(upbeat music)
- Welcome everyone, my name is Dr. Nicole Assisi,
and I'm joined here by my colleague Shelli Kurth.
And together we're here with our third installment
of how to stay sane in these times
of unprecedented parenting.
- Together Nicole are working moms
with over 30 years of experience
teaching elementary school, high school
and even college.
We're also mindfulness practitioners
and yoga teachers and practitioners.
And we are really excited today
to get to share with you
some toolbox, part of a toolbox
to keep us sane in these
kind of insane times.
I know a lot of us are at home
with really big to do lists.
Maybe a house full of family
and a lot on our plates
that were unexpected.
And that can cause anxiety and some stress.
And rather than add one more thing
to the to do list,
Nicole and I are hoping to give you
some tools that you can use
when you feel like you're at your wit's end.
- And today's session
with that in mind will focus
on creating some space for self care,
both for yourself and possibly
for your children.
Our bodies built to react
to stress in three ways,
either fight, flight, or freeze.
And when we feel that in our body
or when that happens,
it can either feel like anxiety,
stress, anger, avoidance, and inability
to move forward or get started on tasks.
And sometimes when we're in these moments
of stress, it's actually hard
to notice and to slow ourselves down.
So a general rule I want you to think about is HALT.
HALT stands for hungry, angry, lonely or tired.
And when you're hungry, angry, lonely or tired,
I want you to halt
and just hit that pause button,
and nothing screams tired
than being a homeschooling parent,
and especially when that's not
what you originally signed up for.
So today, we offer you some opportunities
and some ideas on how to take care of yourself.
Because these are hard times
and whether you had some recent changes
in employment,
maybe you're working more than before,
maybe you lost your job maybe a family member has,
it's important for us to take some time
to take care of ourselves
and those that we love.
So there are two strategies
that we're going to focus on today.
One of them is breathing
and just taking a breath or two or three,
and Shelli is gonna talk to us
about that in a minute.
The other is building a gratitude practice
and just getting in the habit
of shifting our minds
and our mindset to trying to embrace positivity.
So that's what we're gonna focus on today,
provide you some real actionable tools
and to kick us off Shelli, take it away.
- Breathing, simplest thing.
It is the way that we sustain life.
But using your breath
is also a simple way to reset yourself
and to find a sense of calm
when you're at your wit's end.
The use of intentional breathing
as a self help or self healing tool
is supported by doctors all over the world.
And it can be particularly useful
when you're feeling anxious or overwhelmed,
and it can provide a quick relief
from stress right when you need it.
I'm going to talk about
two different kinds of breathing today.
There are so many different ways
that you can do this
and so many different kinds
of intentional breath work.
But I wanted to provide you with some
that you can use anytime,
anywhere, eyes open, eyes closed,
sitting up laying down,
something that you can take with you
that you can pull out in those times
of pure stress when you're about to lose it.
Or maybe when you're preparing for stress,
or my favorite time,
is when I'm washing my hands
because I've been doing that
about a million times a day,
like most of you.
When I'm washing my hands,
I'm doing some intentional breathing,
to reset my body and keep myself calm.
Because it hasn't been calm all the time.
The first technique I'm going to teach
is called diaphragm breathing,
and I'll tell you what to do,
and then we'll do a practice together,
but it's really simple.
You're gonna put your hand on your abdomen,
and that's for practice.
You don't always have to do that,
but it's a good way to learn how to do this.
And when you inhale,
you'll inhale a little deeper
and a little longer than usual.
And you'll feel your belly,
fill all the way up with air,
you'll feel your whole diaphragm.
And then you'll exhale
and feel your whole diaphragm,
relax in your belly,
relax and go back down to normal
and you'll do this as many times
as you need to.
So let's do it together.
Go ahead and put your hand on your belly
and inhale, long and deep.
Feel your hand rise,
and exhale
all the way out
and feel your hand and belly
go right back to normal.
You can do this
as many times as you need.
Like I said, I do it
when I'm washing my hands.
I get quite a few breaths
in there with that.
This does two interesting things.
It activates your parasympathetic nervous system
and that's the nervous system
that can keep you calm and
that generates a feeling of calm in you.
It also gives you a mindful moment
because in that minute
that you're taking a breath,
you're thinking about nothing
but the breath.
And that connection
between your brain and your body
is so important.
When your brain is calm,
your body is can be calm,
and when your body says calm,
then you're it's sending a message
to your brain that says calm.
You could do this exact same kind
of breathing with your kiddo.
I call this one teddy bear breathing.
