Prioritising Wellbeing And Self Care In Higher Education

This book illuminates international voices of those who feel empowered to do things differently in higher education, providing inspiration to those who are seeking guidance, reassurance, or a beacon of hope. Doing things differently comes with an awareness and curiosity to explore what can be. Increasingly, more and more professionals in higher education are choosing themselves, happiness, families, relationships, kindness, and compassion over arbitrary notions of institutional prestige, continuous pressure to overwork, and competitiveness with others. The chapters in this book do more than highlight flaws in the system, they call for proactive engagement in interrupting and reimagining what is broken. The authors share their own experiences as a way of encouraging readers to take small steps towards self-care, to notice their surroundings, and to embrace change as an empowering tool. The focus is on becoming the change we aspire to see, with a collective readiness to instigate positive transformations. Sharing ambitious ideas to encourage change, this book is a valuable resource for those seeking to enhance their self-care and wellbeing in the higher education context, and for those seeking to engage with others in support of these efforts.

The workplace has significant influence over our sense of wellbeing. It is a place where many of us spend significant amounts of our time, where we find meaning, and often form a sense of identity. Creating a Place for Self-care and Wellbeing in Higher Education explores the notion of finding meaning across academia as a key part of self-care and wellbeing. In this edited collection, the authors navigate how they find meaning in their work in academia by sharing their own approaches to self-care and wellbeing. In the chapters, visual narratives intersect with lived experience and proactive strategies that reveal the stories, dilemmas, and tensions of those working in higher education. This book illuminates how academics and higher education professionals engage in constant reconstruction of their identity and work practices, placing self-care at the centre of the work they do, as well as revealing new ways of working to disrupt the current climate of dismissing self-care and wellbeing. Designed to inspire, support, and provoke the reader as they navigate a career in higher education, this book will be of great interest to professionals and researchers specifically interested in studies in higher education, wellbeing, and/or identity.

This book illuminates international voices of those who feel empowered to do things differently in higher education, providing inspiration to those who are seeking guidance, reassurance or a beacon of hope. Doing things differently comes with an awareness and curiosity to explore what can be. Increasingly, more and more professionals in higher education are choosing themselves, happiness, families, relationships, kindness, and compassion over arbitrary notions of institutional prestige, continuous pressure to overwork, and competitiveness with others. The chapters in this book do more than highlight flaws in the system, they call for proactive engagement in interrupting and reimagining what is broken. The authors share their own experiences as a way of encouraging readers to take small steps towards self-care, to notice their surroundings, and to embrace change as an empowering tool. The focus is on becoming the change we aspire to see, with a collective readiness to instigate positive transformations. Sharing ambitious ideas to encourage change, this book is a valuable resource for those seeking to enhance their self-care and wellbeing in the higher education context, and for those seeking to engage with others in support of these efforts.

Self-care involves taking action to support, protect or maintain wellbeing. Relationships have a significant influence on these acts of self-care and one’s sense of wellbeing. Relationships are fundamental to individual meaning-making and crucial to the world of academia. In this edited collection, authors navigate how they view relationships as a crucial part of their wellbeing and acts of self-care, exploring the "I", "We", and "Us" at the centre of self-care and wellbeing embodiment. Each chapter unpacks this idea in varying ways that demonstrate that relationships are a fundamental element of both work and personal life and how they intersect with wellbeing. The authors present critical discussion through visual narratives, lived experiences, and strategies that highlight how relationships, seeking social support, scaffolding opportunities to learn with and from each other, and changes in practise become acts of self-care individually and collectively. There has arguably never been a more important time to raise awareness of self-care and wellbeing as central to the nature of work in higher education. Healthy Relationships in Higher Education: Promoting Wellbeing Across Academia highlights new ways of working in higher education that disrupt current tensions that neglect wellbeing and will be of interest to anyone working in this environment.

This book focuses on the lived experiences of higher education professionals working in the face of stress, pressure and the threat of burnout and how acts of self-care and wellbeing can support, develop and maintain a sense of self. In considering the place of self-care in higher education, we are challenged with the tension that exists when it comes to the valuing of self-care and our individual and collective wellbeing. In Reflections on Valuing Wellbeing in Higher Education, authors present and explore the ways in which they manage and reframe their wellbeing and self-care, through mindfulness, compassion, connection to breath, ref lection, demonstrating individual and collective embodiment and resistance to neoliberalism and environmental destruction. Covering various contexts of higher education, such as learning and teaching, research, leadership and engagement, this book offers practical strategies grounded in literature and evidence-based research. The self in self-care is relational. It is not just about self. We need others for inspiration, motivation and, indeed, the act. This book will be of great interest to professionals and researchers specifically interested in studies in higher education, wellbeing and/or identity as well as those navigating a career in higher education.

This book provides an evidence-based approach to sustainable self-care, anchoring these strategies in individual academics' core personal values. It teaches readers how to use their values to leverage self-care strategies into a workable, individualised, and effective map to wellness. Working in the demanding environment of higher education can leave little time for self-care, yet making space for wellness and self-care is an essential part of creating a creative and innovative environment for academic work. This book shows how to create and successfully implement realistic self-care plans. By identifying core values and using these to develop individualised self-care plans, Sustaining Your Wellbeing in Higher Education pushes back against a one-size-fits-all approach, while also discussing the role of self-care in academic labour activism and providing strategies for readers to become advocates for better self-care practices within their zones of influence. Designed to provide academics with the skills they need to develop workable and sustainable self-care plans, this book is an invaluable resource for students and professionals working in all areas of higher education.

This volume focuses on individual and collective practices of creativity, embodiment and movement as acts of self-care and wellbeing. Creative Expression and Wellbeing in Higher Education positions creative expression as an important act for professionals working in higher education, as a way to connect, communicate, practice activism or simply slow down. Through examples as diverse as movement through dance and exercise, expression through drawing, writing or singing and creating objects with one’s hands, the authors share how individual and collective acts of creativity and movement enhance, support and embrace wellbeing, offering guidance to the reader on how such creative expression can be adopted as self-care practice. This book highlights how connection to hand, body, voice and mind has been imperative in this process for expression, fl ow and engagement with self and wellbeing practices. Self-care and wellbeing are complex at the best of times. In higher education, these are actions that are constantly being grappled with personally, collectively and systematically. Designed to support readers working in higher education, this book will also be of great interest to professionals and researchers.

Academic staff and students within higher education settings are confronted by a learning environment that is academically stimulating, informative, career-focused and socially rich, which can be intensely competitive and highly charged. Within this learning environment, academic staff and students are often at risk of compromising their wellbeing in their pursuit of academic excellence. This book provides an examination of the key areas that are important to the sustenance of wellbeing within higher education settings, with a view to promoting healthy learning environments. The chapter authors are predominantly working in the Asia-Pacific rim, but the book also includes more universal perspectives. The synthesis of the issues covered in the book is crucial to the understanding of higher education as not only an environment for gaining knowledge and skills relevant for success in academic and career domains, but also as an environment for developing socially adept and authentic communication skills. The ideas presented in this book will further assist academic staff and students to consider ways to more fully participate in their learning environment so that they can optimize their valuable contributions to the professional communities they serve.