What Is Your Call of Duty?
What's going on with our boys? These days, I’m asked this question a lot by parents and teachers alike. This school year alone, I have done more staff trainings and have been asked to observe and assist teachers more than ever before with respect to boys’ behavior...
11 Ideas for Cultivating Gratitude in the K-8 Classroom
In our work with teachers and counselors around the United States, we are in a unique position to see what trends and common issues face schools. One particularly strong trend is an emphasis on social and emotional learning (SEL) to help students to succeed in a...
Things That Go Bang!
At our recent Boys & Coyotes Course in Minneapolis, I asked a group of therapists, teachers and other educational professionals, “What do you know about boys?” Some of their answers: They are active. They like to play superheroes. They make exploding noises. They...
The Emerging Field of Contemplative Science & How It Can Help Us Help Kids Thrive
It seems “mindfulness” has hit the big time. A simple news search of the term in Google typically brings up several thousand results. It seems everybody’s talking about it. One reason why is just our search for solutions to the increasing pressure and uncertainty we...
How Stories & Storytelling Make for Healthier, Happier, More Resilient Kids
Once upon a time… There’s good reason why these four simple words almost instantly capture our interest. As if by magic, they may transport us back to childhood and the fairy tales read to us by our parents or earliest school teachers. They also hit an even more...
Honoring our Children, Honoring Ourselves, Honoring our Elders
A guest post by Kimberly Carson, co-instructor for our new Yoga for Seniors Certification program. Growing a beautiful, productive garden is more complex than just supplying water, appropriate sunlight and good soil. Among other things, you must consider the effects...
Take a Stand for Children’s Health…Literally!
At first glance, it’s a hard statistic to believe – that by the time they reach high school, 63% of kids are no longer physically active. But consider some of the barriers that either didn’t exist or were much less common for children just one or two generations ago:...
The Children You Save
A few years ago, after hearing news of another mass shooting, I sat with the principal of the rural elementary school where I worked as a counselor, feeling sad and discouraged. Then he said something I’ve never forgotten: "The children you save never make the...
New Hope for Dealing with Tension & Trauma, Part 2
Read Part One Words Are Not Enough: Yoga & Meditation As we discussed last time, recovery from trauma is both a mental/emotional process and a physical process. Key to the latter is deactivating the somatic cues that trigger the troubling emotions and autonomic...
New Hope for Dealing with Tension & Trauma
Have you ever been so nervous or scared, your body was literally shaking? That shaking is called neurogenic tremoring – an innate release system that nearly all mammals are born with and seems to be a key component in how they handle stress. Yes, just as our bodies...
Sowing Mindfulness & Social Skills, Harvesting Gratitude
Heading into the holiday season, I find my thoughts going back several years to a party I attended at the elementary school where I worked as a counselor. Each of the 32 students contributed some kind of food. There were large bottles of soda, big bags of chips and...
Schools, Yoga & the Religion Issue
What began as a local story of a few California parents objecting to classroom yoga has, over the past couple weeks, ballooned into one of national interest, garnering mainstream media coverage. According to the original North County Times article about the dissent,...