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Welcome to the Stress Nanny, the podcast where we take the overwhelm out of parenting and help kids and parents build calm, confidence and connection.
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I'm your host, Lindsay Miller, kids mindfulness coach and cheerleader for busy families everywhere.
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Each week, we'll explore simple tools, uplifting stories and practical strategies to help your child learn emotional regulation, resilience and self-confidence, while giving you a little more peace of mind too.
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I'm so glad you're here.
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My guest today is Giselle Shardlow.
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She's the founder of Kids Yoga Stories.
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Kids Yoga Stories was founded in 2012 by Giselle, who's a classroom teacher and trained yoga instructor.
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Through her travels and teaching grades K through five in Guatemala, australia, canada and the United States, giselle witnessed the need through five in Guatemala, australia, canada and the United States.
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Giselle witnessed the need to address childhood literacy, obesity and stress.
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She blended her passions of yoga, mindfulness and education to create books, card decks, courses and educational resources to bring the benefits of yoga to children everywhere.
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The pandemic and the rise in mental health issues in children, as well as teacher burnout, has made the kids yoga stories mission even more critical and timely.
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They continue to grow and expand, providing weekly resources that are free and hundreds of yoga products available for purchase on their site.
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I'm so excited to share my conversation with Giselle.
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It felt like talking to an old friend, giselle, thank you so much for joining me today.
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I'm so excited about this conversation.
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Oh, it's so great because we've met once before and it's always.
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It was one of those things.
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When I first met you, I felt like I'd known you forever.
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I know, and even just as we're chatting beforehand, we're like old friends just chatting about what's going on.
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So I really appreciate yeah, I appreciate you coming on the show because it's going to be insightful for me and everyone listening.
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So thank you.
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Thank you, Thank you.
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Okay, In case people aren't familiar with your work, let's just get started with a bit of an intro.
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I know we we had shared the podcast you and I recorded on your show.
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But if people aren't familiar with your work, help us.
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Help us get a glimpse of, like how you got into it and what you're up to these days.
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Yeah, great, Okay so I think of it sort of like two areas of my life, right?
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So yoga has always been a thread.
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You know, I started I practiced when I was little.
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My mom told us when we were really little.
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I grew up in the middle of Canada on a farm.
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My parents were British and she used to play yoga on the television, so that's really where it began.
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And then in my 20s I, you know, did practice yoga at the university.
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And then I, every time I came home to be with my mom, we'd always go to her classes.
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And then I, when I went to, when I lived in Sydney, australia, I did my teacher training yoga teacher training with my husband.
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We were newlywedseds and we jumped right into that, and so it's always been this thread with me.
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And then, parallel, I've always worked with children.
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So I grew up a figure skater, taught figure skater, worked in day camps, became an international school teacher, and now here I am with Kids, yoga Stories, writing stories and helping grownups teach yoga to children.
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So those have kind of been the threads we're.
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We put everything together in terms of we're just we're on this mission, lindsay, just like you are right, is that now more than ever, even though.
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We've been doing this work for 13 years, but now more than ever you know to transform school communities right On on, helping children to self, to self, regulate and manage their big emotions and be ready to learn.
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So these SEO you know tool in your toolkit is no longer a nice to have, it's a must have.
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Yeah, 100%.
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Well, and I love just the the history of your experience, because I think that that, like tethering all those different perspectives, like from different countries, you know, in different like timelines, and being able to weave the, the universality of yoga through all of those things and then share those bits of it that you know for you were consistent everywhere, you went right, like those were the supportive bits, those were the things that really made an impact, and so I think you're teaching around it and the stories really illustrate those concepts and those principles that are, like you said, universally essential, especially right now for adults, for kids, for all of us as we navigate modern living.
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Yeah, that's actually a good point.
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I hadn't thought about that, because when I first took yoga teacher training, I first started writing yoga stories.
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For me, at that point, what I could see in the classrooms that I was working in was obesity or stress, or English as a second language, or global education, environmental education.
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So those are the things that were on my heart and those are the books that were on my heart, and those are the books that I wrote about is teaching children.
