Here are twenty-five different activities you can try with your students or clients to add some fun variety to your mindfulness lessons. Focusing on the five senses can also be a good alternative to breath-based practices for youth who suffer from anxiety or who’ve been impacted by trauma. Sense of Sight World of Color “Collect …
Five Mindfulness Activities for Each of the Five Senses Read More »
It’s common for adults to tell youth to “stop overreacting.” That’s usually not very helpful, especially if the adult is yelling at them to calm down! It’s much more effective to be a good role model of skillfully responding, and to teach them what’s going on in their brains and how they can self-regulate when …
4 Tips for Culturally-Sensitive Teaching Guest post by Catharine Hannay In his book on Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness, David Treleaven tells the story of Nari, a young woman born and raised in the United States. Nari was on her first meditation retreat, looking forward to her first private appointment with the teacher. Unfortunately, he started the session …
While you were growing up: Were your parents or caregivers unloving, unsupportive, or neglectful? Were you threatened or abused? Did you witness the abuse of one of your caregivers? Did you live with anyone who had a mental illness or a problem with alcohol or drugs? These are all examples of ACEs, or Adverse Childhood …
In retrospect, it wasn’t such a great idea to tell my devout Christian mother I thought I was a pantheist. I don’t blame her for freaking out. The poor woman must have imagined me performing Dionysian rituals in the backyard, assisted by our ever-accommodating golden retriever. But I do fault her for this: after the …
Four Ways to Improve Difficult Relationships With Youth Read More »
One year on February 14th, my husband did something utterly baffling. He bought me flowers. As everybody knows, women are supposed to buy men chocolate on Valentine’s Day, and men reciprocate a month later on White Day. At least, everyone knows this in Osaka, which is where we were living at the time. I sometimes …
Add a Culturally-Aware Lens to Your Trauma-Informed Toolkit Read More »
During a meeting at a refugee assistance organization, a psychologist described a problem she was having with one of her clients. “I think he must be lying about how he got to the U.S.” she said. “I mean, given the rest of his story, how could he possibly have been in Iceland?” The young man …
3 Essential Tips for Working with Limited English Proficiency Youth Read More »
This year, in addition to the usual back-to-school jitters, teens are getting hit from all sides during the pandemic: They may be hearing alarming misinformation about COVID, or have legitimate concerns about a highly contagious illness; They may be pawns in the competing agendas of parents, teachers, school administrators and government leaders about mask-wearing, vaccinations, …
6 Tips for Helping Teens Deal with Back-to-School Stress and Anxiety Read More »
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