From Stress To Stillness: Tools For Kids, Parents, And Teachers

Stress doesn’t ask for permission; it shows up in the car line, at the red light, during homework, and right before bedtime. We explore a kinder, more workable way to meet it: short, judgment-free practices that reset the nervous system and train attention to come back home. With child psychologist Dr. Peter Montminy, we turn mindfulness from an abstract ideal into a set of repeatable reps you can fit into a packed day.

We start by reframing mindfulness as paying attention on purpose to the present moment with kindness and curiosity. No gold stars for perfect calm—just honest noticing that becomes “good to know” data about energy, tension, and need. Dr. Montminy explains how consistent practice quiets the reactive downstairs brain and strengthens the executive functions we rely on for focus and emotional regulation. We connect the dots between neuroscience and everyday life, from lowering rumination and anxiety to improving heart rate variability and easing chronic stress symptoms.

Then we get practical. Mindful minutes are the short, scheduled workouts—one to five minutes with silence or a guided app—that build your attention muscles. Mindful moments are the in-the-wild cues: red lights, showers, first sips of coffee, driveway pauses before walking into work or home. We show how these tiny resets help you arrive clearer and steadier to the next task. For kids and teens, we model first, then invite them in at their pain points—homework drag, after-school meltdowns, impulsive choices—framing mindfulness as a skill that makes life easier, not another chore. You’ll hear a brief guided body scan you can replay any time and get simple scripts to make practice playful and collaborative.

By the end, you’ll have a handful of small, repeatable habits that lower stress, boost focus, and strengthen connection at home and in the classroom. If this conversation helps you or someone you care about, share it, hit subscribe, and leave a quick review so more families can find these tools. What mindful moment will you try today?

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 for immediate support. 

This podcast is brought to you by Jana Marie Foundation and A Mindful Village. 

Jana Marie Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization located in State College, Pennsylvania which harnesses the power of creative expression and dialogue to spark conversations build connections, and promote mental health and wellbeing among young people and their communities. Learn more at Jana Marie Foundation.

A Mindful Village is Dr. Peter Montminy's private consulting practice dedicated to improving the mental health of kids and their caregivers. Learn more at A Mindful Village | Holistic Mental Health Care for Kids.

Music created by Ken Baxter. 

(c) 2025. Jana Marie Foundation. All Rights Reserved.

This podcast was developed in part under a grant number SM090046 from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The views, policies, and opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of SAMHSA, HHS or the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services.

Transcript

Welcome And Mission

Marisa Vicere, Jana Marie Foundation 0:19

Welcome to the Ripples of Resilience Podcast by Jana Marie Foundation, where we dive into the heart of supporting young minds. I'm Marissa Viziri, president and founder of Jana Marie Foundation, and I'm so glad you're here. The Ripples of Resilience podcast provides parents, caregivers, and educators with practical tools and insights to support children's mental health, emotional resilience, and well-being. Each episode covers strategies and fosters open communication, building resilience, and creating safe, nurturing environments where young minds can thrive. Today we're diving into mindfulness. Mindfulness invites us to slow down, notice what's happening within and around us, and respond to life with greater intention and compassion. This is not meant to be something intimidating or perfect, but as a tool for everyday life. And I'm not doing this alone. I'm joined today by our resident expert, Dr. Peter Montminy, a clinical child psychologist and parenting coach from a mindful village. Welcome, Peter.

Dr. Peter Montminy 1:27

Yeah, hi Marisa.

Marisa Vicere, Jana Marie Foundation 1:29

I'm so glad that you can join us for this important topic. So to start off, how do you define mindfulness in a way that feels realistic for our busy lives?

Dr. Peter Montminy 1:40

Yeah, great. Well, let's let's define what mindfulness is with a just a mini little practice for starters. So let's all just sit back wherever you may be listening to this right now and put down anything you may be holding on to physically or mentally as best you can right now. Just let go of anything you may be holding on to, sitting back comfortably in some manner. And I want you to bring a kind and curious attention. Just join me for this little fun thing. Bring your kind and curious attention and just see what you notice when you allow your body to become very still and ready to go. Now when we get very still together, we notice the second thing happened automatically. It got very what?

