#MindBrewChats is back with Ep.9 on Yoga, Spirituality & Mental Health! This is Part 1 of a two-part episode with Jivanti a/p Murugaiyan, a pharmacist and freelance yoga teacher, health and life coach. In this episode we will be delving deep into Jivanti’s personal journey with the healing power of yoga, and how yoga strengthens the body-mind-soul connection to build self-awareness and create intimacy with our inner selves.

Jivanti is a full-time pharmacist with the Traditional & Complementary Medicine Division in the Ministry of Health, Malaysia. She is also a freelance yoga teacher, health and life coach. A life-changing encounter with the healing power of yoga led her down an almost decade-long journey exploring other world knowledge like yoga, spiritual science, astrology, and Akashic record reading. In 2019, she founded Wild Hearts : Adventures in Mindful Living (@wildheartsworld) in the hopes to bring holistic healing to those who need it. Her voracious appetite for knowledge drives her to continuously expand her consciousness to be open and unconditional in her teaching and learning.

Episode Notes :

#MindBrewChats is back with Ep.8 on Mental Health at the Frontlines! In this episode, we talk to Dr. Amelia Law, an emergency medicine doctor in Melbourne, and Dr. Trevor Lim, a public health specialist in Sabah about mental health and burnout at the frontlines. 

This episode will be divided into two segments of approximately 40 minutes each. In the first segment, we talk about how the pandemic affected the healthcare sector in Malaysia, Australia and the UK, as well as the mental health challenges that affected healthcare workers way before the pandemic started. In the second segment, we dive deep into the mental health stigma and the barriers that prevent healthcare workers from seeking help for mental health issues acquired in the line of duty. 

Dr. Amelia Law (@amelia1aw) is an emergency registrar practising in a busy trauma centre in Melbourne. Having escaped the NHS in the UK, Amelia now reluctantly calls Australia home. She loves to travel, but is currently trapped in Melbourne due to this blight of a pandemic. Her preferred element is water, and when not donning scrubs, you can find her swimming, floating, surfing, diving, blowing bubbles, pretending to be a whale, etc. in her favourite element. Amelia and I are also school friends (since primary school!) And we have not met each other for close to a decade. 

Dr. Trevor Lim (@trevor0207) is a public health specialist and ultra running enthusiast. He started his career in public health medicine in Lahad Datu, Sabah, just in time for the start of the pandemic and MCO in Malaysia. Originally from Peninsular Malaysia, he has been serving in Sabah and Sarawak since 2009,  Trevor loves to run - a lot - as in insanely long distances that normal human beings would not think of attempting without a vehicle. His preferred downtime activities are training for and competing in ultra-trail challenges up to 100km. But due to the pandemic, when no mass events are allowed, Trevor has resorted to running marathons around his office.


Notes :

Contract Healthcare Workers Issue (Malaysia)

#CodeBlackMY #BlackMondayMY #saveMYcontractHCW 

MMA Schmos : https://www.facebook.com/101568508523307/posts/202493691764121/?d=n

MPS Young Pharmacist Chapter - Contract Pharmacists vs Permanent Pharmacists : https://www.facebook.com/181417565204662/posts/4504402936239415/?d=n

Healthcare Worker Burnout

Roslan NS, Yusoff MSB, Razak AA, Morgan K. Burnout Prevalence and Its Associated Factors among Malaysian Healthcare Workers during COVID-19 Pandemic: An Embedded Mixed-Method Study. Healthcare (Basel). 2021 Jan 17;9(1):90. doi: 10.3390/healthcare9010090. PMID: 33477380; PMCID: PMC7829836.

#KisahKamek by the Mental Health Association of Sarawak

Sheena's Story : https://www.instagram.com/p/CCH7Q4rDZ35/?utm_medium=copy_link

Farhah's Story : https://www.instagram.com/p/CC-a-6DDGUR/?utm_medium=copy_link

Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Services Malaysia

https://www.mhinnovation.net/blog/2020/may/6/staff-support-during-covid-19-mhpss-initiatives-miri-general-hospital-malaysia

Mental Health Resources Malaysia

Mental Health Directory (Kuching/Sarawak) : https://mhasarawak.com/get-help/#mhasdirectory

Mental Health Directory (Malaysia) : https://www.mypsychology.my/get-help-my/

#MindBrewChats is back after a break with a brand new episode on Minimalism and Mental Health! In this episode we explore what minimalism is, how it relates to both physical and mental space, as well as our relationships with people. Through the personal experiences of our host Laura, and guests, Georgette and Raven, we explore how the practice of minimalism has impacted our self-care practices and mental health. This episode is split into two segments of roughly 40 minutes each for easier listening. 

