The Mindful Writing Workshop: Teaching in the Age of Stress and Trauma


Book Description

“Though life occurs in events, it must be written about in moments.” Today’s youth are growing up in an age of stress and trauma, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the classroom. Absenteeism, emotional distraction, passivity, and unresponsiveness are all signs of children in need. Thankfully, it turns out that the workshop classroom, with limited but essential tuning, can be just the environment students in the grip of trauma need to become comfortable in themselves and break through into active learning. In The Mindful Writing Workshop: Teaching in the Age of Stress and Trauma, Professor Richard Koch offers clear, comprehensive, guided lessons that help teachers gain the insight necessary to adapt their instruction of writing to incorporate restorative and healing practices—practices that can improve the quality of learning and writing for all learners. Accessible, straightforward, and empowering, the approaches presented in The Mindful Writing Workshop will help previously indifferent or distracted students become engaged, increase their effort, deepen their resilience, and soon raise the quality of their writing, all while guiding teachers in creating a positive, collaborative, “doing” classroom.




Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing


Book Description

"[A] rare combination of solid scholarship, clinically useful methods, and passionate advocacy for those who have suffered trauma." —Rick Hanson, PhD, author of Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom From elementary schools to psychotherapy offices, mindfulness meditation is an increasingly mainstream practice. At the same time, trauma remains a fact of life: the majority of us will experience a traumatic event in our lifetime, and up to 20% of us will develop posttraumatic stress. This means that anywhere mindfulness is being practiced, someone in the room is likely to be struggling with trauma. At first glance, this appears to be a good thing: trauma creates stress, and mindfulness is a proven tool for reducing it. But the reality is not so simple. Drawing on a decade of research and clinical experience, psychotherapist and educator David Treleaven shows that mindfulness meditation—practiced without an awareness of trauma—can exacerbate symptoms of traumatic stress. Instructed to pay close, sustained attention to their inner world, survivors can experience flashbacks, dissociation, and even retraumatization. This raises a crucial question for mindfulness teachers, trauma professionals, and survivors everywhere: How can we minimize the potential dangers of mindfulness for survivors while leveraging its powerful benefits? Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness offers answers to this question. Part I provides an insightful and concise review of the histories of mindfulness and trauma, including the way modern neuroscience is shaping our understanding of both. Through grounded scholarship and wide-ranging case examples, Treleaven illustrates the ways mindfulness can help—or hinder—trauma recovery. Part II distills these insights into five key principles for trauma-sensitive mindfulness. Covering the role of attention, arousal, relationship, dissociation, and social context within trauma-informed practice, Treleaven offers 36 specific modifications designed to support survivors’ safety and stability. The result is a groundbreaking and practical approach that empowers those looking to practice mindfulness in a safe, transformative way.




Creative Writing


Book Description

Imagining new, introspective outlets for the support of mental and physical wellbeing, pracademic duo Mark Pearson and Helen Foster draw on their clinical and archival expertise to equip both healthcare professionals and general readers to unleash their creativity and unlock the comfort and creativity that putting pen to paper can bring.




Mindfulness for the Next Generation


Book Description

College students and other young adults today experience high levels of stress as they pursue personal, educational, and career goals. These struggles can have serious consequences, and may increase the risk of psychological distress and mental illness among this age group. This fully updated second edition of Mindfulness for the Next Generation describes an evidence-based, approach for teaching the useful and important skill of mindfulness to college-age adults.




Mindful Arts in the Classroom


Book Description

Written especially for the teacher or camp director who wants to bring mindfulness, social and emotional learning (SEL), and the arts into their busy day through storytelling and fun games, this book offers a complete course that helps kids identify and talk about their feelings, self-regulate and self-soothe when stressed, and learn from easy mindfulness practices. Educator and theater director Andrew Nance is the author of the popular children's book Puppy Mind, which brought a new dimension of cuteness to the practice of mindfulness in the form of a rambunctious, playful puppy. In this book, Nance brings the puppy and a host of other friendly characters into the classroom to animate a 21-lesson curriculum centered around lively stories and easy-to-lead exercises for young students from kindergarten to third grade. Nance offers a teacher's guide to arts-based mindfulness exercises utilizing story-telling, theater games, and drawing to spark students' self-expression, self-awareness, and social and emotional well-being.