Marisa Vicere, Jana Marie Foundation 2:49

Quiet.

Dr. Peter Montminy 2:50

And when we get quiet and still, we can start to notice things that we hadn't noticed before. So the beauty of this practice is there's no wrong answers, right? It's just a matter of what do I notice is here right now. So what did you happen to notice on this one, Marisa?

Marisa Vicere, Jana Marie Foundation 3:06

Yeah, it was the first time that I had been still all morning. And then we talked about I came in and went from thing to thing. Yep. And so it was nice. I realized that I'm tired, a little hungry, but feeling energized to take on the day. I've had a lot of really great things that have happened so far this morning. So, you know, a little bit of mixture, but it definitely allowed me to kind of check in with myself, see what my needs are right now and what might make me even thrive more.

The Power Of The Pause

Dr. Peter Montminy 3:32

Beautiful, beautiful. So right, so we often talk about our our the power of the pause and mindfulness practice at its very basic core, being a little circuit breaker or reset for the nervous system. And we all are running around with busy daily lives, and you're in the middle of yours, I'm in the middle of mine today, and you notice that it just started settling and kind of taking stock of your energy and feeling tired and hungry, the noticing the body and what it needs, and also noticing some excitement about some other things going on for you right now. So good to know, right? Good to know. Now, others of us out there may have noticed that we felt our heart rate kind of. I notice my heart or it's slowing down a little. Maybe we notice the breath. Maybe we notice some tightness or tension in our neck or shoulders. Often when I pause for this moment of stillness, we call it a mindful check-in or a mindful uh minute, where we just pause for a minute and just notice what's here now. I often notice my shoulders have crunched up again, you know, and I might I just release them a little bit, roll them a little bit, soften, right quiet down. You may have noticed you feel particularly tired. You may have noticed you feel particularly jittery or anxious. You may have noticed that you were feeling bored or feeling awkward because we don't often pause for a minute of quiet stillness, yeah? You may have noticed that your mind got kind of clearer. You may have noticed a thought or two. You may have noticed a hundred thoughts racing around and thinking, when is this going to be over so I can get to the next thing? Any and all of it is good to know. And that is mindfulness at its core. Mindfulness doesn't make you calm any more than mindfulness makes you jittery. Mindfulness doesn't clear your mind any more than it fills your mind up. Mindfulness is simply the awareness of what already is right here, right now. Mindfulness is the awareness of what you're already carrying with you. And wouldn't it be good throughout our busy days to have a little moment to kind of reset the circuit breakers of our nervous system to just pause and notice?

Marisa Vicere, Jana Marie Foundation 5:39

And I love how you said it's just pieces of information that we're getting about ourselves. And so we don't want to have any judgment toward it, but just noticing how it is that we're feeling, and it allows us to check in with what we might need or what might help us with moving forward to the next thing going on.

Why Mindfulness Matters Now

Dr. Peter Montminy 5:58

Exactly. And that's why I call mindfulness the gateway skill to emotional intelligence and resilience. It's really, it's not a miracle cure, it's not an end-all, but it's the portal, it's the gateway in to all of our other social emotional skills. So at its core, simply, borrowing from John Cabot Zinn, mindfulness is simply a way of paying attention. I work with kids all the time, and by the time they leave my office, it's like, what's mindfulness? It's not being calm, it's not just mindfulness is simply paying attention. But it's paying attention in a certain way. It's paying attention on purpose to the present moment without judgment, as you said, without judgment assumptions, biases, criticisms, preconceived notions, it should or shouldn't be this way. We're just pausing and noticing what is here now. And we're noticing it not with judgment or criticism, but with kindness and curiosity. So literally, mindfulness is a skill you can cultivate and develop of being able to pay attention to what's here now around me and inside of me with kindness and curiosity.