Georgette Tan (@GeorgetteTanWriter) does a lot of things, including but not limited to studying the tarot, making people use bullet journals, collaborative story writing, poetry and podcasting. A former journalist, she is now a pen-for-hire living in Kuching. Check out her work at https://linktr.ee/georgettetan. She has also just released a digital copy of her poetry chapbook at https://ko-fi.com/s/03e7c38506 

Rave Kwok (Raven) (@ravenue) studied psychology in Melbourne, but fell in love with coffee there instead. He now runs Earthlings Coffee Workshop (https://earthlings-coffee.com/; @earthlingscoffee), which has been serving up specialty coffee in Kuching for seven years. He does a fair bit of photography, illustration, and design for his business and as a hobby, and sometimes teaches private coffee lessons. 

Curated Resources on Minimalism : 

Books and blog) Becoming Minimalist - Joshua Becker (https://www.becomingminimalist.com/)

(Blog, podcast, books and documentaries on Netflix) The Minimalists (https://www.theminimalists.com/)- Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus (Special mention : Less is Now on Netflix - watch trailer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn-xbOCZOiQ) 

(Book, and Netflix series) The Konmari Method - Marie Kondo  (https://konmari.com/)

(Book and blog) The Bullet Journal Method (https://bulletjournal.com/) - Ryder Carroll (Teaches mindset, simple methods, mindfulness practices)  

(Book) Goodbye Things - Fumiko Sasaki (Unique perspective on how someone with a lot of things can become a full-on minimalist living in a busy city) 

(Book) Digital Minimalism : Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World - Cal Newport (How to manage our digital life as a practising minimalist)  

Notes : 

“You can’t change the people around you, but you can change the people around you.” - The Minimalists  

Dunbar’s number : A suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships—relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person (Ref: Wikipedia)

This episode was recorded as part of a FB Live session streamed from the Mind Brew Facebook page on December 27, 2020. It will be released in two parts.

Part 2

2020 was such a monumental year of shifts and uncertainties and global unrest, many of us have not had the headspace to process what happened yet. If your mind is still stuck in March 2020, when the pandemic and the MCO first upended our reality, you are not alone. In this episode, we use the Year Compass (@yearcompass) resource to process the year that has been, and talk about how we found moments of growth and joy in the difficult moments that have past. Hosted by Laura, in this episode we are joined by Hazel, Kim and Celine, three very different people from different backgrounds who find commonalities in lessons learnt and experiences gained.

Head on over to www.yearcompass.comto download your free Year Compass resource.

This episode was recorded as part of a FB Live session streamed from the Mind Brew Facebook page on December 27, 2020. It will be released in two parts.

Part 1

2020 was such a monumental year of shifts and uncertainties and global unrest, many of us have not had the headspace to process what happened yet. If your mind is still stuck in March 2020, when the pandemic and the MCO first upended our reality, you are not alone. In this episode, we use the Year Compass

(@yearcompass) resource to process the year that has been, and talk about how we found moments of growth and joy in the difficult moments that have past. Hosted by Laura, in this episode we are joined by Hazel, Kim and Celine, three very different people from different backgrounds who find commonalities in lessons learnt and experiences gained.

Head on over to www.yearcompass.comto download your free Year Compass resource.

In this special edition of #MindBrewChats for #WMHD2020, we focus on one of the cornerstones of society, our education system and the educators who hold the fort. Grab your favorite brews and join us we chat with our guests, Jing Yi and Gladys, who are educators in Pasir Gudang and Kuching respectively. Also joining us is Celine, a university student, as we explore the impact of the COVID pandemic on our students and what can we do to support their mental health. 

In this special edition of #MindBrewChats for #WMHD2020, we focus on ground-up, community initiatives for mental health. Grab your favourite brews and join us we chat with our special guest, Yang Berhormat Michelle Ng Mei Sze, about SJ Care Warriors, a community-driven mental health initiative she founded during her term as Subang Jaya State Assemblywoman, and draw parallels with our homegrown Mind Brew initiative in Kuching.

How can #selfcare be more than just an instagrammable moment? In this episode we discuss what shifting our mindset on self-care looks like, from developing self-awareness to making a deliberate choice daily to prioritize our mental health and well-being.

We focus a lot on physical health and well-being - it’s a multi-billion dollar fitness industry with health food, gyms, personal trainers, exercise equipment, diet plans etc. I’ve heard a lot of people talking about losing that quarantine weight, all the extra weight that’s piled on from quarantine cooking, stress eating and lack of physical activity. But what about all the mental weight that’s piled on? All the stress, worry, anxiety, grief … Why isn’t it normal to talk about that? Openly, honestly - why are we not running to counsellors, mental health professionals to deal with that mental weight?

Stigma - shame, fear of appearing weak or crazy.

Everybody’s talking about moving forward with life in the new norm - we say, stigma against mental health issues, stigma against seeking help for MHI or openly conversing about moments of vulnerability in our lives IS the old norm.