Kind Listening Circles with Kinder Leeds

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Kind Listening Circles are warm, welcoming practice spaces for a small number of participants to practice the habits of listening with close attention, exploring questions that matter to us on self-care and kindness, and appreciating each other. Purposeful and conscious practice of these skills can help us develop kinder ways of relating to both ourselves and to others.

Monday 16th November  – 8pm –9.30pm Facilitated by Angela Green:  More Info / Register

Tuesday 17th November – 9.30am-11am Facilitated by Angela Green: More Info / Register

 

World Diabetes Day – Saturday 14th November

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Today is #WorldDiabetesDay  and the local NHS is urging residents to be more aware of the condition, learn how they can prevent or manage it and access support if they need it.
In Leeds, out of a population of around 800,000 people, approximately 44,000 people have diabetes, and a further 36,000 are at high risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.  People are more at risk if they’re white and over 40 or over 25 if they have African-Caribbean, Black African, or South Asian heritage.
This year, it’s especially important to be aware of the risk of T2 diabetes and to manage the condition well, because people with diabetes of any kind are more likely to catch coronavirus. While most people will have mild symptoms, people with diabetes can become seriously unwell, as their bodies have to fight with the virus as well as problems caused by fluctuating blood sugar levels.
For more information about the condition, how to prevent or manage it and where to find support if you need it visit: NHS Leeds Diabetes support or https://www.diabetes.org.uk/
You can check your risk of developing T2 diabetes here: https://bit.ly/1WauZbi

Date change for virtual Christmas lights switch on – now December 2nd

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Leeds City Council have announced that they are rescheduling the city’s first ever virtual Christmas Lights Switch On.  It was originally planned for this Sunday, November 15th but is being moved to Wednedsay December 2nd, when it should coincide with Leeds, and the rest of England coming out of the four week national lockdown.

This does mean that if you have pictures or videos that you would like to be included in this event you now have up until Sunday November 29th to submit them.  The organisers are asking for video clips and images of your Christmas light displays at home (past and present) so they can feature in a dazzling digital montage that will be the climax of the exciting virtual Lights Switch-On.

The finished video will be set to a very special performance of Light up the Sky by pop band The Dunwells and the event will also feature performances from panto and theatre stars along with messages from local sporting celebrities and the Lord Mayor of Leeds.

To submit your pic or video message please send by email by Sunday, November 29 to: lightupleeds@sonderstudios.co.uk

The virtual switch-on event will be free to watch on the Millennium Square YouTube channel and Facebook page on Wednesday, December 2 from 6.30pm.

Leeds Virtual Christmas Lights Switch-On

The Shows Must Go On – West End Unplugged – Vol 1

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A lockdown special celebrating the very best of London’s West End 

In this edition we welcome the talents of Alice Fearn (WICKED / COME FROM AWAY / LES MISÉRABLES) Tim Howar (RENT / ROCK OF AGES / PHANTOM OF THE OPERA) Sandra Marvin (WAITRESS / SHOWBOAT / CHICAGO / HAIRSPRAY) Aisha Jawando (TINA / MOTOWN / BOOK OF MORMON / THE LION KING) Ben Goddard (JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR / SWEENEY TODD) and Mazz Murray (MAMMA MIA! / CHICAGO / WE WILL ROCK YOU / FAME)

It is on tonight (Friday 13th Nov) at 7pm – click on the picture to watch. It is unclear how long this will be available to view.

The show is free to watch but optional donations in support of three charities: Backup-The Technical Entertainment Charity, Help Musicians UK, and the Theatre Artists Fund. https://westendunplugged.com

Leeds Mental Wellbeing Service – Older Adults Class

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Leeds Mental Wellbeing Service will be starting their ‘Live Well in Later Life’ class on Wednesday the 18th November. The class is designed for older adults or for anyone who can relate to difficulties older adults may face (e.g. retirement, loss, isolation, physical health difficulties).

The class will run for 5 weeks from 18th Nov-16th Dec and starts at 10:00. Due to current covid restrictions they are delivering the class online though the Microsoft Teams platform.

Here’s a little bit of information about the class from their website.

Later life can be a big time of change, which can lead to us feeling low or perhaps more worried or stressed. You may have noticed little changes, or started not feeling like yourself. Sometimes we can experience big life stressors that have a big impact on our wellbeing.

The Live Well in Later Life course aims to help manage these difficulties by teaching you techniques that you can use everyday to tackle low mood and worries.

You may benefit from the course if you have:

  • Recently retired or semi retired, or are experiencing work related problems
  • Increased caring responsibilities for family or friends
  • A physical health condition that maybe impacting on your wellbeing
  • Experienced a loss or bereavement
  • Become more isolated
  • Stopped doing things you used to enjoy
  • Worry a lot or are having trouble sleeping

What we cover in the class:

  • Week one – introduction, understanding mental health
  • Week two – sleep and improving physical symptoms of anxiety
  • Week three – low mood and our behaviour, how to increase motivation
  • Week four – Negative thinking and managing worry
  • Week five – maintaining progress and further resources

The classes are based on guided self-help cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) which is an effective therapy for treating depression and anxiety symptoms. You will learn how your thoughts, feelings, behaviours and physical symptoms interact and impact emotional wellbeing. The classes are run by qualified psychological wellbeing practitioners.

These are psychoeducational classes, not group therapy – The idea is to watch, listen, and learn about mental health and ways to improve it, and clients are encouraged to make changes outside of the classes to improve how they feel.