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You know, let's go on an adventure to Costa Rica, or let's go, you know, on a mountain, or so we learned habitats and things and acting things out so that it was light and fun back in the day, right, and now, that's the cool thing about this ancient wisdom, as you know, right, that you know this is 5000 years old.
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This is not a trend, this is not an overnight right, but this is something that has a thread through every aspects of your life and you get to pick and choose what works for you.
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So, right now, emotional regulation is, you know, and stress and you know, being with people and social interaction.
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Those are the most important things.
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So those are the concepts we can pull from this ancient wisdom, whereas before it was more.
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Like you know, let's get children to move and have body awareness and travel the world and learn about things you know, so I hadn't thought about that way.
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It's very adaptive to what we are addressing in this moment.
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Yeah, I love the way you put that, because I think one of the things that's so appealing to me about teaching kids mindfulness is the universality of the tools.
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You know that, like you just said, they have application in a wide range of circumstances and being able to kind of pick and choose what helps when the empowerment of that is also supportive, right, like being able to kind of pick and choose what helps when the empowerment of that is also supportive, right.
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Like being able to approach a situation knowing, if you have the tools of yoga, if you have the tools of mindfulness, like that are kind of written within you, then you have a level of resilience for anything that comes your way Right, and it's a matter of just activating the wisdom that you hold as a result of those practices.
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And so it does feel, yeah, really versatile and really relevant, just because you, you know, with a little bit of support, can be translated into so many different scenarios, such that the individual experiencing, you know, a myriad of conditions or circumstances can find that inner resilience.
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Yeah, I love that so much.
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Yeah, that's so true, and it changes.
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Right, it can meet everyone where they're at, whether you're in a classroom, at home or in a clinic with a pediatric therapist.
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Wherever you are, it meets you where you're at, both with the grownup and the child.
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So the resilience piece is really that's really interesting concept of how do we help these children bounce back.
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I mean, gosh, they've been through more Lindsay in these years than we have in our entire lives.
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Right, it's going to only get faster and more complex and more artificial.
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You know there's a lot coming ahead of us.
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And how do we help these children navigate this new world?
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Yeah, for sure.
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You and I were just talking before I got started about how this podcast has been.
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You know it was launched almost six years ago and the number of different topics or social situations or you know, just looking back on my episode summaries and list of episodes, it's really interesting to me to see, you know, because it was right before COVID started.
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So I've got episodes about COVID and making it through COVID.
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You know we've got episodes on so many different like social situations that have occurred over the last six years, and then also just the general skillset right, that we're seeing as, like you said, an essential skillset.
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You know that's emerging as something kids can't do without these SEL tools and I think, yeah, the dynamic nature of life is not going to change anytime soon and, if anything, the speed will will increase, and so having tools at your disposal that are timeless and have served for for such a long time really does make sense, to me at least.
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Yeah, and I think too, speaking of that right, that what a blessing that we found this really easy tool that can be added in in such a quick way and have such powerful impacts, and now we have the science to back that up, right.
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So it's not about adding more to your plate or taking a lot of time or buying a bunch of things, right, but also it affects the child and the grownup, and the grownup.
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I mean like you as a mindfulness coach, right, going through those lessons with your students.
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How cool is that.
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You get to experience it yourself.
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You get to teach the families that you work with right, and no doubt that's, you know, filtering through to their classrooms and it fits the whole community.
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Yeah, that's pretty cool.
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Yeah, I totally agree, and that's what you know.
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When I, when I talk to new families and we'll talk through what to expect One of the things that I hear back consistently is like I came to you for help with this one child, but what I'm learning as a result is helping my whole family, or my whole circle of influence, right?
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Or you know, classroom one of the moms that I worked with her son and she was second grade teacher and she's like, oh my gosh, the thing we did last week.
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I just took it to school and my kids loved it.
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I've got to show you what we did.
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Here's the bulletin board of it, you know, and it is like once you kind of just can wrap your brain around the shift in thinking that is like that internal locus of control and like what can, what can I do in this circumstance?
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And being really present with that, tuning into your body, right, your intuition, and figuring out how to move forward.
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The sky's the limit as to where it applies, right, Like who can benefit from it.
