Tagged With "Dynamic Mindfulness"
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10 Nature Activities to Help Get Your Family Through the Coronavirus Pandemic [childrenandnature.org]
By Richard Louv, Children & Nature Network, March 16, 2020 If the coronavirus spreads at the rate that experts believe it will, schools, workplaces and businesses will continue to close. Here’s a thread of silver lining. We’ll have more time for each other and nature. And, at least so far, nature’s always open. Getting outside — but at a safe distance from other people — can be one way to boost your family’s resilience. If you spend too much time indoors, “your vitamin D level goes...
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4 Jedi Mind(fulness) Tricks to Help an Anxious Child (themighty.com)
Middle school hurt. Social intimidation, academic challenges and parental pressures all set against the backdrop of swirling hormones and my personal penchant for worry . Around age 12, my anxiety really took flight and started to knock the wind right out of me — literally. The smallest challenges sparked internal firestorms of thoughts that manifested in stomachaches, crying, and often shortness of breath. My parents tried to cleave me from the throes of panic with consistent love and...
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4 years after integrating ACEs science, Pueblo, CO clinic improves services for families; cuts ER costs, doctor stress
Four years ago, Dr. Leslie Dempsey would never have talked about ACEs — adverse childhood experiences — with her patients. Now ACEs is a common topic. “Just as I don’t feel awkward asking someone if they smoke or do intravenous drugs, I don’t really feel awkward talking about their childhood traumas in a way that it relates to their health. It’s just integrated into obtaining background and social history,” she says. Dr. Leslie Dempsey Dempsey is a physician in obstetrics who oversees a team...
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6 Psychologist-Approved Ways To Cope With Unexpected Losses Right Now (mindbodygreen.org)
The science of psychological flexibility , which is explained in more detail in my book A Liberated Mind , can help. Over the last few decades, thousands of scientific studies have focused on a small set of mental skills that have a big effect on whether people can rise to life challenges. And most importantly they can be learned. 1. Choose to feel. Loss is a rich soup of emotions, sensations, urges, and memories. Make room for them all . Research shows that people who respond to loss with...
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7 Ways to Help a Child Deal with Traumatic Stress
Traumatic stress feels awful. Thankfully, there are small things we can all do to help relax a hyperaroused nervous system.
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8 Benefits of Yoga for Kids (wakeup-world.com)
Children these days deal with stress, distractions, peer pressure, over-stimulation, etc., and for this reason, the low-cost practice of yoga can benefit their well being immensely. Little ones have their own battles, races, and tension, and to bear it all, they require a calm mind and a healthy body. 1. Yoga Improves Concentration 2. Yoga Builds Confidence and Self-Esteem 3. Yoga Alleviates Stress (Something We All Face) 4. Yoga Promotes a Healthy Body and Mind 5. Yoga Teaches Body Balance...
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9 Signs You Need Better Self-Care and May Be a Trauma Survivor
Self-care is the sum of things you do for your emotional and physical wellbeing. Getting enough sleep, brushing your teeth, and eating well are classic examples of good physical self-care. How to take good care of yourself emotionally may be harder to see from the outside. Your ability to view your inner world with compassion and curiosity is one sign. Noticing your emotions and thoughts with gentle awareness is another inward sign of emotional self-care. Knowing how to find and turn to...
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9 things this adoptive mom would like everyone to know [upworthy.com]
Adoption is amazing. And it’s complicated. It can bring great joy. And it can bring great pain. Adoption is nuanced. And like anything else, it can be hard to see those nuances when it's not part of your life. That's particularly true when the media is so good at circulating adoption narratives that are a little problematic — like the baby left under the Christmas tree for his siblings to discover. I get why people thought it was sweet: A precious new life was placed into an...
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A Brief Overview of Post-Partum Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (mathewsopenaccess.com)
Note: Parenting with ACEs can present us with extra challenges. Being pregnant, giving birth and breastfeeding can all be difficult for many of us. The stresses all parents experience can be compounded depending on our own emotional and physical well-being and the support we have (emotional, financial, family, community). In addition, we might have to consider thing such as going on, staying on or going off of drugs for some period of time during and following pregnancy. We don't talk a lot...
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A Conversation with Nadine Burke Harris: How Should Pediatricians Address Childhood Adversity?
Pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris is a masterful storyteller. I learned in a conversation with her at Wheelock College before her presentation for the Brookline, MA organization Steps to Success , that before she decided to become doctor, Dr. Burke Harris wanted to be an author. Only after the smashing success of her TED talk: How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime , when she was approached by a literary agent, did she find her way to writing. Her newly released book The...
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A Daughter's Letter to Her Alcoholic Father - I Love You and I Hate You
"Why don’t you love me? Why don’t you care enough to care?," writes the high school girl who wrote a letter to her alcoholic father but never mailed it. She asked me to share it on my blogs, instead. It’s the rawness of her hurt, so many years into her life, that drew me to share her letter. Helping children and adults understand the secondhand drinking (SHD) impacts a child experiences when growing up with a parent’s alcoholism* is essential to helping a child (or an adult child) heal from...
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A Few Quotes I Love from The Silenced Child by Claudia M. Gold, MD
This book is so good. I am loving reading it and I have already underlined so many parts that I can't wait to read the whole thing to write a book review. I'm going to start sharing some quotes. First, what I love most is the warm and non-clinical tone. It sounds like it is written by a human being and that's appealing. The author writes about parents (and is one) with kindness and care and as a human being. O.k., at only 50 pages in, here are some of the gems so far : "Listening to parents...
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A Grandfather With Vitiligo Knits Dolls to Restore the Self-Esteem of Children Who Suffer From This Disease (brightside.me)
Vitiligo is a disease that affects almost 3 million Brazilians and consists of the loss of skin color in certain body areas. Although there are numerous treatments to fight the condition, the most difficult aspect to cope with is other people’s prejudice toward those who suffer from it. João Stanganelli, now 64, began to show signs of vitiligo at 38. He worked in the gastronomy industry, but, due to a heart problem, his life radically changed last year. However, João didn’t allow this...
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A New Wave of Caregivers: Men [nytimes.com]
By Courtney E. Martin, The New York Times, September 24, 2019 When you hear the word “caregiver,” what image comes to mind? Most likely it is a woman in her 40s — someone tucking her children in with a phone call to her aging mother before bed. And in fact, this isn’t inaccurate. But did you know that of the 40 million family caregivers in America, nearly half of them are men? According to Jean Accius of AARP, these once invisible men are starting to “come out” publicly. Dr. Accius has...
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A Post in Honor of World Mental Health Day: ACEs - Childhood Traumas - Are the Mother of Almost All Addiction and Disease.
Community is the anti-trauma. Children who grow up in trauma are wired for trauma -- it is the lens through which they see the world -- unless that trauma is disrupted by a love of peace. That peace comes from quiet moments reading, time in nature, time when there is no fear or expectation. It takes a lot for a parent with high ACEs to learn how to calm the mind and body enough to provide that calm space for children. ACEs are crafty. Their impact pops up across the lifespan, and for women,...
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A Reflection of Real Life and the Amazing Influence of People: The Saga of C-PTSD Continues
Cissy Note on Leisa's Amazing Post: This post isn't about parenting, specifically, but it is about C-PTSD which many parents are living with, sorting through and recovering from. I felt so much compassion for and admiration of Leisa reading this. I even felt some compassion for myself. I wonder how many others, while facing our ACEs feel the compassion of others or ourselves? I wonder if anyone, while battling symptoms, feels respected or admired? There can be so much shame. I hope that if...
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A Relative Stranger (www.lilacsinoctober.wordpress.com)
Arwen Faulkner wrote this stunning piece about her father, ACEs, their relationships and his death. Like life, it's complex, painful and beautiful all at the same time. What I know about my father could fit on a grain of sand. He wore Drakkar Noir cologne, rode a Harley Davidson, and loved Jimi Hendrix. And he was an addict with a brilliant mind who struggled most of his life to shake the monkey off his back, until one day, that nasty monkey killed him. A few other things I wish I didn’t...
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A Sherpa Helping Us Scale Mountains of Loss & Fear: The Impact of Sebern Fisher's Work
“You can recover from all that happened to you.” That was the dose of hope I received from Sebern Fisher during a short telephone interview. She is the author of Neurofeedback in the Treatment of Developmental Trauma: Calming the Fear-Driven Brain. Her book is excellent even if you never plan on using neurofeedback. She helps explain why and how developmental trauma devastates and how it is different than single-incident trauma or traditional post-traumatic stress. Honestly – if you read her...