If they would like to join the class, you can sign up on their website – https://www.leedscommunityhealthcare.nhs.uk/our-services-a-z/leeds-mental-wellbeing-service/online-group-classes/live-well-in-later-life/

You will receive information and instructions on how to join using Teams when you have signed up. You will need to have access to a computer or tablet to be able to join.

Shared Moments: ‘Oliver feeling uncertain??’ written by Oliver Cross

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Anxiety is an ordinary consequence of being sane and if you fail to feel it during a major pandemic, you probably need help. Depression, too, is to be expected if you’re dealing with broken work routines, precarious earnings, threadbare television, confusing government announcements or the scores of things we’ve recently had to add to our worry lists.

But I’m a ‘vulnerable’ 70-year-old, so all this is overshadowed by the raw reality that the possible effects of the virus include, as well as anxiety and depression, a lonely and unpleasant death.

We tend, even if we’re in the undertaking or terminal care trades, to think that death, the only certainty in life, won’t apply to us. This is why, over the centuries, millions of people have marched willingly to war and why, right now, so many are stressing the possible psychological or economic effects of the virus rather than acknowledging the fact that, worldwide, it will leave hundreds of thousands dead, possibly including me.

Of course fretting about the non-fatal effects of the virus can be dismissed as a predictable displacement activity – a feeling that, with death knocking at the door, it’s time to change the subject. But the current spike in depression and anxiety is real enough and may be terrible for some; it’s just that diphtheria or smallpox would generally be a lot worse.

I’ve long been suspicious of the idea, which has become a sort of universally-agreed wisdom, that we should give the same status to mental illness as we give to physical illness, assuming there are enough physiologists in the world to separate the two, which there probably aren’t.

Like all 70-year-olds, I’ve seen the awful effects of severe illnesses, both ‘physical’ and ‘mental’, but most diseases, complaints and conditions could best be regarded, especially in the age of Covid-19, as trivial, or at least bearable.

Ordinary headaches, ordinary colds, indigestion, feeling anxious while waiting for exam results, feeling down because you can’t cheer on your team… they all, as they so often put it now, have an impact on your mental wellbeing, but they hardly ever  kill you.

Thank you Oliver, until next time….

Additional guidance and support for vulnerable people during lockdown

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The government has revised its guidance on those over 60 or who are deemed to be clinically vulnerable and could be at higher risk of severe illness from coronavirus. If you fall into this category, you should:

  • be especially careful to follow the rules and minimise your contacts with others
  • continue to wash your hands carefully and more frequently than usual and maintain thorough cleaning of frequently touched areas in your home and/or workspace.

There is support available if you need it.  Please contact us at Caring Together if you need any help or advice, or for more information about other support available in the city see: https://www.leeds.gov.uk/coronavirus/people-and-communities

Current information on who is classed as ‘vulnerable’ or clinically extremely vulnerable is available here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/new-national-restrictions-from-5-november#protecting-people-more-at-risk-from-coronavirus. (If you fall into the latter category you should have received a letter giving you detailed guidance)

 

Poetry Corner: ‘ Dumpty written by John Lithgow

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‘Dumpty’ by John Lithgow
Trumpty Dumpty wanted a wall
To stir up a rabid political brawl.
His Republican rivals, both feckless and stodgy,
Succumbed in the end to his rank demagogy.
Dumpty’s wall made no earthly sense,
A boondoggle built at enormous expense.
But he promised, in speeches despotic and shrill,
He’d make certain that Mexico footed the bill.
Trumpty Dumpty kept insisting.
More and more citizens started resisting.
Sadly, there won’t be an end to this tale,
At least until reasonable people prevail.  
Dumpty: The Age of Trump in Verse (Dumpty, #1) by John Lithgow

Light Night 2020 – Faint Signals

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Faint Signals

Faint Signals by British Library and Invisible Flock

British Library and Invisible Flock (UK)

Online from sunset on 10 November 2020 to 2 January 2021

Explore Faint Signals here

(Please note: Faint Signals is available through modern browsers (such as Chrome or Firefox) but is not currently optimised for mobile devices.)

Looking ahead to Light Night Leeds 2021, which will explore the themes of nature and the environment, the British Library has commissioned Yorkshire-based interactive arts studio, Invisible Flock, to produce a new online digital artwork using sounds from wildlife, weather and nature from the British Library’s extraordinary collection

Set in an imagined Yorkshire forest, we invite you to explore a vast online interactive commission rooted in real life natural environments. Faint Signals is a digital experience that reflects the diversity and complexity of Yorkshire’s natural world. Using just a mouse and keyboard you can explore this world for yourself. Scroll over the landscape and unlock a rich variety of different sounds. Learn more about them through a simple narrative as you playfully bring to life a vivid and complex ecosystem.

While the forest is imagined, the flora, fauna and wildlife you will discover is all scientifically accurate and native to Yorkshire – though some of it is now sadly extinct. There are thousands of combinations to explore so you’ll never have the same experience twice.

The pandemic has slowed transport and industry and given some landscapes an unprecedented absence of human contact. We’ve seen sea eagles return to the Yorkshire Moors and deer taking over corners of East London. And, for the first time in many years, city-dwellers have heard birdsong all day long. As we contemplate how we live in a world impacted so much by COVID-19, Faint Signals considers our relationship with shared spaces and the natural world, as well as with sound, and how human impact has changed this over time.

Faint Signals is part of the British Library’s growing culture and learning programme in and around Leeds