Mindful Life Project

MLP is at it again, rolling out our awesome MLP Assembles at our Mindfulness 360 partner schools! Interested in bringing mindfulness based social emotional learning to your school through in person mindfulness and mindful hip-hop assemblies, staff mindfulness and family mindfulness sessions, as well as virtual weekly programming? Reach out to MLP’s Director of Partnerships, Angelo Monsalve-Restrepo, at [email protected] if you want in!

The past is gone, the future isn’t here yet, so cultivating being here now over and over again will help us live life with its natural flow.

What part of the brain ?? do you find yourself in the most? The prefrontal cortex aka the Upstairs Brain is where we as humans can self-regulate, problem solve, critically think, skillfully communicate and so much more. The amygdala aka the Downstairs Brain is the survival brain and sends signals that trigger the stress response. Emotions and thoughts can trigger the Downstairs Brain. However, with mindfulness and mindful skills we can navigate emotions with the Upstairs Brain and instead of automatically reacting we can pause and skillfully respond both to internal and external stimuli. Our lower grade classrooms our taught our Brain House Curriculum where they learn that all emotions are friends and our mindful skills/friends that live in the Upstairs Brain can help emotions feel welcome and accepted. The more we practice mindfulness the more we engage, grow and develop our Upstairs Brain. And lower the activity in the Downstairs Brain.

MLP is deeply grateful to be of service to our school communities in providing comprehensive mindfulness based mental and emotional health programs for students, educators, and families ??

Mindfulness is one of the most transformative practices one can learn as it provides us the opportunity to learn how to navigate our human experience with deep presence, emotional intelligence, compassion, connection, and so much more. While today is International World Mindfulness Day, every day is mindfulness day at MLP, and we do this work with our youth and educators from a place of fully believing if every school had a mindfulness coach/teacher the world would be completely transformed!

Got skills? Got Mindful skills? The 7 Mindful Skills and our full array of senses are the way back to the present moment and the Upstairs Brain. Some of the skills will come naturally and others will be more challenging to develop. Those that might be harder to drop into are likely the ones that will support our mental and emotional health the most. So the key is to continue to remove the judgment that might arise as well as notice if we start to judge the judgment. Heartfulness is a huge antidote and just like a bird needs to wings to fly, mindfulness needs heartfulness to thrive.

Did you know that the brain is naturally wired to be on survival mode? Did you know the brain has a negativy bias? You put those two pieces together and what stress and trauma do to the brain and body and you have a recipe for having a strong “inner critic” which feeds mental and emotional suffering. With mindfulness we can truly be kind to our mind. With a consistent practice, we are able to shift the “inner critic” to the “inner friend” and welcome the full range of our inner experiences. The more we practice the kinder we are to our mind, and the kinder we are to our mind, the stronger our mental, emotional and physical health will be. And start this at a young age, like MLP supports 4-14 year olds in doing, and you have a strong foundation of mental and emotional health!

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After a transformative two weeks of training and professional development, MLP Coaches are launching into their school sites tomorrow. This school year we are humbled and honored to be serving over 40,000 students and their educators with comprehensive mental and emotional health programming. We love our work and are so grateful to be of service and spreading mindfulness in education through in person, relationship based, high impact programming.

Going back to school can bring up a lot of strong emotions so here are some ways to support youth this time of year: -Normalize and welcome all emotions that are arising for the child (and you). When emotions are treated as something you “shouldn’t be feeling” it triggers the stress response (downstairs brain). When we normalize, befriend and welcome the emotions we are able to “receive” them in the upstairs brain (PFC). - We often try to calm kids down by telling them to relax or to not feel the way they feel (ie don’t be nervous). This doesn’t work because It will trigger the stress response, as does any demand/command, which will only amplify the stress response. Instead ask a question or two and to engage the prefrontal cortex (PFC-Upstairs Brain) and then ask if they want to take some mindful breaths together or check into the body and notice where the emotions are arising. - A great way to counter overwhelm is by practicing gratitude. By doing gratitude practices with the kids we can reset the overwhelming feelings to being able to see what we are grateful for both in general and in this situation about school. - Cultivate compassion together. We all can lean in to being super compassionate to ourselves and to our youth. MLP sends our best wishes for the 2024-2025 school year to the youth, families and educators ??