[Click for Mindful Eating Activity PDF] Join the FREE Resilience Community for Helping Professionals to learn more about trauma-informed care, resilience, mindfulness, building relationships, and more! Our community features self-paced courses, a monthly live Zoom call, a weekly live meditation, and an online platform to connect with other providers/professionals in your field. Related Posts 9 Guidelines for …
Whenever I teach mindfulness to teenagers I try as best as possible to incorporate the use of metaphor. I find that with teens (let alone people) metaphors access a different part of a person’s ability to relate to information. I often ask the youth I work with how they’d define mindfulness. For those I haven’t …
Cultivating the Lion Mind: A Mindfulness Metaphor that Sticks Read More »
Jeanette*, a 17 year-old high school student, found herself in my office trying to describe the shock of losing her father: “I just can’t….” and she trailed off. “I mean I don’t know, I just, I don’t, I can’t…” and she stopped again. She couldn’t speak because her brain was down regulating. The outer most …
9 Guidelines for Teaching Trauma-Informed Mindfulness To Teens Read More »
Teaching mindfulness to teenagers is one of my favorite professional pastimes. I usually teach mindfulness to young people in educational, medical, and even correctional settings. To say the least, the teens themselves aren’t always that excited about closing their eyes and meditating in front of their peers, especially if they have a negative connotation toward …
Teaching meditation to teens who have the giggles Read More »
When my colleague Steven Saul and I were developing the Mindfulness-Based Substance Abuse Treatment (MBSAT) 12-Session Curriculum at a juvenile detention camp, we had a number of conversations about the pros and cons of using cognitive acronyms as strategies to promote mindfulness and general self-awareness. He was more open to cognitive techniques given some of …
10 Acronyms That Promote Self-Awareness and Decision-Making in Youth Read More »
Mindfulness is the practice of observing your own experience in the present moment with an attitude of non-reactivity and/or non-judgement. That’s it. It’s not necessarily about being calm, going to a “happy place” or even controlling your breathing. Mindfulness is about being with “what is” in regard to your experience. Check out this infographic on …
As I walked into the juvenile hall on a Thursday night to teach a mindfulness class, I contemplated the evening’s agenda. It was 2007 and I worked for the Mind Body Awareness Project as a mindfulness instructor; at the time we had no set curriculum. It was up to us as facilitators to develop our …
As I entered the juvenile hall to teach a Thursday evening meditation class many years ago, I tried to prepare myself for the level of emotion that might arise: it was Thanksgiving Day. In hindsight, I don’t know if I could’ve better prepared myself for that evening. Youth were emotional because they were incarcerated and …
4 Tips for Working with Marginalized Youth During the Holidays 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 »
Group work with teens can be both challenging and extremely rewarding. One of the responsibilities we as facilitators are charged with is mixing up content to curtail boredom—the feeling in youth that can easily snowball into disengagement, detachment, and less buy-in. When facilitating group work, whether it’s therapy-based, skills-based, or even a traditional classroom (yes …
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