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Right, exactly, and I think one of the things you know I'm sure you've spoken about is you know we could speak all day about what's not working right now.
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Right, and so you can kind of go down that rabbit hole of all the things.
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But you know, I'm really curious I'm shifting now into this what is working?
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What are the success stories?
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Right, because we all had to experience the empathy for each other and really understand parents and schools and all what's happening and children.
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But now you know to your point about what's working.
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You know, in our community we work closely with practitioners and pediatric therapists, educators, families.
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You know the whole range, and what we're hearing is the practices that are most transformational are those that that go across the classroom, go across the, the sessions, the pediatric therapy sessions, go across the families, go across the children, is with the adults, with the children, with everything.
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So it becomes embedded in a community.
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That's where the transformation happens.
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We can't, you know, looking at what we can control and what we can't control.
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You know we can't control the government choices, the educational standards, the you know systematic issues that are happening, even the you know administration potentially, if they're not on board.
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But what can we control right.
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We can control our own regulation.
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We can work with our child, although I do have one of those children that is a little resistant to yoga, mindfulness we can talk about that at some point, but you know, I mean you can't.
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What you can control is yourself, and even by practicing yourself in whatever way works for you, all of that has ripple effects.
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And then you can speak to other moms or you share it with your educators and how cool is that?
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One of your moms, of your student, is now as a second grade teacher and that's had a ripple effect.
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So you working one-to-one has now affected all the children in that classroom who may go home and tell their families.
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It know it's, it's amazing.
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I think that's the key is starting small but having a larger impact.
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Yeah, yeah, that's so beautifully put and I think when we teach kids and we'll get into specific tools here in just a minute but I think as we lay this foundation for why this is important and how significant the impact is, it's like when we teach kids these tools, they build the whole rest of their lives right On this foundation of resilience and the kind of individuals that are going to affect change in the future, the kind of individuals who will be able to problem solve, work through big emotions to, you know, tackle big problems, those are going to be people who have a certain level of resilience, right, and that level of emotional regulation, emotional intelligence, to be able to communicate through big feelings, to be able to talk about you know, how to approach a situation, with discernment, with mindfulness, right, like being fully present with what the reality of the situation is.
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And so I'm constantly just like, so enthusiastic about the types of lives that can be built, like weaving these tools in from such a young age.
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You know, just building with this foundation feels like there's such incredible ability to access one's potential.
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Yeah exactly, and I think you know, going back to this idea of being artificial, I was listening to YouTube the other day with the president of CASEL, dr Leah, and Dr Mark Brackett, who's the professor out of Yale right and he's author of Permission to Feel and the Ruler Approach, and they were talking about how the importance of the social, emotional and cognitive it's those three pieces that are really the most important thing.
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It was a fascinating, a fascinating look, and we can, you know, thinking about resilience in terms of, you know, the research around, you know the parents want it, the educators want it, the workforce, the students who are showing up at Yale, for example.
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Those are the ones that have the social, emotional component as well as cognitive.
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It's not just about getting good grades, it's can you interact?
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Can you, you know, manage your big emotions?
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And then, in terms of workforce, right, and so they were talking about AI and looking at you know who's in charge of creating this artificial intelligence and how regulated are these folks?
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And how do we prepare our children for this world of artificial intelligence?
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How do we help them navigate and make good choices in the face of who knows what's going to be thrown at them?
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Right, and it's not going away, it's something that we have to face, and so, being these mindfulness tools that you're teaching also is having them be able to discern whether, like you said, discerning, discern is this for real.
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You know, I was watching a video the other day about something entirely different and I thought I don't actually know if this person is real or not.
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Like it's a level of distrust that we all have, and this is the thing that we have to teach our children is how do you discern?
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How do you trust people online?
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How do you know what's real, what's not, what's honest, right?
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And these are all the practices of resilience, as you say.
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Yeah, yeah, no, it's such an interesting point and I love the idea of like growing a generation of kids who could train like a compassionate AI, you know like an informed AI and emotionally intelligent AI.
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I listened to the Mo News podcast a lot and they've been talking recently about just the increased need for people who are training the models.
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You know, training the.
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AI models and how.
