Zoom-in Psychotherapy and Counselling Highlands
Your Journey to Being "you"
Discover what feels good to your heart, mind and soul.Â
What brings light, laughter
and makes you feel whole.
It is said that "small acorns grow into big trees", however small acorns need to be nourished by the soil, in which they grow, by the sun and rain. Mindful space has been created for children to find the extra "nutrients" they need to flourish and to teach them skills for self-nurture.
Learning about ourselves
and meeting our needs
through mindfulness
Frequently, children who are attending mindfulness sessions are doing so because they are experiencing some kind of a difficulty; be it emotional upset, hyperactivity, negative self-attitude or towards others, anxiety, stress, autism and so on. Whatever the true cause of the difficulty is, the fact is that the child's autonomic nervous system will be disregulated and as such reflected in the emotional, psychological, physiological and social difficulties they are experiencing.
What makes matters often worse is that these children are frequently labeled and treated as disruptive, naughty.Yet the child is only communicating what's going on inside them.
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"In my experience of working with children, I have come to know that a mindful approach to what the child is communicating through their behaviour paired with meeting that particular need or deficit can make a significant difference in a relatively short space of time to the child's wellbeing."
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Teaching children how to
self-regulate and sooth
through mindfulness
The foundation for a successful mindfulness session is  a calm and relaxed instructor because ultimately she is there to teach children to find and acquire healthy means of regulating their own nervous systems. If this condition is fulfilled, children will in time stop using a defence mode (flight, freeze or fight) and will open up to engaging in mindfulness based activities and here we speak of "co-regulation" (of the nervous system).
The beauty of using mindful awareness as a basis for co-regulation is that children will acquire knowledge of their unique and individual gates to "the good feeling" and so be able to do this for themselves, thus learning to self - regulate. As an instructor, one of my priorities is to facilitate an understanding to parents and children, that life without an ability to self-regulate is very difficult and it crates a reliance on an external regulatory stimulus that may not be healthy nor be always available.E
Mindfulness: Knowing Presence
effortless awareness
The above words describe what mindfulness is but how does it feel when we are mindful?
I am inviting you to experience this first hand.
TRY THE FOLLOWING EXERCISE
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1. We are going to use our finger as the tool. Lift in front of your face, about the length of your forearm. Do not fix your sight on the finger or anything else. Simply look past the finger with a soft gaze. The finger will appear a little blurry as your eyes defocus (you may feel more relaxed). Even though you are not focusing your attention on the finger, you KNOW that it is there because your AWARENESS is PRESENT to the existence of your finger. This is a really an important point. You could be looking at the finger but be somewhere else with your thoughts or be aware of a noise or something else. Try moving the finger slowly from side to side but do not move your eyes to follow it or fixing on it. You will still be aware of the movement without having to do anything, it feels EFFORTLESS, all that is needed is you Presence.
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A place of transformation
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