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Effects of Preterm Birth
A baby born prematurely often spends that crucial time for attachment and development of neural pathways in the NICU
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Facing a suicide crisis in his country, this African psychiatrist enlisted grandmothers to step in (washingtonpost.com)
On any given afternoon in a discreet area outside health clinics in the capital of Harare, and surrounding cities, an elder woman can be found on a bench listening intently to another person’s stories. She’s affectionately called a “grandmother,” an appropriate term for her role offering comfort, encouragement and a ready ear. But she’s no one’s grandmother, at least not of the people who sit with her on the bench. Rather, she’s one of 300 older Zimbabwean women who have been trained to...
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Family Spirit program aims to help Native parents improve kids’ prospects [minnpost.com]
Everyone loves their children but not everyone understands that the way we care for the youngest among us will have an impact on our society for years to come. With that reality in mind, a new program run by Headway Emotional Health Services , a Twin Cities-based mental health provider for families, aims to improve the parenting skills of at-risk American Indian parents by helping them learn to give their infant-to-preschool-aged children the support they need to be prepared for success...
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Fathering as a Survivor - Ray Charles (www.triggerpointsanthology.com)
We hear too little from men about having survived childhood abuse and even less about how that abuse impacts their fathering. This series about fathering as a survivor is helping to change that. They've done a complete interview with Ray Charles. Here's an excerpt. 7. What would you tell another survivor father who is expecting their first child? You have 9 months and counting to help yourself to try and climb out of your own issues (sounds easy, its not). This little person will need you...
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#Female Adversity: Growing Up With Female Adversity: The Female Body and Brain on Toxic Stress Series
One thing readers know about the work I do and the books I write, including Childhood Disrupted , The Autoimmune Epidemic , and The Last Best Cure , is that I focus on the intersection of neuroscience, immunology and emotion – while shining a spotlight on WOMEN’s experiences. Connecting these dots is always an underlying theme in my work. Women, girls, toxic stress, the female brain and immune system, autoimmune disease and chronic physical and mental illness — if you care about any of...
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Francine Shapiro, Developer of Eye-Movement Therapy, Dies at 71 [nytimes.com]
Laura's Note: I realize that an obituary is not typical of the type of posts we share here, but because Francine Shapiro's work has influenced and benefited so many people on this site, it seems fitting. Shapiro died in June 2019. One spring afternoon in 1987, a psychology student trying to shake off an upsetting memory took a stroll through a park in Los Gatos, Calif., distracting herself by darting her eyes back and forth. The sting of the memory quickly faded, and the student, Francine...
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Free Live Webinar | Nurturing Mindful Families
Packed schedules, increasing responsibilities, and reliance on technological devices can affect how connected and supported we feel in our families. Together families can: Improve our ability to be fully present with one another Enhance the way we listen and communicate with each other Deepen our empathy for one another and decrease reactivity Expand our strategies for problem-solving and conflict resolution Wednesday May 1 Register Here 9:00-10:00 am (PDT) or 12:00-1:00 pm (PDT)
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Free Mind Matters Online Series -- Build skills to overcome anxiety and increase resilience
In appreciation of and support for the tremendous work you are doing under challenging circumstances, Dibble will be hosting a free, 12-week Mind Matters online series with Dr. Carolyn Curtis and Dixie Zittlow. Unprecedented times, such as these, are stressful and call for everyone to think about ways to help others and themselves. Thus, we see this as an opportunity to offer free, professional development and help you and your staff practice self-care. Join us as we teach the Mind Matters...
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Going beyond asking what happened: building beloved community
“Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.”- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world.” –bell hooks One of the most notable descriptors of trauma-informed care is shifting the question of what is wrong...
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Grateful in a Grand Way
Children don’t come to live with their grandparents or relatives because everything is going great. The transition can be tough for the new family. As a grand“Parent” guardian of my grandson, I’ve written previously about the sad stuff, the tough stuff, and there’s a lot of it. It’s easy to get sucked into the negative, rehashing the entire past, the guilt, the anger, and projecting into an ugly future. Today is the last day of National Adoption Month. It is a month I celebrate, not as a...
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Great Basic Parenting Tips & Why I Have Such a Hard Time Sharing Them
At least once a week I struggle about what to share here. This is my most recent example. It's a series of tips on the U.S. Department of Education . These are great hand-outs with comprehensive information about child development that's not too long, abstract or hard to read. Here's the list (also attached below). I especially like the flyer for talking about feelings which has the tag line "Talking is teaching." And the short summary of milestones at different ages and stages from birth to...
