My Life Journal Welcome Back Kit: This 30 page welcome back to school package is a great resource for successful online learning, scheduling, coping tools and more! Can be modified for any grade level. Enjoy!
Dynamic Mindfulness is an evidence-based, trauma-informed program that strengthens stress resilience and social-emotional learning. Mindful action, breathing, and centering are its key elements. How It Works:It’s as easy as ABC. Mindful action, breathing, and centering helps shift our response to stress: we move with full attention on the present experience while using the breath to calm our nervous system. Chronic stress places us in a persistent state of fight, flight, or freeze. Our ability to make decisions, pay attention, regulate emotions, adaptively cope, and experience empathy is disrupted. And, over time, our bodies and our mental health begin to feel the toll. With trauma-informed Dynamic Mindfulness, or DMind, we are able to shift our response from fight, flight, or freeze to rest and restore. (Or, in more scientific terms, we can downshift from the sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic nervous system.) The result? Increased focus, stronger stress resilience, and an improved sense of wellbeing. Why It Works Developed by the Niroga Institute in 2005, Dynamic Mindfulness has been embraced by educators and health professionals across the country. It integrates what we call the Mindful ABCs: Action, Breathing, and Centering into a powerful intervention that can be implemented in the classroom or clinic in 5-minute to 20-minute sessions, three to five times a week. When students regularly practice DMind, they experience changes in the way that they feel. Our students self-report that they focus better, can manage their emotions better, and feel less angry, stressed, or anxious. They bring DMind’s tools into their schoolwork, their families, and their after-school activities. They learn that they have power and choice when it comes to how they react to their external and internal world. Integrating DMind in schools provides students with ways to manage their stress, to find a sense of safety in their own bodies, and to take positive action to change their emotional and mental states. At Mission High School, 70% of participating students reported improved focus and being better able to manage stress, anxiety, and anger after 1 semester. That jumped to 100% of participating students after 4 semesters. Read our review summary here.
How Can Teens Cope with Anxiety? Many teens find ways to cope with the high anxiety they feel. It's important to recognize your emotions, to know what you're feeling and why you're feeling that way. It's also important to find healthy ways of coping with anxiety. Recognizing the types of situations that cause your anxiety is helpful. Sometimes just admitting that a situation is stressful and being prepared to deal with it can reduce your anxiety. If you try these simple measures and still have too much anxiety, getting treatment from a health care professional or therapist is the next step.