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Like, yeah, the need for individuals who can have an impact on the way so many people will see the world, you know, a need for individuals who are well-rounded and have the skills that they need to to create models that are going to lead humanity forward in a hopefully, holistic and supported way.
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You know we can't underrate that, right?
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So I love that, I love that you were hearing that too.
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Yes, 100% Well, and I think I mean I think too, like you just brought up and we can maybe start here with the tools the uncertainty right now.
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You know, like the incredible amount of uncertainty in so many facets of life, right, and I love back to Mark Brackett, his definition of uncertainty anxiety being uncertainty about the future.
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So he, you know, he's like anxiety is when you were uncertain about the future, and so I think, you know, taken globally, if we look around us right now, it's no wonder that we have so many kids grappling with massive feelings of anxiety, and adults for that matter.
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Right, but that uncertainty about the future, it can feel like a lot to manage.
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So, in the families that you're working with and you know, as you're sharing the stories, what are some of the ways you see parents use yoga and mindfulness to help kids manage the everyday stresses or big emotions like anxiety.
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Yeah, Well, I think that for me, the number one thing is starting with ourself, right, and so being aware of our own calm and organized self, and I think it has to start here.
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So you know, personally I was not aware of the anxiety that I had inside of me.
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Then I, you know, spoke to my mom about it.
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Apparently there is a thread.
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They were born in England, as I mentioned, so you know that came through there, but it's really exacerbated over the last five, six years, right, and having my child as well as COVID.
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But just acknowledging it, right, and so it's a label and I see myself saying I'm anxious, or people say to you, are you feeling nervous, or whatever, I start to worry about the future.
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Or you know, get prepared with things, or whatever.
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And so I think, just acknowledging, like what?
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What?
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Speaking of Mark Brackett, bracket, you know, recognizing our own emotions.
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But I think it's also about how do we change the script on that, because we hear it so much and I feel like it's been so overused also since covid about how do we just lean into gosh, I'm a caring, loving person and I love people and I'm also prepared for the future.
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Is that such a bad thing Really, you know I'm just making this up, but like what if we just shift like change the channel, changed how we looked at things and changed our lens.
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So I think that's one thing in modeling with my daughter.
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She was diagnosed with anxiety and depression, all the things, but you know how do I help her see that it's not necessarily a bad thing either.
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You know, I've had a great life.
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I traveled the world and how could I have traveled the world as a backpacker and lived overseas in so many places if I was so anxious?
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It didn't paralyze me, you know.
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I think that those of us in this sort of age where we have, you know, our perimenopause years, some of us are naturally like my constitution.
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If you look at the doshas in Ayurveda yoga, sister science, I'm a strong vata.
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It's one of the three constitutions and vata is very airy.
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I'm very creative, I'm very airy and that creates the anxiety piece, right.
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But if I am aware of that, so we've got this trifecta right now for a lot of us my constitution has anxiety, the time of my life where women are moving into a very Vata style life and also the world has an entire Vata vibration.
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Right now it's ADHD and there's fast moving and all the things right, and so acknowledging that and thinking okay, so what are some counter practices that I can use myself?
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And then that will have ripple effects because we see the children are anxious.
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But, Lindsay, I'm curious about how many of us, as educators and parents, are anxious and how much of it is our stuff and how much is their stuff?
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You know what I mean.
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And so practices that have worked, and it's not a one size fits all, so everyone has to find their own way and we can certainly talk about that.
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But lately I've been doing yoga, nidra, which is I play in it overnight because I haven't been sleeping well, so that's one thing.
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I've been having really hot baths, so for my constitution that works really well.
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You know, I have my consistent with anxiety.
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Right, it's a consistency.
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I have my consistent exercise routine, my yoga routine, sitting silently in the morning, taking deep breaths during the day.
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You know.
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So, even before us chatting, I knew I had to take a moment to take a pause and just take a deep breath.
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You know there's all kinds of these little practices that build on themselves, so it's not like one class once a week, but is it?
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How do we make it more of a lifestyle?
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That is part of our life, Right.
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So I think that's that's the thing is, about acknowledging and looking at, getting curious about huh, okay, what am I worried about, Right?
