Working in a classroom or a clinic can be overwhelming and exhausting. As the level of children’s distress and needs increase so do competing demands from parents and administrators.

This vicious cycle wears down teachers and clinicians while fueling stress, frustration, conflict, and disappointment for children and caregivers alike.

Join mindfulness expert, Susan Kaiser Greenland to show you how activity-based mindfulness beats this depleting cycle by developing six crucial life skills that lead to:

• Stronger attention
• Greater emotional intelligence
• Enhanced self-regulation
• Strengthened compassion for self and others

Effective, brief, yet authentic, mindful activities build lasting psychological strengths while offering moments of calm in the classroom and clinic, even when stress and strong emotions run high.

You’ll learn to foster six essential life skills – Quieting, Focusing, Seeing, Reframing, Caring & Connecting – using mindful games that have been empirically tested for over 15 years with thousands of children. Using mindful activities will strengthen and support how you communicate and teach while helping kids and caregivers alike develop mind-body awareness, compassionate life skills, and manage stress.

1. Present an introduction to the theory and practice of mindful awareness in the classroom and the clinic.
2. Teach practical, mindful tools that can be applied in your professional work with children, teens and families.
3. Observe demonstrations of mindful games that impact attention, emotional balance and compassion in the classroom and the clinic.
4. Explore age-appropriate, secular, mindful games and activities from the perspective of a child or teenager in small groups through role-play.
5. Discern the connections between mindfulness, stress-reduction, attention, regulating emotion, regulating behavior, and learning.
6. Determine ways to integrate mindfulness into existing programs and/or routines.
7. Illustrate mindful awareness and its general applications in psychology and education.
8. Present the Inner Kids evidence-based model and how it supports education and psychotherapy settings.
9. Explore ways to integrate mindful life-skills into personal and professional life for self-care.
10. Compile mindful strategies to ignore distractions & build flexible attention.
11. Design mindful games and develop perspective talking.
12. Incorporate mindful games to help strengthen the behavioral health of your clients.

INTRODUCTION:

• An Exploration of the Inner Kids Model and Activity-Based Mindfulness
• A fun, pragmatic approach to mindfulness and meditation using games to develop six essential life skills:
  • Quieting
  • Focusing
  • Seeing
  • Reframing
  • Caring & Connecting
• Experience mindful games: lecture, demonstrations and dyads

DEMONSTRATIONS AND ROLE PLAY IN SMALL GROUPS

Quieting: Calming and Self-Regulation

• Explore mindful strategies to:
  • Develop restraint
  • Release nervous energy
  • Calm and self-soothe
• Experience a mindful activity: A Cooling Out-Breath, Shake It Up, and Gratitude Walk

Focusing: Attention and Concentration

• Explore mindful strategies to develop:
  • Concentration
  • Help kids ignore distractions
  • Build steady, flexible attention
• Experience mindful games/activities: Mindful Breathing, Counting Breaths, Tic-Toc, Slow and Silent Walking, and Visualizations

Seeing & Reframing: A Wise and Compassionate Worldview

• Explore mindful strategies to explore:
  • Cause and effect
  • Develop perspective taking
  • Open-mindedness
  • Appreciation
• Experience mindful games: Duck! Rabbit!, Pinky Pointing or Thumbs Game, Life is Good, and Three Good Things.

Caring & Connecting: Speaking and Acting with Wisdom and Compassion

• Explore mindful strategies to develop:
  • Age-appropriate discernment
  • Self-care
  • Capacity to let go of old hurts and disappointments
  • Offer a roadmap for speaking and acting in a way that’s helpful to self and others
• Experience mindful games: Is it Helpful?, The Three Gates, What Did I Hear?, Resting and Noticing, Stargazing, Pink Bubble