Slim Calm Sexy Yoga


Book Description

Inside this book is the secret to a new you. A slimmer, calmer, sexier you. The secret? A revolutionary approach to the traditional practice of yoga. Study after study has shown that yoga offers a multitude of benefits for today's stressedout, busy woman, including a trimmer body, stronger immunity, lower blood pressure, improved mood, better sex, and more! In this comprehensive manual, you'll find more than 200 body-shaping and lifechanging yoga poses, meditations, breathing exercises, and unique 15-minute routines crafted by yoga superstar Tara Stiles. In Slim Calm Sexy Yoga you'll discover how just 15 minutes of yoga a day can help you: - Sculpt a sexy silhouette - Control diet-busting cravings - Banish stress for good - Amp up your sexual satisfaction - Get smooth, glowing skin - Sleep better, stay healthy, and have through-the- roof energy This easy-to-follow illustrated guide to the transformative powers of yoga guarantees a total lifestyle makeover. Let Slim Calm Sexy Yoga be your blueprint for a brand-new you!




You Are Radically Loved


Book Description

From the award-winning host of the Radically Loved podcast, an invitation to discover the healing power of who you are, body, mind, and spirit. Growing up in East L.A. in the nineties, Rosie Acosta dismissed spirituality and wellness as something people like her didn’t do. But after being arrested at age fifteen, she knew that only a radical change would lead her away from debilitating anxiety and self-doubt. As she puts it, yoga offered her a ladder and she began to climb. In this empowering and accessible guide, Acosta leads readers through the essential spiritual practices she uses to create a radically loved life. With the arc of her own journey as a framework, she presents meditations, journaling questions, and practices for identifying and honoring our own radical truths. With grit and grace, this heart-filled guide makes spiritual practice accessible to everyone and helps you become the person you are truly meant to be.




Teaching Mindfulness Skills to Kids and Teens


Book Description

Packed with creative, effective ideas for bringing mindfulness into the classroom, child therapy office, or community, this book features sample lesson plans and scripts, case studies, vignettes, and more. Leading experts describe how to harness the unique benefits of present-focused awareness for preschoolers, school-age kids, and teens, including at-risk youth and those with special needs. Strategies for overcoming common obstacles and engaging kids with different learning styles are explored. Chapters also share ways to incorporate mindfulness into a broad range of children's activities, such as movement, sports, music, games, writing, and art. Giving clinicians and educators practices they can use immediately, the book includes clear explanations of relevant research findings.




Implementing Mindfulness in Schools


Book Description

Implementing Mindfulness in Schools aims to provide practical, trustworthy and evidence-based guidance on developing mindfulness in schools and in the whole community who work and learn there. It attempts to bring some clarity to an area of education that is growing fast, and with very promising evidence and much enthusiasm from schools, but which can be confusing and is often riddled with misunderstandings. The guidance is based on: international scientific evidence of the outcomes of mindfulness in schools. international empirical research on implementing and embedding mindfulness in schools for teachers and students. advice from a range of experts, drawn from innovators in schools, programme developers, researchers and academics and contemplative practitioners. The guidance is for a range of audiences: those who are actively working in the 3-18 UK education systems initiating, leading and developing practical work on in school settings, or policy mindfulness, with children and young people and the adults who work with them. The detail and application of the advice has a specifically UK focus. those from other parts of the world who are working in this area, and who should find the principles and the evidence base on outcomes and implementation relevant to their situation. those programme makers who are developing and leading mindfulness courses and practices specifically for use in schools or with young people. those who are working in related areas such as compassion, mental health, emotional and social education, personal development and reflective learning who want to explore what policy and practice around mindfulness has to offer in the joint effort to make schools more humane and effective places. those who are broadly interested in what is happening with mindfulness in schools.




Deep Listening


Book Description

World-renowned restorative yoga teacher Jillian Pransky came to the practice of yoga to heal herself. For much of her life, she subscribed to a relentless work hard/play hard mentality, burying parts of herself beneath the pursuit of busy-ness and accomplishment. It wasn’t until a devastating personal loss and health crisis thrust her into suffocating anxiety that she stopped racing around. As she began to pause and examine her actions and emotions, she found herself able to unlock deeply seated tension in her mind and body. Since then, Pransky has been devoted to studying and teaching mindfulness practices, deep relaxation, and compassionate listening. In Deep Listening, Pransky presents her signature Calm Body, Clear Mind, Open Heart program―a 10-step journey of self-exploration that she’s taught around the world. Derived from the techniques that healed her, the practice of Deep Listening invites you to pay close attention to your body, mind, and heart. You’re taught how to tune inward and relax into a state of openness, ease, and clarity. This is the new frontier in integrative wellness—mindfulness designed for healing. Pransky doesn’t ask you to “be your best self,” or “do more!” She asks you to “be here” and “do less.” She guides you gently through the stages of Deep Listening, from being present and noticing your tension to welcoming what you discover with softness and compassion. She integrates tools like guided meditations, journaling prompts, and restorative yoga poses to help you regard yourself with kindness and curiosity. Immersing yourself in the practice of Deep Listening will allow you to nurture your own well-being.