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And then, what are some practices that I could add in that would make a difference so that I can I can have the anxiety, stay here and not be over there with the children?
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Does that make sense?
00:22:10.126 --> 00:22:12.903
Yeah, yeah, no, I love the way you explained it.
00:22:12.903 --> 00:22:18.326
It makes me think of Dan Siegel's River of Integration.
00:22:18.326 --> 00:22:19.508
Are you familiar with that?
00:22:19.508 --> 00:22:48.344
How he's got on one side of the river is like chaos and on one side is rigidity, and the thing you have to figure out is how to find flow right and like, if things feel if you've like, when I feel anxious, I feel chaotic right Like it just feels like kind of a lot and I and then sometimes, when I'm trying to manage that I might swing to the other side of the river and just get super, super structured right and find, like I must do things exactly this way in order to feel okay, right.
00:22:48.344 --> 00:23:06.420
And instead the invitation, you know, which I've, as I age, have increasingly taken with more and more grace, but still sometimes fight is to blend that the chaos and the and the rigidity in a way that allows for flow right, like so that you can down the river.
00:23:06.881 --> 00:23:25.606
And so I love what you just described, because I think you know, if we get stuck in the big emotion and we're kind of fighting it and we're not willing to say like I'm feeling anxious right now or I'm feeling really sad right now, I'm feeling really concerned right now, if we fight the big feelings, we can't work with them, right?
00:23:25.606 --> 00:23:29.505
It's just like all of our energy is getting stored up.
00:23:29.505 --> 00:23:35.967
One of my favorite psychologists calls it like a beach ball emotion, and just like beach ball underwater, right.
00:23:35.967 --> 00:23:46.268
Yes, if we're using all of our energy to do that, we're not at liberty to be incorporating, like you said, those simple practices or figuring out how we can work with our tendencies.
00:23:47.095 --> 00:24:11.375
And I think, more than like a label, I love to call it a tendency, like I tend toward you know my brain tends toward this, you know, and if we can look at ourselves with a bit more grace, I think that those moments of acknowledgement are a little softer right, because we can find the gentleness in it, and it doesn't have to be a permanent.
00:24:11.375 --> 00:24:12.740
I will always feel this way.
00:24:12.740 --> 00:24:14.144
There's nothing I can do about it.
00:24:14.144 --> 00:24:16.576
Acknowledgement it's more of a.
00:24:16.576 --> 00:24:23.464
This is something that is consistent for me, so the invitation is for me to figure out how to work with it Right.
00:24:23.464 --> 00:24:46.300
So like bringing the chaos and the rigidity into the middle, where you can move with some flow, using those tools, finding the practices that are like go to for you, in order to not get stuck over there on the side of the river in the emotion, watching life go by, but instead being able to like engage with our tendencies in a way that gives us movement in the direction we want to go.
00:24:46.300 --> 00:24:47.282
Yeah.
00:24:47.542 --> 00:24:54.280
I love the grace and I want to say some sprinkle of humor, you know, like let's.
00:24:54.280 --> 00:24:56.565
I mean, how funny are we as humans?
00:24:56.565 --> 00:25:05.898
Right, and I've learned this from Judith Lassiter Hansen, who's the co founder of Yoga Journal back in the day, right, she's amazing wrote a book, non violent communication.
00:25:05.898 --> 00:25:08.904
But, hand on heart, say how human of me.
00:25:08.904 --> 00:25:14.884
Oh my gosh, lindsay over the last few years has been challenging you know it's, it's changed my life really.
00:25:14.884 --> 00:25:15.846
That's been the thing.
00:25:15.846 --> 00:25:24.086
But also I think that, coupled and there's something about hand on heart too, there's some science behind the feeling of it on your, on your chest.
00:25:24.086 --> 00:25:33.942
But also I've been lately thinking like, zooming out a bit and going, oh gosh, we're funny, like is there something ruminating about that, you know, or yeah, like.
00:25:33.982 --> 00:25:34.384
I've got it.
00:25:34.384 --> 00:25:39.306
I don't like flying, it doesn't make me feel well, and we fly to Australia every other year.
00:25:39.306 --> 00:25:44.720
Right now it's gonna be every year, you know, and it's like a 25 hour flight right with my daughter who's?
