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| Swirl!! |
Swirl!
We made some wonderful tools for mindfulness.
Mindfulness is when you put your thinking in the present. Not in the past. Not in the future. Just now.
Heather Robbins came to our class as a guest speaker. She talked about stress and anger and how they make the amygdala get excited. That is the little part of your brain that does "fight, flight, freeze." It cannot think. It just reacts. And then, tons of cortisol and other "stress chemicals" race around your entire body.
ARGH!!
That is where mindfulness helps.
Heather said that if you can calm down your amygdala, then the parts of your brain for thinking and deciding can start to work. Also, you feel better when you are not so upset!
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| We could add a selection of colored glitter. |
We made jars with water and glitter in them. We put in a lot of glitter in different colors. Then she glued on the lid with Crazy Glue.
To use this tool, you swirl it and the glitter moves around. Then you just watch it as it slows down and settles down.
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| A simple, powerful tool for mindfulness. |
When you focus on that, your brain starts to get calmer. You stop feeling upset at the past. You stop feeling anxious about the future. The stress chemicals stop going to your body. You can think better and make decisions.
We tried it and it really does work!
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| Heather Robbins, Guest Speaker |
We really enjoyed making these jars and learning from Heather.
We are grateful she came. We decided to also live our value of wausida (kindness in Dakota) so we made one for our classmates who were absent. We gave one to Jen, too.