And if you have little kids at home,
they will love it.
It will give you a little break,
it will give them a little break.
And it's even put my child
to sleep a couple times.
So when they were little.
So what you do,
you lay down for this one
and you get a teddy bear and each of you put a teddy bear
on your diaphragm or on your belly.
And when you inhale,
you'll watch the teddy bear rise.
And when you exhale,
you watch the bear fall.
And you do this as many times
as needed.
So think about when you start
to see your kiddo winding up,
maybe a little too much energy
or maybe getting mad,
catch them before they're in
the full blown tantrum.
But this is a moment throughout
the day that you can take this breathing
and it's a little bit fun,
and it's a lot relaxing.
And it does that great job
of connecting your brain and your body
and reminding it all
to be in a state of calm and relaxation.
- And being relaxed is great
coz you want your body
to be ready to endure the stress.
But there's some things
we can also do to prepare our mind.
And one of the simple ways
to show gratitude for self
that I recently learned
from a coach and colleague of mine
is just to sort of place
your hand over your heart
and give yourself that little like pat
and gratitude of like, okay,
I'm still here
I am okay right now
and showing yourself some gratitude.
And sometimes it feels like
there's not a lot to be grateful for
in these moments,
but I want you to push yourself
and if it's hard to think of something
you are grateful for,
start with what you are grateful
for that you don't have to endure.
So a sentence starter
for you might be,
I am grateful that I am not
I am grateful that I am not sick.
Think about it for yourself.
What are you grateful for
that you are not enduring right now?
Once that becomes natural,
switch it.
What are you grateful for?
I'm actually grateful
for spending quality time
with my kids and not racing out of the house.
Try the sentence for yourself,
I am grateful for
and you can write these things
on sticky notes.
If you have a journal practice
in a little bit I'll talk about journaling.
But it's also great
to combine the practice of gratitude
with the breath work
that Shelli was talking about.
And one of the things that we do in my house
is something called heart focused breathing.
Now, the way we do heart focus breathing
is that we focus our attention
to the area around our heart.
And imagine that the breath
is flowing in and out of your heart
and your chest area.
Again, this is to relax you
to help you deal with stress
to deal with the anxiety,
or anger, frustration
that's creeping into your life
during naturally stressful
or traumatic times.
And so you're going
to breathe a little deeper than usual
and we're gonna breathe
for a count of five in
and we're going to breathe
for a count of five out.
So it's going to look like this.
(breathing in)
And out one, two, three, four, five
and what I want you to do is
as you're breathing into
this area around your heart,
I want you to think
about someone who you're grateful for
someone who you have a lot of love for.
And if it's hard off the back
to think of something,
remember that moment
when your child so peacefully slept
in your arms when they were little.
Imagine that as you're breathing in for five
and out for five.
And deep breathing is actually really important
because it helps your body get oxygen,
it needs more oxygen.
It helps with the outgoing carbon dioxide
and it shows to slow down your heart rate,
and stabilize your mood as Shelli said,
and again combining this
with just more positive thinking
will help you deal with
these feelings of anxiety, depression, stress.
Now if you wanna do something
a little bit more upbeat,
and fun and creative,
I recommend maybe a vision board
or collage exercise.
So I'm showing you here an example
of what my family did.
And we basically took old magazines,
you could take images from the internet
or you could draw your own images,
take old photos and cut them up
and collage them.
We actually pasted ours
onto an old notebook,
and then wrapped it in packing tape.
So it seems almost laminated
and all fancy.
And my son is using that
for his writing work
and his daily exercises around writing.
Again, remember, he's in kindergarten,
and so he's doing his words in there
practice writing his letters.
And I'm using mine for journaling
and just reflecting before I go to sleep,
what was something great
that has happened and just building
that practice to build the mental muscle,
along with the physical muscle
and the breathing,
of just things to be grateful for
and infusing that positivity
and mental well being
into your day to day homeschooling times
of really unprecedented parenting.
- We are so very grateful
that you're here with us today
speaking of gratitude,
and you know right now, we are okay,
we are here together,
we're building a toolbox for these stressful times,
but also feeling a world of gratitude
that we are in this together.
So we are with you in this
and we can't wait to see you next week
we're gonna talk a little bit more
about some of these tools.
We'll talk about movement,
mindful movement and movement and exercise,
how you can do certain things
in the day that can help you
with ease the stress
and make the day easier,
and presence and being able to be present
in the moment and how that can make
some subtle shifts in your day
as we're in this
for a few more weeks together.
Thank you so much for everything
and have a great week.
- Bye, everyone.