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Great pandemic resilience building activities for youth by ITRC CA steering committee member Lil Milagro Henriquez
I hope everyone is staying safe during these perilous times. I wanted to share some of the resources that Mycelium Youth Network is putting together. I'm extremely proud of the programming that we've put together and the community partners that we're working with for these projects. We've put together comprehensive youth and adult programming all designed with mental, socio-emotional, and physical resilience in mind. A full listing of classes can be accessed on our website . All of our youth...
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Happy Mother's Day! Remembering The Greatest Generation of Moms...
“I waited.
And waited…
And then…I waited some more.”
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Healing From Childhood Trauma — AVAIYA University online course, July 29 - Aug. 6
AVAIYA University is hosting a free online class, Healing From Childhood Trauma, July 29 - August 6, that features 18 physicians, therapists, psychologists & more who share life-changing strategies to heal from childhood trauma. Featured in the course are Dr. Dan Siegel on "Trauma & Mindfulness", Dr. Jamie Marich on "Healing the Wounds of Childhood Trauma", and Ann Kelley and Sue Marriott on "U nderstanding Unresolved Attachment to Heal From Loss & Trauma." I'm doing a session on...
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Healing from Codependency and the Freedom that Awaits
There is no healing without recognition of that which needs to be healed. Someone who has clogged arteries cannot heal those clogged arteries if they are unaware they have clogged arteries. To heal mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically, or cognitively first requires an acknowledgment of some kind of deficit or wound. In order to acknowledge a wound one must become conscious or self-aware of such wound.
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Healing in place: Game on to flip the COVID19 threat into a positive experience for our children
As I was considering the children sheltering-in-place this morning and reflecting on lessons from my own childhood, I wondered: Can we heal-in-place too? I was born after the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, another collective trauma affecting everyone. Yet, it was nevertheless passed on to me by the adults in my life in the form of constant reminders that the U.S. could be blown into bits any second. When I started school, there were constant “hide under the chair” earthquake drills I took to be...
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Helping Children in Emergencies: Keep Your Child’s Developmental Stage and Temperament in Mind
By Karissa Luckett, RN, BSN, MSW Common reactions to stress will fade over time for most children. Let’s be honest: Your exploring, tactile toddler won’t suddenly start keeping their hands to themselves. Your continually forgetful preschooler won’t suddenly start hand-washing properly just because you’ve told them it’s important. Depending on their ages, stages and temperaments, some children will require more reassurance or more time to shift than others. This situation is unique, and so is...
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Helping New Parents Make Room for Uncertainty
A new program for parents and infants, thanks to generous support from Mill Town Capital , is coming to Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The Hello It’s Me Project shines a spotlight on these tender new relationships, investing resources around the birth of a baby with the long-term goal of building a healthy community from the bottom up. When world-renowned child development researcher Dr. Ed Tronick spoke in the spring of 2018 for an audience of a wide variety of practitioners in Berkshire County...
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How It Feels & How We Heal: Parenting with ACEs Chat Quotes (You Tube, Database, PDFs, Links)
Parenting with ACEs is sharing inspiration, information, and expertise from our chat series in 3 formats. Parenting with ACEs: How It Feels & How We Heal Quote Collection (pdf version below as well) Quotes Database (pdf version below as well) Links to Chat Transcripts and before and after-the-chat blog posts. Thanks to everyone who showed up, who shared, and who is doing the important work that is our mission (prevent ACEs, heal trauma, build resilience). We know that work happens...
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How One Connection at CYW’s ACEs Conference Sparked Awareness into Action
Origins offers a number of training and consulting services. We developed The Basics as a half-day session to provide the foundation to support trauma-informed and resilience practices across sectors and industries. The session includes an overview of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, the neurobiology of toxic stress, the impact of social and historical trauma, and the science of resilience. We have tested The Basics with two cross-sector audiences, in Los Angeles and Phoenix.
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How to Be a Resilient Parent (mindful.org)
Children learn more from what you do than what you say, so your resilience - the way they watch you approach adversity - affects theirs. Explore these mindful strategies for building awareness around challenging experiences. Resilience relies on how we perceive our lives. So maybe we get queasy watching our child on stage for the first time; anxious and concerned, we start ruminating. Within those thoughts exist layers of assumptions, perspectives, and mental filters— I didn’t prepare her...