Marisa Vicere, Jana Marie Foundation 7:06

Amazing. So I can see the benefits of mindfulness, but why is it so important right now, especially for our kids and our teens?

Dr. Peter Montminy 7:18

Yeah. Well, decades of neuroscience research confirms what centuries of human experience has shown us, that regular practice of pausing and focusing your attention nonjudgmentally on what's here now improves both mental and physical health. And it's the ultimate antidote to stress in our lives, which of course we talk a lot about here. So in mental health, it uh studies have shown that regular mindfulness practices decreases the amount of anxiety and rumination. Because when you think about it, anxiety, we're lost in thought about worries about the future, what if, what if, what if, or regrets and worries about the past. Oh, I woulda, coulda, shoulda, I messed up, what if, what are people thinking of me? And we're lost in thought about all kinds of things, and our mind is everywhere except for where we actually are, which is here now in the present. So it really helps a lot with a lot of the modern kind of anxiety difficulties we have with stress. It improves coping with PTSD, and beautiful studies have shown how it quiets the downstairs brain, that emotionally reactive part of the brain that we talk about, and it literally strengthens the upstairs brain, the capacity for executive functions of paying attention and regulating your emotions and impulses. So it really is a brain hack to be able to transform your relationship with stress. And the physical benefits, long-term, it helps with all sorts of preventing. The number one disease as we age is heart disease, and regular mindfulness practice really helps lower our blood pressure, increase heart rate variability, which is a huge key in managing stress and activating our immune system in healthier ways. It it helps reduce gastrointestinal distress, it and it's a very powerful way of dealing with chronic pain as well. It's one of the few treatments that has been found to actually alleviate chronic pain. So I could geek out on this all day, but it has many, many physical and mental health benefits, uh, is why we want to be able to do it. And it's it's a it's a skill we can cultivate. It's not magic, it's not woo-woo. It's actually something we can practice and develop that can improve ours and our kids' quality of life.

Marisa Vicere, Jana Marie Foundation 9:34

That's amazing. And I know right now we're in a world where there's just so many, so much multitasking that's happening, right? Our brain is always trying to switch from one thing to the next. And I know growing up, it was always, you know, said to be a good thing that we can multitask and that we're all meant to be able to do all these things at once. But what research continues to show us is that it makes us more fatigued, we have more errors, it's harder to actually be present anywhere. And it feels like mindfulness could really help us with our focus as well.

Dr. Peter Montminy 10:04

Yeah, right on. Perfect. Absolutely.

Marisa Vicere, Jana Marie Foundation 10:07

Yeah. So this really shows us the benefit of it, but how do we develop this skill?

Dr. Peter Montminy 10:14

Yeah. Well, there's there's two big ways, uh, known traditionally as formal practice and informal practice, but it's what I call mindful minutes and mindful moments. So the mindful minutes is literally just scheduling a few minutes. You don't have to go to the gym for a few hours. You can just, anywhere you are, schedule in five minutes. Yes, set a notification on your phone, post it note on your desk, work with an accountability buddy, but get real about just scheduling in a few minutes a day of brain training exercises. And there's lots of apps out there that can help us, such as Insight Timer or Headspace or Calm. There's many others, but those are common, really good ones, ones that I've used over the years. And what we do is we just schedule a time, five minutes in the morning, five or ten minutes, you know, start with one or two minutes. In the evening, find a time in your day where you can reliably just sit somewhere quiet and still and practice focusing your attention. You can sit in silence, you can sit with quiet music, you can sit with some guided meditations, and don't let the word meditation scare you. Meditation just means a focusing exercise, right? Focusing our attention on what's here and now with kindness and curiosity. So those apps have anywhere from five to fifty-minute, you know, little guided exercises, and you can sit and use that structure to begin practicing the ability to, when you're lost in thought, lost in worries, lost in pain, lost in tension, to just come back to this moment. And as you do that, just like football players get in the gym and lift weights and get the reps going, they don't do, you know, they don't get all those hours in the gym during the week to become professional bodybuilders. They do it so that in the fourth quarter of the game on Friday night, the high school players, right, Saturday, college, whatever, Sunday, so in the fourth quarter, they can perform better when they need to. So they can rise to the occasion. But what is what helps them do that? Getting in the reps with those mindful minutes of exercise. And then I'll mention mindful moments too in a minute, but anything you want to add to that?