00:25:44.720 --> 00:25:46.442
You know, she's 13.
00:25:46.442 --> 00:25:49.404
Now, but it has been a challenge, right.
00:25:49.404 --> 00:25:55.990
I'm just going to say that, but you know I'll worry about that for 10 months before the flight.
00:25:59.234 --> 00:26:01.219
As soon as you get home start worrying about that, exactly, exactly.
00:26:01.380 --> 00:26:07.719
And then you think, oh my gosh, wow brain, like you have to have kind of a, have a laugh about it.
00:26:07.719 --> 00:26:11.548
That's ridiculous, as if I'm oh my goodness, poor me.
00:26:11.548 --> 00:26:18.557
I get to go to Australia, you know, every other year, every year, like, oh my goodness you know, to see family.
00:26:18.557 --> 00:26:21.845
So, yeah, I think there's a, there's a bit of lightness.
00:26:21.845 --> 00:26:24.115
I think that that has to happen to we've.
00:26:24.237 --> 00:26:27.482
It's been so intense the last few years.
00:26:27.482 --> 00:26:38.441
You know, all of us have been on our own individual journey, so the intensity will change, depends on your, you know, whether with your children or your elderly parents, or you've got a sick dog.
00:26:38.441 --> 00:26:40.229
You were mentioning this, a lot of stuff.
00:26:40.229 --> 00:26:43.319
But also, I think, globally, we've all been very intense.
00:26:43.319 --> 00:26:50.305
But I think this kind of period of like let's lighten up a little bit, like where's where's the humor, where's the fun?
00:26:50.305 --> 00:26:58.577
How do we bring that back and I know that's a simplistic way, you know that's not going to work for everyone at all moments, you know.
00:26:58.577 --> 00:27:06.280
I think you do have to drop into your life and stuff that's happening, but also a little sprinkle of fun.
00:27:06.961 --> 00:27:09.145
Yeah, no, I totally agree.
00:27:09.145 --> 00:27:15.884
And that that resonates with me Because, I mean, even last night we had been having a conversation.
00:27:15.884 --> 00:27:28.787
My daughter, like you know, as she's getting older, her involvement in different activities is is shifting, as well as some of the potential or the opportunities associated with those activities.
00:27:28.787 --> 00:27:44.527
Right, and so the stakes, you know, as they get older, the stakes on some things get a little higher, right, and in some of the environments she's in, she's feeling that pressure and trying to navigate it with as much grace as she can, but also recognizing that, like, this is a skill set that's developing for her.
00:27:44.527 --> 00:27:55.556
And so, where I can talk about it with perspective, we were specifically talking about Seth Godin's concept of the dip where it's like yes, you have like it's like you're oblivious to kind of how.
00:27:55.576 --> 00:28:17.028
You have like oblivious optimism about something and then you have like pessimistic realism about it and there's this like cavernous dip that happens and then at the bottom is like the valley of despair, and then you find your way you find your way to like informed optimism and then success, and how a lot of times we're navigating something that's challenging.
00:28:17.556 --> 00:28:29.181
We might be in that dip right when we were like all happy-go-lucky about it before, and then we hit the dip and we're like, well, this is harder than I thought it was going to be and we've got to kind of work through it in order to get out.
00:28:29.181 --> 00:28:31.124
So, anyway, we've been having these conversations.
00:28:31.124 --> 00:28:32.406
She's got a lot going on.
00:28:32.406 --> 00:28:34.718
It had been a long day, a couple of different practices.
00:28:34.718 --> 00:28:35.200
She was at.
00:28:35.200 --> 00:28:36.744
We get to the end of the night.
00:28:36.744 --> 00:28:44.381
We're like everybody's kind of settling down and getting ready to go to bed and all of a sudden I see all these ants crawling from her backpack.
00:28:44.381 --> 00:28:45.804
Oh, my goodness.
00:28:45.804 --> 00:28:47.708
And I was like what is going on?
00:28:47.708 --> 00:29:18.755
No-transcript.
00:29:19.958 --> 00:29:22.061
I was like, yeah, yeah, this is the dip.