WellCAM Events 2021-2022

Overall Aims

• Help recognise your signs of stress and anxiety
• To ‘normalise’ stress, anxiety, worry
• To understand the power of our individual attitude towards stress & anxiety
• To foster resilience and coping with stress and anxiety
• Be given the time in our busy lives to consider our individual responses to stress and anxiety

The focus of this workshop will be on worry and anxious thoughts and how they impact our wellbeing. We will look at strategies to help address worries directly as well as activities to distract and soothe us. There will be two relaxation exercises and time for Q&A at the end.

• Introduction – The worried mind
• Progressive relaxation exercise
• How worry and anxious thoughts impact our wellbeing
• CBT strategies to manage worry
• Assessment and action process
• Soothing and distraction
• Rest and relaxation
• Guided meditation

Delivered by Sarah Hughes from the University Counselling Centre

Joining instructions will be provided in your booking confirmation email.

Overall Aims:

• Help recognise your signs of stress and anxiety
• To ‘normalise’ stress, anxiety, worry
• To understand the power of our individual attitude towards stress & anxiety
• To foster resilience and coping with stress and anxiety
• Be given the time in our busy lives to consider our individual responses to stress and anxiety

In this workshop, we will take a deeper look at stress and anxiety, work on what our triggers are, and any behaviours that might maintain an anxious state.

• What Triggers anxiety?
• Think more about the physical symptoms
• What maintains anxiety
• Negative Automatic Thoughts
• Intrusive Thoughts

Delivered by Euan Ambrose from the University Counselling Centre

Joining instructions will be provided on your booking confirmation email.

A Mindfulness session – “May our heart's garden of awakening bloom with hundreds of flowers.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh

Mindfulness is recommend by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) as it can help improve mental health.

Esther Hunt trained as a Mindfulness Teacher with the British Mindfulness Institute and was taught by Dr Patrizia Collard. She is a Registered and Accredited Psychotherapist with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and an Affiliated Lecturer in Child and Adolescent Psychotherapeutic Counselling in the Faculty of Education.

For more information on the benefits of Mindfulness please visit the NHS website

We all need something that can take us away from the stresses of everyday life and to clear our minds. What better than a photo walk.

Lloyd Mann and Nick Saffell from the Office of External Affairs and Communications, are offering wellbeing photography walks for staff across the University.

The sessions aim to teach simple steps that will help you take great photographs using your smartphone or camera, with a no-pressure, hands-on approach. We help you think about what makes good subject matter, and support you with angles and framing, allowing you to get the best shot possible.

The photo exercises give you something to occupy your mind and stimulate your brain, to get creative and hopefully the sessions might encourage you to take photos every day.

To make the session accessible, we’re running them for one hour, during office hours. Don’t let the walking part put you off, the emphasis is on taking some time to ‘look up’, and to connect with our surroundings.

Pilates is suitable for all levels of fitness.

It is aimed at improving and strengthening your posture, as well as developing flexibility to aid relaxation. Location: In person - University Sports Centre (West Cambridge Site)

Booking required

• Please wear comfortable gym clothing.
• Mats are available on site.
• Changing/showers are available on site
• Please let the instructor know of any medical conditions or mobility issues prior to the start of the class.

We all need something that can take us away from the stresses of everyday life and to clear our minds. What better than a photo walk.

Lloyd Mann and Nick Saffell from the Office of External Affairs and Communications, are offering wellbeing photography walks for staff across the University.

The sessions aim to teach simple steps that will help you take great photographs using your smartphone or camera, with a no-pressure, hands-on approach. We help you think about what makes good subject matter, and support you with angles and framing, allowing you to get the best shot possible.

The photo exercises give you something to occupy your mind and stimulate your brain, to get creative and hopefully the sessions might encourage you to take photos every day.

To make the session accessible, we’re running them for one hour, during office hours. Don’t let the walking part put you off, the emphasis is on taking some time to ‘look up’, and to connect with our surroundings.

Pilates is suitable for all levels of fitness.

It is aimed at improving and strengthening your posture, as well as developing flexibility to aid relaxation. Location: In person - University Sports Centre (West Cambridge Site)

Booking required

• Please wear comfortable gym clothing.
• Mats are available on site.
• Changing/showers are available on site
• Please let the instructor know of any medical conditions or mobility issues prior to the start of the class.

How often do you find yourself on social media during the course of a normal week? More importantly, how does using social media make you feel?

Since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, the ways in which we have used social media has changed, as well as how we feel about social media in general. Social media is a paradox. It connects us in some ways, while pushing us apart in other ways. Social media has become our source of information, and a valuable means of connecting with friends and family, while at the same time making us feel lonelier and disconnected.

In this talk, we will explore some of the research about social media, connection, loneliness – as well as looking at some ways that we might be able to helpful reframe our relationship social media in our everyday lives.

Tyler Shores is delighted to announce that he has secured two external speakers to join him next week.

Luke Fernandez is Assistant Professor in the School of Computing at Weber State University where he teaches classes on the politics of technology and software development and Susan J. Mattwho is Professor of History at Weber State. They have both co-authors of Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid: Changing Feelings about Technology, from the Telegraph to Twitter (Harvard University Press, 2019).

Tyler Shores manages the ThinkLab research program at the University of Cambridge, and is a Senior Research Associate at the Intellectual Forum, Jesus College. His research focuses on digital habits, social media, and how digital environments shape how we work and think. Prior to Cambridge, Tyler worked in online education at Stanford, served as a director at an international education nonprofit organization, and worked at the Google world headquarters in Mountain View, California while running the Authors@Google program. His various work has been featured in the New York Times, BBC, WIRED, amongst others. And he was once on an episode of The Simpsons.

Luke Fernandez is Assistant Professor in the School of Computing at Weber State University where he teaches classes on the politics of technology and software development. He is co-author of Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid: Changing Feelings about Technology, from the Telegraph to Twitter (Harvard University Press, 2019). He holds a PhD in Political Theory from Cornell University. He is also a software developer. His articles have appeared in The Washington Post, Salon, Slate, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, among other places.

Susan J. Matt is Professor of History at Weber State. Her research focuses on the history of emotions and US social history. She is co-author of Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid: Changing Feelings about Technology, from the Telegraph to Twitter (Harvard University Press, 2019). She is author of Homesickness: An American History (Oxford University Press, 2011), and Keeping Up with the Joneses: Envy in American Consumer Society, 1890-1930 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003). Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Journal of American History.

A mentoring relationship could help you to progress in your professional life/career and build your networks. It can also support your mental health by increasing confidence and reducing anxiety.

If you are interested in hearing about mentoring and its effects on mental health, join the ourcambridge Self-Match Mentoring Scheme' team for an informal session and discussion.

“(Mentoring) supported my mental health through a period of work-related anxiety/stress”.

University Sports Centre

Dr Elizabeth English, the University Mindfulness Practitioner, will explore components of mindful communication, and how we can create calm and satisfying connections with other people, even under pressure.

In this session Rachel Bailey, from the University SPACE network, gives personal insights from her experiences of supporting and caring for someone with mental health issues.