Marisa Vicere, Jana Marie Foundation 12:28

No, I think that sounds great. You know, it really does help us to the more we practice to build these skills. You know, and when you say and relate that to how we practice for a sport, for a play or theater that we're in, you know, we do these little exercises to help build up that endurance, to help make us prepared. And this is really preparing us for our day.

Everyday Mindful Moments

Dr. Peter Montminy 12:52

Exactly. So scheduling in those few minutes a day of practice to build the reps then allows you to have more mindful moments throughout your day, which is simply a mindfulness practice in the middle of your daily activities. How and you can do anything mindfully or mindlessly. How often have you driven somewhere and gotten there and said, I don't even remember driving there or how I got here, right? Yeah. Yeah. Or pretty scary, right? Or or we sometimes get out, step out of the shower in the morning and we go, wait a minute, did I even wash my hair or not? I don't even remember, right?

Marisa Vicere, Jana Marie Foundation 13:23

And you know walking to the refrigerator, opening it up and forgetting like why you're even there. Exactly.

Dr. Peter Montminy 13:29

Exactly. So we can literally just practice having a mindful shower, mindful eating a piece of food where we just really tend to the textures and taste of the food. There are many opportunities throughout the day. I use red lights or traffic lights as a mindfulness bell and an invitation to practice for a few seconds throughout my day. As I'm running around town consulting in different places or getting out to schools or whatever it may be, I used to hit red lights and just tense up and sometimes, you know, swear or something and be frustrated. Don't you know I have to hurry up and get to where I'm going? But many years ago I realized, no, this was an OTP, an opportunity to practice. And every moment of our day, so many places in our day are OTPs if we simply have the eyes to see it that way. So now when I get a red light, I might initially tense up for just a second, but I very quickly go, and I release and relax. I notice the nature around me or the people around me. Maybe I actually listen now to the music on the radio or just appreciate checking in with my heart rate and my breath. And the green, the light turns green, and I get to my meeting at the same time. I don't get to my meeting any sooner, but I get to my next meeting showing up more clear and calm because of how I related to the red light. Does that make sense?

Marisa Vicere, Jana Marie Foundation 14:50

It absolutely does. I always tell my husband, like, those moments in the car before getting to work is what really grounds me for the day because, you know, as a parent, you're trying to rush around, get yourself ready, get your kid ready, make sure everybody is feed, get out the door, walk the dog, whatever it is that you have, that like if I don't have that time, just to ground myself a little bit before coming into work, then I show up flustered, really anxious, kind of all over the place. But if I'm allowing myself to just take those deep breaths, kind of be in silence, drive to a place, paying attention to what's around me, it does really help me feel more calm and more prepared to show up and transition into the next part of my day.

Dr. Peter Montminy 15:34

Beautiful, exactly. We call them sometimes driveway moments or parking lot moments, right? Well, you know, as you're transitioning from work to home to step back into parent mode, perhaps. Your parking driveway, you just take 30 seconds, a minute or two to pause, breathe, and kind of collect yourself and notice what's going on around me, what's going on inside of me. And as we talked about with the mindful solutions approach, being able to then more wisely choose to respond to the next thing on your plate, not always react to it. So great.

Marisa Vicere, Jana Marie Foundation 16:04

Yeah. So these mindful moments then.

Dr. Peter Montminy 16:08

Yes. In in daily life, we look for those opportunities, whether it's a traffic light, whether it's eating food, showering, pausing in the driveway or the parking lot before you go. That's it.

