, now’s a good time to support the company by using its app
• Barry’s, the high-intensity workout gym beloved by many a Manhattanite, is streaming two new workouts daily: one that doesn’t require any equipment and one that uses some basic items such as fitness bands
• Classpass, which has put all members’ memberships on hold during the COVID-19 pandemic, continues to offer at-home workout videos via Classpass On Demand, which includes HIIT, yoga, barre and more
• Chris Hemsworth-founded app Centr is currently offering a free six-week trial to anybody who signs up via its website. Classes, which are 20–40 minutes long, include HIIT, boxing and yoga
• Golds Gym is offering free access to its GOLD’s AMP app, which contains over 600 audio and video workouts, through the end of May (go to goldsamp.com/promo and redeem the code FIT60 at checkout by April 30; free access will be valid until May 31)

For even more at-home workouts, you can check out YouTube, Amazon Prime Video (which is included with an Amazon Prime subscription), or CNET writer (and Crossfit instructor) Amanda Capritto’s 20-minute HIIT workouts. We also recommend looking up your favorite neighborhood studios and gyms to see if they’re offering virtual, remote workout sessions.

CARING FOR YOUR EMOTIONAL & MENTAL HEALTH

In addition to your physical health, it’s also important to care for your mental health. The extraordinary circumstances that we find ourselves in at present are stressful, and it’s important to look to our mental well-being in order to endure through these times.

We wrote about technology to support mindfulness and meditation practices in a previous issue; if this is something you’re interested in, check out those resources and technologies.

A number of mindfulness and meditation support apps are offering extended free trial periods or memberships to support people in the current COVID-19 pandemic:

• Simple Habit is offering free access until April 20 (email help@simplehabit.com with a note about extenuating financial circumstances to receive free access)
• Personalized meditation app Balance is offering free premium access to anyone who wants to use the service (email access@balanceapp.com for redemption instructions)
• Sanvello, a digital care delivery platform, is offering free medium access to its daily mood tracking, assessments, peer support and coping tools
• Headspace is offering free meditations and sleep and movement exercises through its app’s “Weathering the storm” collection

In addition to technology, there are also some useful guidelines you can follow to care for your mental wellbeing.

1. Limit your consumption of information: While it may feel impossible to escape COVID-19 news, over-consuming this information is not only unhelpful, but also potentially actively damaging to your mental health and well-being. Consider limiting the amount of time you spend on news and social media sites to 30 minutes a day. Tools like Screen Time on iOS or Focus Mode on Android can help force compliance with this goal.
2. Focus on the things within your control: Although there are many, many things with regard to COVID-19 that are outside individuals’ control, each of us retains control over our own actions. Following best practices (such as frequent handwashing, staying away from people who are sick, avoiding nonessential travel, and other best practices as recommended by the WHO and CDC) are good starting points that will help you feel more in control of your personal circumstances.
3. Stay busy: Allowing yourself to dwell on COVID-19-related fears and worries will allow your anxiety to spiral out of control. While you should recognize and acknowledge your feelings, you should also do your best to keep your thoughts and emotions from spiraling out of control. Low-mental low activities, such as puzzling, drawing, reading, or cooking, can be good ways to distract yourself and take your mind off your worries.
4. Set aside time to worry: On the other hand, you also don’t want to bottle your anxieties up only for them to spill out at an inopportune time. Allow yourself time to worry about COVID-19. One good way to do this in a productive, contained way is to set aside a few minutes each day for journaling or thinking through your thoughts. Once your allotted time for the day has elapsed, do your best to move on.

For mental health support in New York City, you can also seek support services for stress, depression, anxiety, drug and alcohol dependency and more via NYC Well. At the state level, over 6,000 mental health professions offer free online mental health service which can be accessed by calling the New York state hotline for mental health: 1–844–863–9314. STAY CONSISTENT

Maintaining your usual schedule as much as possible is another way to ground yourself and try to maintain some sense of structure to your days. To this end, Elizabeth Grace Saunders, author of Divine Time Management and How to Invest Your Time Like Money, recommends five key building blocks:

1. Sufficient sleep: getting enough sleep and maintaining a fairly consistent sleep schedule will help you be more productive and boost your mood and immune system
2. A consistent work schedule: keeping your work schedule as close as possible to what you were doing while in the office will help your mind continue working along its deeply-embedded patterns; this helps maintain focus and clarity throughout the day (for more ways to stay productive while working from home, check out this article)
3. Structured days for children: if you have children at home, developing routines similar to the ones they have at school and daycare will help prevent behavioral issues and promote harmony at home; this in turn will give you the space you need to continue working
4. Regular exercise: as already discussed, staying active benefits both your body and mind, as it helps maintain health and reduce stress
5. Recharge: limit your time on social media of watching the news in favor of engaging in truly relaxing activities such as reading, exercise, listening to music, spending time with your family, or engaging in a creative hobby

CHANNELING ENERGY INTO ACTION Redirecting your COVID-19-related anxiety and stress into meaningful action is yet another way to keep your anxiety at bay. Donating your time or money (or both, if you can manage it) is productive and immediately helpful to the effort against COVID-19.

