We’ve partnered with the team Zeitgeist Light to bring you 20 ways to keep you and your family healthy and happy while stuck at home.

​Their creative comms agency has ten years experience in helping brands move into the mainstream, though innovative ideas and creative content.
They help socially conscious brands narrate the spirit of the times, putting them at the forefront of people’s awareness.

Scroll down to find out more about them after you’ve discovered some fantastically useful apps, books, brands and ideas to help in our national lockdown - we’ll all be joining in together!

20 Ways Stay Happy And Healthy In The Lockdown

Here are some tried and tested solutions from the Zeitgeist Light team.

Download a wellness app

Stay calm, collected and keep anxiety at bay with some of these wellness apps. They don’t require you to be outside, all you need is a quiet space inside - you could even listen along in the bath.

Headspace

Headspace is one of the most popular meditation apps, and it has a free beginner’s course, if you’ve never tried meditation before. A few minutes meditation a day can help lower your stress levels, improve sleep and stop you feeling so anxious. While these certainly are more anxious times than normal, finding some time to stop and embrace mindfulness, can only help.

On the paid version, there are meditations for everyone, from one minute to much longer and a range of focuses, from kids to meditation for compassion and videos, how-tos and more.

Freemind

Head over to Freemindhub where meditations mix with powerfully uplifting music and motivational psychology. It mixes a mindful mindfulness with a score that’s meant to help tap into your subconscious and help you take in the mediations more deeply.

Freemind has been built around peace, purpose and power - the app was designed to help you achieve whatever it is that is out of reach but also works for right now. If you’re having a hard time getting motivated, if you’re anxious and uncertain and need some positivity - definitely give it a download and get started.

My Possible Self

Keeping a track of our mental health, during this crisis, is going to be key, especially if we’re socially distancing and self isolating from our traditional support networks. While this is hard on a lot of people, My Possible Self, is a useful tool for how you’re doing.

Track your daily moods and keep a digital diary which can help you reflect. The app then offers mood tracker insights and helps flag up the things and people that make you happiest. There are learning modules too to help change behaviours and shift mindsets to equip you to identify negative thinking and how to replace it with more positive thoughts. Easier said than done, we know, but in this new lockdown situation, where days can merge into one another, this is a really useful tracker app.

Sleep Cycle

Hands up who isn’t sleeping well at the moment? It’s not really a surprise as there are so many stressful elements to daily life right now. And when we’re stressed, we take it to bed with us. Sleep Cycle helps you track your sleep, and works out when to wake you up (at the lightest sleep point) so you feel refreshed rather than tired and groggy. It tracks the sleep patterns of people all over the world and offers up tips and advice on how to get a good night’s sleep.

Streaks

As we all try and adapt to a new normal of living inside, developing and keeping up routines is going to be key to stave off boredom and create a sense of purpose. The good news is there’s an app for that.

Streaks creates to-do lists that lead to good habits. Set it up to record the things you want to do every day, from spending 15 mins learning a new language to doing a daily yoga practise. It will then record it and create ‘streaks’ to encourage you to keep going.

Try out some herbal remedies

Staying calm and collected in the weeks ahead is going to be key and there are so many helpful herbs out there that will help you find some relief.

Welleco

Who fancies a calming tea right about now?

Welleco create lovely organic teas (passionfruit, hops and skullcap) and wholefood supplements ‘super boosters’ that include all the vitamins and herbs you need to look after your gut, hair, nails, bones and your immunity. In the short term, when we’re all indoors, we need to make sure that our dietary health doesn’t suffer, just as much as our mental health. Vitamins and herbs are going to be crucial to this.

Fushi

Vegan and organic skincare, haircare and supplements brand, Fushi, have just the ticket to treat your body inside and out at this stressful time. All of their organic herbs are ground in their workshops in London, as are all their organic cold pressed essential oils that make up their skincare and haircare.

Try their herbal supplements and tinctures, the Valerian Organic tincture helps soothe you into a restful sleep. They have a useful list of herbs to take that specifically help anxiety.

Unbeelieveable Health

Hands up who loves bees? Who’s heard of Unbeeliebeable Health, who make award-winning vitamins and supplements that donate a portion of profits to bee charities. We’re loving Bee Calm (see what they did there), perfect for this stressful lockdown spring.

Bee Calm contains eight active ingredients to help you stay calm including lemon balm, magnesium, royal jelly and passion flower - which all reduce stress and tension.

