This is a gratitude journal that your students can use to help build an understanding of themselves.

Give your eyes a break with this audio-only Digital Wellness Break. Follow along as teacher Stephanie's voice guides you step-by-step through "Tense and Release," a mind-body-breath integration that's designed for children and effective for all ages.

TODAY’S MINDFUL MOVEMENT
🦦 TENSE AND RELEASE 🦦

“It’s the end of a very long day. Back-to-back-to-back meetings. You sign-off from work, gather your belongings, rush out the door... only to get stuck in traffic. Tension rises.

A busy lifestyle with no time to relax can lead to frustration, tension, and chronic stress.

Making time in our busy days to mindfully unwind can help. Tense and Release is one of our favorite relaxation exercises to do just this. By consciously tensing and releasing our bodies, we are able to tune out what is going on outside and tune in to what’s going on inside. And in tune, consciously let go of the tension and stress we carry.

This audio-only relaxation will allow you to return to a state of balance. Just hit 'play' and give your eyes a rest for the next four minutes.” (Yoga Ed.)

What Is It?

Practicing mindfulness can help relieve the stressors of school, work, and life. As an educator, you may not know where to start. How can you make time for self-care to protect your own mental health? How can you incorporate mindfulness exercises into meetings with colleagues and/or interactions with students?

In this guide you'll learn how to develop a personal mindfulness practice (complete with a sample breathing exercise!), and how to get started cultivating mindfulness skills in students or other adults. You'll walk away with simple ways to work mindfulness into your daily life. In the guide you will learn more about:
I. Benefits of Mindfulness for Educators
II. Practice a Mindful Breathing Exercise
III. Sample Mindfulness Exercises
IV. Tips for Facilitating Mindfulness Exercises

What Is It?

INNER EXPLORER PRESENTS A MINDFULNESS APP FOR FAMILIES - Helping Parents Raise Mindful kids.

Inner Explorer is a free mindfulness app (for Apple and Android) from Inner Explorer. Hundreds of school districts use Inner Explorer's mindfulness program to help educators and students become socially-emotionally present and handle situations with calmness and resilience.

Inner Explorer @ Home is specifically designed for parents and caregivers to use with their children and features daily guided mindfulness practices for all age-groups.

THE BENEFITS AND 5 W's OF MINDFULNESS
1. What is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness means paying attention to what’s happening right now with curiosity and kindness and without judgment.
2. Why Mindfulness?
Mindfulness is popular because it is very effective for reducing stress and for improving focus which helps learning.
3. When?
One can practice mindfulness any time. However, practicing mindfulness in the morning often sets the tone for a calm and lovely day.
4. Who?
Inner Explorer was designed for Pre K – 12th grade students. However, many adults utilize the program on a daily basis. Practicing as a family magnifies the benefits and creates calm and connection.
5. Where?
Practicing in as quiet a place as possible is always a good idea to minimize distractions.

Mindfulness is a powerful tool in supporting children’s emotional wellbeing. This module will help parents, carers and teachers to confidently support children through life’s ups-and-downs. Our five foundational topics include:
Awareness as a foundation of mindfulness

Attention as a key element of a mindful life

Recognising and managing our emotions

The senses

Mindful Movement

There are full packages for ages 5-7, 8-10, 11-12. Click the link on the page to download the package.

Resources
Free Activities organized by age

*under education offerings....
168 activities to explore the 12 scientifically proven attributes of kindness.
Activities for prior-to-school, early years, primary school, middle school and senior students
Ambassador video’s
Teacher resources including attribute posters for the classroom and teacher support documents

*Be sure to explore the Resources tab at the top of the pages for supporting posters and the resource library

Self-Compassion for Educators - We need to care for ourselves before we can care for those around us!
This session is based on the work and book by Canadian author Lisa Baylis and participants will discover the 7C's of resilience (which go beyond candles and bubble baths) and will also explore a few mindful practices that can help us treat ourselves and therefore others with compassion and care.

"As impactful as these times have been on each of us as adults, this pandemic has also deeply impacted our youth. Children and teens are spending less time with their peers, which can influence mood, behavior and mental health, as well as affect their development. Youth and adults alike—ourselves at Yoga Ed. included—are cycling through thoughts of “I’m fine, we’re fine” and “we are definitely not fine.” In this toolkit, you will find tangible, effective tools to nurture healthy communication and connection as we navigate this uncertain time.