Regardless of where you are in the world, donating to the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund is a way to contribute to the WHO’s response to the pandemic around the world. The WHO’s response fund:

• Sends supplies (such as personal protective equipment) to frontline health workers
• Boosts countries’ laboratory capacities to track and detect COVID-19’s spread
• Ensures health workers and communities have access to the latest science-based information to protect themselves, prevent infection, and care for those in need
• Accelerates efforts to fast-track the diagnosis and discovery of vaccines, diagnostics and treatments for COVID-19.

If you want to specifically give medical supplies, Relief International (which operates in 16 countries throughout Africa, the Middle East and Asia) is providing medical protective gear for frontline healthcare workers.

For those with access to protective personal equipment (PPE) or with the means to produce PPE, you may consider donating your supplies to frontline medical workers or producing PPE via your existing manufacturing processes. The need for PPE is acute in New York:

• At the state level, the New York’s Empire State Development agency is seeking partnerships with companies that can provide PPE. Companies with PPE on hand or the ability to produce PPE should email COVID19supplies@esd.ny.gov
• At the city level, the New York City Economic Development Corporation is seeking businesses with the abilities to source and/or make PPE to support the City’s COVID-19 response work
• Emergency room providers at NYU Langone Hospital and Bellevue successfully fundraised to get the PPE they need to protect all Emergency and ICU staff (donations are currently paused as they’ve met their goal)

For even more organizations working to help victims, healthcare workers, and children during the COVID-19 pandemic, refer to the New York Times’ list of organizations addressing the pandemic in various ways. GUARDING AGAINST COVID-19 DISCRIMINATION

Last — but not least — we also want to take a moment to note the disturbing rise of racist attacks against Asian-Americans, and particularly Chinese-Americans. The politicization of COVID-19 and certain political groups’ attempts to label it the “Chinese virus” have made it uncomfortable and, in some cases, even dangerous for Asian-Americans to live their day-to-day lives in the U.S. and elsewhere.

The impact of discrimination against, and fear of, Chinese-Americans in light of COVID-19 has already had profound social and economic consequences for this community. It’s already affecting rideshare users, restaurants in Chinatowns, Chinese community centers, and all manners of businesses in Chinatowns.

Policies and laws against Asians and Asian-Americans have a long history in the U.S. The Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, the Immigration Act of 1924 (aka Asian Exclusion Act), and the Japanese-American internment during WWII are some examples of this.

So what can you do? Words and images matter. For those that work in media, please be mindful of the words and images your editors chose in COVID19 coverage. Your decisions may help keep communities and people safe.

We’d like to note that racially-motivated attacks against Asian-Americans are both unproductive and actively dangerous to overall community well-being. The virus is not an ethnicity. It is not a nationality. The virus doesn’t discriminate; neither should we.

If you believe you’re the victim of a hate crime or believe you’ve witnessed a hate crime, report it to the New York Attorney General by emailing the Attorney General’s Civil Rights Bureau or calling 1–800–771–7755.

Coronavirus Will Change the World Permanently. Here’s How. By now, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who believes COVID-19 won’t significantly impact short-term economic well-being and life for most, if not all, Americans. However, the longer the pandemic goes on, the more likely it is that it will also dramatically change the world over the long term. This article presents 34 prominent thinkers’ hypotheses about how the novel coronavirus will change the world, for better or worse. 41 min read YC startup Felix wants to replace antibiotics with programmable viruses While the world grapples with the frankly terrifying destructive power of the novel coronavirus, Y Combinator-backed startup Felix envisions a future in which programmable viruses are harnessed as a better alternative to antibiotics. 3 min read How chronic renters are reshaping the homeware industry

Although cash-strapped millennials may not have the cash to purchase their own homes, that doesn’t mean they aren’t interested in living in well-designed digs. Rising concern with rental homes’ aesthetics is driving tremendous growth in renter-friendly house accents such as stick-on floor tiles, removable back splashes, houseplants, and even pay-per-month furniture rental.

7 min read This Week in Business History

March 22, 1917: International airline service debuts

The first-ever international air route is a weekly flight between Paris and Brussels operated by Lignes Aériennes Farman. Tickets for the two hour and fifty-minute flight cost 365 francs.

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