Teaching Kids Through Modeling

Marisa Vicere, Jana Marie Foundation 16:20

I love it. Really looking at our senses and really allowing ourselves to show up in those spaces. This all sounds great, but I do have you know a 10-year-old who I would love to get more involved in mindfulness. And when you say you have to kind of sit still or be quiet, that is a challenge. And I'm sure my kid is not alone in that. So how do you not at all practice or apply this to our kids? How do we teach them these skills by meeting them with where they're at?

Dr. Peter Montminy 16:49

Yeah, great, great question. The key question, right? For for our listeners, I'm sure. And so the key is first we need to be mindful parents and mindful teachers before we can do some mindful teaching and before we can teach mindfulness to our kids. So we start off with embodying and practicing it. And so why don't we do a practice right now?

Marisa Vicere, Jana Marie Foundation 17:12

Love it.

Guided Body Scan Practice

Engaging Children Without Battles

Dr. Peter Montminy 17:12

And then we'll go into other ways we can actually bring this directly to our kids. Okay, we'll come back to that in a minute. But it starts with centering ourselves. So there are many different ways we can focus our attention on what's here now. We can focus on our senses of what we see or what we hear, or uh tactile senses, even smell or taste. We can focus on our body and being more aware of the bodily sensations, or and there's many mindful movement exercises, right? Where we're paying attention to how we move our body. There's mindful exercises involving focusing your attention on your breath right now, or on then you can bring it into noticing your thoughts or noticing your feelings. But let's start with a basic one. Let's just do a very brief awareness of body mindfulness exercise. We often call this a body scan, right? So again, I'll invite any of us together right now to sit back in a way that's comfortable and relaxed, somewhat alert yet relaxed. So you're not too slouchy, slumpy, and you're not too sitting up tense, rigid, but you're sitting fairly solid, alert yet relaxed. And as you do so, I'll invite you, if you're comfortable, to let your eyes close or just gaze softly down in front of you. And we're going to bring your mind's eye now, attention, that kind and curious attention to your feet. And just notice what the feet feel like in this moment from the inside out. Notice if the feet feel warm or cool. Tense or relaxed. Notice if they're wiggling or still. Maybe notice areas of your feet that feel soft and other areas that feel hard. You may notice where the bottoms of your feet contact the bottoms of your shoes or the floor and where they don't. No judgment, no right or wrong, just noticing, oh, that's what it feels like. The feet feel like right now. And then gently bring your curious attention up to your legs, maybe the calves. Notice any tightness or muscles in your lower legs or softness, any jitteriness or quiet. Just notice. Good to know. Your thighs and quads. Just noticing again any tightness in your legs or softness. The temperature. Maybe notice how they are touching your skin, is touching the clothes, your pants. Covers. Or the air. You might notice how your bottom feels sitting in the chair and feeling the support of the chair. Any warmth there. Notice the sensations in your hips. Your lower back. Noticing any tightness or softness. Maybe any areas of a little bit of pain or discomfort. Or relaxation. The sensations in the middle of your back. On up to the top of your back, between your shoulder blades, and on to the shoulders. And just notice the shoulders right now. Maybe soften, let them drop down and back a little bit. Noticing the weight of your arms hanging off your shoulders, your hands resting in your lap, perhaps. Notice the sensations in your hands. And the fingers and the fingertips. Any tingling or numbness, warmth, or coolness. Bring your attention to the belly and see if you can soften the belly. Maybe you notice it's churning or growling or quiet. Maybe it's hungry or full. Just soften the belly and bring your attention now to the chest and noticing the slight expansion and contraction of the rib cage with each quiet breath. You may feel a warmth in your heart, your heart beating. Bringing your attention up to your neck and throat. The jaw. Maybe notice any tension in the jaw and softly release it if you can a little bit. Not forcing anything. Maybe letting go a little bit or just letting it be just as it is. Noticing the air, softly kissing your cheeks. The sensations in your ears. Your lips. And the tip of your nose. And maybe noticing the air coming in at the nostrils. And going out. Noticing the eyes and soften the eyes and maybe the muscles around the eyes that may feel tight. Let's see if you can just soften them a little bit. The brow, the forehead. Let your whole face be smooth and open. Feel the sensations on the top of your scalp. The crown of your head. And taking one deep breath all the way in. And letting it all the way out with a sigh. Just noticing how your body feels right now from the top of your head all the way back down to your toes. And when you're ready, you can slowly open your eyes again and reorient to the room you're in, to our voice, our conversation together. And just notice if you feel any difference from how you did maybe two or three minutes ago. And remember, whatever you notice, it's good to know because then you can figure out how to take care of your body and move on with your day.