This toolkit is designed as a resource for caregivers in order to:

Better understand your own mental health needs and the needs of the youth in your life,

Provide ideas for sustaining self-care practices, and

Learn practices to support connections between caregivers and youth."

You will need to enter your email address to download the kit.

Mindbodygreen is a lifestyle media brand dedicated to helping people live their best life mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally and environmentally.

"Here you’ll find a 360-degree approach to wellness that weaves the mental, physical, spiritual, emotional, and environmental aspects of well-being together, because we believe that these pillars of health are all interconnected."

Topic areas include:
Mindfulness
Health (including mental health)
Parenting
Food
Movement
Beauty

To begin this lesson I introduced the concept of mindfulness as being more than an empty mind but rather focusing on the present and staying in the moment and being in the now. Shared a video on Mindfulness from GoStrengthsOnline called Teaching Mindfulness to Children At Home and In Schools. We discussed other ways we can be mindful in addition to sitting and meditating or doing deep breathing. Introduced the concept of mindful colouring – focusing on the now (What am I doing now? What color am I choosing and what part of the image will I colour with it?) I shared an image that I’ve been working on and discussed my colour choices the feelings I had while coloring it. Following their art work students used an iPad to record their colour choices and thoughts/feelings they had throughout the project.

"Finding mindful moments throughout your day can help cultivate self-awareness and resilience, reduce stress and bring joy, as you unplug and come back to the moment at hand. This toolkit is a great starting place for getting started with a mindfulness practice, or building upon the mindful tools you already have.

Our 22-page toolkit includes 6 ways to practice mindfulness, 9 yoga tools for mindfulness, 1 yoga sequence, and 1 mindful coloring sheet. No previous yoga experience or extra equipment necessary.

Increase the number of mindful moments in your day."

Enter your email to access the download.

"This collection of Mindful Moments is effective for all ages. At just a few minutes each, these compact recordings are perfect for a break from screen time, a support for transition time, or mindfulness anytime."

3min 50sec

Through social emotional learning, students learn to better understand and navigate their thoughts and feelings, set goals, work and empathize with others, build friendships, and lead successful and enriched lives.

With this toolkit, you’ll be able to practice the five core competencies of SEL through simple, engaging yoga tools with your children and teens.

Enter your email to download your free toolkit.

"Let's take the time to pause, breathe and really take in what's all around us. This month we're encouraging you to take some time to look within. Learning to be more mindful and aware can do wonders for our well-being in all areas of life - like the way we eat, the things we notice or our relationships. It helps us get in tune with our feelings and stops us dwelling on the past or worrying about the future - so we get more out of the day-to-day. It can also help us identify what we're grateful for, which has been proven to help boost your happiness levels!"

Mindfulness is a form of brain training. It is training our brain to pay attention to where we want it to be. It is training our brain to not wander or be stuck on one thought but to be able to train our brain to go where we want it to go … and ultimately, be able to stay there for a while. The goal of Mindfulness Meditation is simply to get our brain to pay attention to the present moment, and what is happening ‘right now.’ But we must also be able to do this without judging our thoughts, ourselves, or others.
This resource includes:
- How mindfulness works
- Instructions to do it

This fall the grade K-4 teachers at our school decided to introduce mindfulness and the zones of regulation into our classrooms. We went to a workshop on the topic and were able to learn a lot. We thought that there were some specific students who would benefit from having tools to help them to cope with their day to day stresses, but also, that the student population as a whole could benefit from this.

This resource contains additional information, tips, and worksheets to do with your child to help you easily integrate mindfulness into your day.

OPEN has one mission: to improve the effectiveness of physical education for every child.

We help teachers help their students by providing rigorous, outcomes-based curriculum tools to every physical education teacher – no exceptions.

Equity of Access is essential for empowering the entire physical education community. US Games believes in the talents and creativity of the teachers and administrators that we serve. That’s why OPEN will always be free to every educator. This is not an ideal or philosophy. It’s a movement.

Follow the link to the Google Play or Apple Store to download the Release App for Mindfulness. This app was created by Keynote Speaker Trinna Markusson at iLearn & SWTA for 2020.

"This new wellness app incorporates mindfulness and tapping techniques to help empower you to begin to deal with daily stress, difficult emotions and limiting beliefs that can hold you back from living your best life! With categories for adults, teens, kids, classroom use and a special high-performance category for athletes, Release can help you to stay present and to live with more peace and ease."

For more information visit (copy and paste into a browser) - http://www.presentmomentliving.ca/

GOAL: Experience the self-compassion that naturally exists within you & consider how you care for yourself each day.