A wonderful anecdote from senior yoga teacher Patricia Walden has stuck with me since I first read it some years ago in a post at Yoga Journal. She recalled a statement BKS Iyengar made to her when she struggled with depression: “If you open your armpits,...
Several years ago, I was working with a 4-year old girl who I’ll call “Joy.” She had experienced trauma, and her mother was very worried about her. Joy often had angry outbursts, and her mother wanted to be sure she was providing good support. At the end of one of our...
President Biden’s proposal for universal preschool was great to hear this past week. Of course, now comes the challenge of getting the plan through Congress. Still, we’re hopeful that some progress will be made toward making preschool available to more children. After...
Not long after I’d begun work as a counselor in a high poverty, high trauma school, I played a social/emotional game with a group of students in which I’d ask questions to get them thinking. “What would you do if you found $10,000?” I asked the children. Having come...
Originally posted August 2, 2015 We’ve looked before at the relationship between physical activity and cognitive skills. The short version, as brain scientist John Medina has noted, is that our brains developed to work best while we’re moving in an outdoor...
Disappointment happens. It’s how life goes. But try telling that to a child. Actually, don’t. It’s dismissive. It says, “Your feelings don’t matter.” And when you’re a kid, those feelings can feel very big. End-of-the-worldish. Challenging. More often, we’re tempted...