Tisserand

Don’t underestimate the amount scents can help shift our brain function. Organic aromatherapy experts, Tisserand, have a huge range of essential oils which you can use in a home diffuser to make your indoor environment a more calming place - something we all need right now.

Choose from Mind Clear, Sleep Better or Total De Stress diffuser mixes if you don’t want to get into the whole world of essential oils. They also have a range of diffuser oils developed with National Geographic which will evoke different parts of the world, perfect for some armchair travelling.

Anatome

London apothecary, Anatome, make incredible blends of essential oils that can be rolled straight on pulse points, for a moment of calm when spending all your time at home gets a little much. Use them along with taking a few minutes to practise some deep breathing and recentering, which will help you keep your head.

We love their Balance and Stability oil that uses 25 essential oils including St John’s Wort, Angelica Seed and Patchouli to lower stress levels.

Find time for books

Most of us have more time on our hands, can you find escapism in books, whether that’s listening to them as you go to sleep, spending a weekend afternoon learning a new skill or using other kinds of books to find mindfulness and self-reflection.

Audible

If you haven’t got into the audio book revolution, now’s the time. Audible is a subscription service from Amazon, that offers up audio books (often recorded by the author) plus original storytelling and podcasts. You can use it online or offline and once you’ve downloaded an audio book, it’s yours to keep.

Audible has a 30 day free trial for new customers and is also offering some kids stories for free for those stuck at home.

Hive

An online bookshop, Hive, is a brilliant alternative to Amazon. Order your books for home delivery and Hive donates 10% commission to independent bookshops in the UK and you choose the bookshop! They also don’t just do physical books but e-books as well.

Some reading suggestions from them include Ali Smith’s Spring, The Adventures of a Yorkshire Shepherdess and Hilary Mantel’s latest, The Mirror and the Light.

Colouring books

It’s not just about reading though, has anyone else developed a taste for colouring in? This calming past time has been reinvented as a way to find a spot of mindfulness, as you concentrate on not going over the lines. It’s not all pictures of flowers and fairies though.

Try the Sweary Adult Colouring In Book, this ‘snarky’ one of vet life or one full of Japanese designs.

Keep a journal

Journalling can help keep you sane. If you haven’t tried it before, there are endless ways to keep a journal, from those focusing on mindfulness and meditation to drawing, doodling and well any other way you like to record your thoughts really.

If this has you raising an eyebrow, we like the Mindful As Fuck: A Mediatation Journal for Snarky Ass Mofos and slightly more worthy, The Self Exploration Journal - which takes you on a journey of ‘90 days of writing, discovery and reflection’.

What pebble readers are reading

We’re launching a book recommendation in our new daily email but here are some of the books we’ve been suggested so far…

Anxious For Nothing: Finding Calm in a Chaotic World - Max Lucado

The Long Call - Anne Cleese

Silent Spring - Rachel Carson

Gardening to Save the Planet - Dave Coulson

From What Is to What If - Rob Hopkins. Read our interview with Rob Hopkins here.

What to do with the kids at home

While we’re all in lockdown, having kids at home is going to be disruptive and stressful. Keeping them occupied is a job in itself, but hopefully these suggestions will be a place to kickstart some ideas. Ideal if you’re over-wrought and don’t want to spend hours Googling. Keep it simple.

Google Learn At Home

Google has developed a range of YouTube channels for kids from 5-13 to learn key subjects at home from maths and science to art tutorials. We love Finding Stuff Out and JoJo’s Science Show to get kids engaged around science and nature.

Online PE classes

Lean in 15 healthy lifestyle guru Joe Wicks, has launched a daily PE with Joe 30 minute workout aimed at kids stuck at home. Find each one on his YouTube channel, The Body Coach.

CBeebies

Good ol’ BBC has a range of fun things to do at home with younger kids through its CBeebies page, from making dens and treasure hunts to a series of easy baking recipes to try and things to make out of cardboard.

Educational apps

Sometimes there’s nothing for it but screen time. But there are a whole host of apps designed to learn and teach your child key skills, from reading and writing to logic puzzles and coding. This list from Sitters has 15 great examples of child-friendly apps that you can give them and feel guilt free.

What to bake with the kids

If you’ve got the time and want to get them involved in the kitchen, don’t overcomplicate things. There’s a world of kid friendly baking sites and recipes out there, but if you’re frazzled, make it simple. Delicious magazine has a list of 36 kid friendly bakes, from flapjacks and cookies to jam tarts and cupcakes. Kids’ baking doesn’t have to be Instagram worthy, just fun and tasty.