Marisa Vicere, Jana Marie Foundation 23:25

That was great. Thank you so much for leading us through that.

Connection, Resilience, And Wrap

Dr. Peter Montminy 23:33

You just need to sit down and choose to do it, right? Yeah, it can be good. Can be good. All right. So we begin bringing this to our kids by embodying it ourselves. And then over time we can practice that with our kids. But as you say, the kids are going to look at you like, what do you mean, sit quiet and still? I don't know how am I going to do that? So we can introduce it to our kids by talking about the pain. I say align, you know, join with your child on their pain points, which is to say, hey, you ever notice how you really struggle to pay attention or do your homework at the end of the day and you're tired and you're scattered and you want to do other things? And it's hard to really focus and get that homework done quickly and easily. What if there was a way? I know you don't want to enjoy doing it sometimes, but what if there was a way to get it done quicker and easier? Would that be nice? Or sometimes when those really big feelings of anger or anxiety are overflowing and you're blowing up or melting down, wouldn't it be nice if you had the ability to kind of quiet and calm that back down a little bit quicker and easier? Would that be helpful to you? How about the times when we kind of just react and do something without thinking and then later regret it or get in trouble for it? What if you could do learn learned a skill, a secret Jedi mind trick that could help you pay attention better, calm those big emotions, and make better choices with your behaviors and stay out of trouble more? What do you think? Would you be game to give that a try with me? So we get real about it with the kids like that. And then we say, well, I'm learning about this thing called mindfulness, which is literally training our brain to practice paying attention to what's here now with some kindness and curiosity. And there's many different ways we can play with this to learn to grow our ability to refocus our attention when we're distracted and to calm down when we're distressed and to more thoughtfully make our choices. So let's play with this. And then you can begin to introduce the practices that you've been doing for yourself, that you've been finding on the apps. You can come to our websites. I have some exercises on my website, and you can begin to literally playfully with curiosity, not demands, not rigid. We need to sit down and this isn't another homework that you're making the kid do, you know, or forcing them to eat their vegetables. You're going, hey, dude, this might be helpful to us. Let's try it and see. And it's not a one and done thing, right? You're going to try anything. You've got to give it a go for a little bit. So be curious, be kind, be playful, and say, come on, let's practice together for a few minutes in the morning. Often at bedtime, it can be a useful thing, and you slowly find ways that you can grow in this together.

Marisa Vicere, Jana Marie Foundation 26:07

I love that idea of doing it with them as well, because not only are we teaching those practical skills then, but we're also creating those bonding moments. And so often our kids are looking for us to give them that attention. And we don't always see those bids for connection. And this is a way that we can go to them and try to make that happen.

Dr. Peter Montminy 26:27

100%. This is win-win for everybody's nervous system, and that strengthens our resilience and it absolutely strengthens our relationships.

Marisa Vicere, Jana Marie Foundation 26:36

Well, thank you so much for being with us today and for going over all of these great mindfulness hints and benefits for ourselves. And thank you for all of you for joining us today on the Ripples of Resilience podcast. In the next episode, we dive into compassion and how leading with empathy can create safer, more supportive spaces for youth mental health. This podcast is brought to you by Jana Marie Foundation, where we're dedicated to opening minds and saving lives through conversations that matter. And by a Mindful Village, where Dr. Peter Montminy provides holistic mental health care for kids and their caregivers. If today's episode resonated with you, share it with a friend and don't forget to subscribe so you never miss a ripple. Together, let's keep showing up, speaking up, and supporting the young minds who need us most. Remember, even the smallest actions can create waves of change.