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The Ten Books That Changed My Life - Healing ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) and Building Resilience
Teri Wellbrock offers a list of those books that had a profound impact on her life and helped her create a life filled with tranquility and joy. While she may not have agreed with every word written, she did find powerful answers, delicious little tidbits, and inspirational guidance within each book.
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The Trauma Resiliency Model: A “Bottom-Up” Intervention for Trauma Psychotherapy (Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association)
Grabbe L, Miller-Karas E. The Trauma Resiliency Model: A “Bottom-Up” Intervention for Trauma Psychotherapy. Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association. 2017; 24 (1): 76-84.
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Thich Nhat Hanh answers children’s questions. "Is Nothing Something?" (lionsroar.com)
Children have a special place in the Plum Village tradition of Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. There are special practices, vows, and programs designed especially for children and teens, and Thich Nhat Hanh often fashions the first part of his dharma talks with them in mind. He regularly takes questions from children, and by and large adults can identify with what they ask. Children may be smaller and younger and they may have a funny way with words, but their questions reveal that they,...
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This Is How Mindfulness Influences Your Child’s Behaviour (mindvalley.com)
The mind of the child is constantly observing, questioning, discovering and building assumptions. Mindfulness can help kids tune into this process and assist them with learning emotional regulation and achieving cognitive growth . By teaching mindfulness to children, you can help them become aware of this natural state and consequently help them to: Become better listeners Regulate their emotions Communicate effectively Focus better Become more compassionate and empathetic Resolve conflicts...
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This Is Us Helps People Get Real About Adoption & ACEs
One thing I've learned from adoption expert and social worker, Beth O'Malley , is that talking about hard topics is essential. She knows. She was adopted from foster care as an infant, was an adoption social worker for the Department of Children and Families, in Massachusetts, and is an adoptive mother. O’Malley says that’s it up to us, as parents to initiate conversations about adoption and to make it safe to share thoughts, feelings and experiences about anything. Addiction. Abuse. Loss.
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This is your kid's brain: The scientific evidence against spanking, timeouts, and sleep training [qz.com]
Children who are spanked are... more likely to commit crimes, more likely to suffer from depression, more likely to go to jail, more likely to get into fights, more likely to commit suicide, and more likely to abuse alcohol and drugs. They also...
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Through a Trauma Lens: The Need for Doulas
Trigger warning: trauma, doctors, hospital, birth, sex It is very important to me to approach all of the work that I do from a trauma-informed perspective. Whether it is asking for consent before touching a student in yoga class, offering self-regulation skills to those I work with, or preparing clients for potential triggers*, I do my best to incorporate my on-going learning in the field of trauma into my professional practices. Recently, I began taking trauma classes for professionals...
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To Help Kids Thrive, Coach Their Parents (nytimes.com)
In 1986, in a few of the poorest neighborhoods in Kingston, Jamaica, a team of researchers from the University of the West Indies embarked on an experiment that has done a great deal, over time, to change our thinking about how to help children succeed, especially those living in poverty. Its message: Help children by supporting and coaching their parents. The Jamaica experiment helps make the case that if we want to improve children’s opportunities for success, one of the most powerful...
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To Zoe’s Mom: I See You
I am not even sure where to start. But, I know I need to write about this. I need to give this to the world. Perhaps to another mother who is facing the darkness and can’t see her way out. Perhaps she is watching her children caught in the cyclone that is her life. I think she is who I am writing this for. And maybe for me too. I am doing some amazing work with a community that is fast becoming dear to my heart. I look at the people who keep showing up that are trying to wrap their heads...
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Tonier Cain Deserves an Evidence-Based Apology
Tonier Cain spoke at the Benchmarks' Partnering for Excellence conference last month in North Carolina. If you don't know her name you might recognize her as the woman featured in the Healing Neen documentary ( which is must see). I am just starting to recover from her speech. Seriously. It was hard to stand after she spoke. When I did, I went right to a yoga mat in the self-care calm room for a while. I took off my high heels and curled up in a ball for a bit. I'm still digesting her words.
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Toolkit on Domestic Violence and ACEs Now Available
This blog post is to share our toolkit, "A Resilience Framework for Domestic Violence and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)." The toolkit is a PowerPoint that can be downloaded here and is free to share. This project started nearly 24 months ago with support from the Arctic Fulbright Initiative to examine the intersections between domestic violence and ACEs and create an open access resource. A statewide survey in Alaska and focus groups in Finland provided recommendations on information...