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SEND Parenting Podcast
Welcome to the Send Parenting Podcast. I'm your neurodiverse host, Dr Olivia Kessel, and, more importantly, I am a mother to my wonderfully neurodivergent daughter, Alexandra, who really inspired this podcast.
As a veteran in navigating the world of neurodiversity, I have uncovered a wealth of misinformation, alongside many answers and solutions that were never taught to me in medical school or in any of the parenting handbooks.
Each week on this podcast, I will be bringing the experts to your ears to empower you on your parenting crusade.
SEND Parenting Podcast
Creating calm in the classroom with Lisa Danahy, Founder & Director of Create Calm
Dr. Olivia Kessel speaks with Lisa Danahy, Founder & Director of Create Calm, yoga therapist and author of Create Calm in the Classroom, a book about understanding and supporting children's nervous systems through breath and movement techniques. She talks about why playful approaches work better than verbal instructions for neurodivergent children and:
• Why we need to understand behaviours as nervous system communications rather than problems to fix
• How to use the "volcano" movement exercise to release tension and anxiety
• The importance of validating emotions rather than labelling them as good or bad
• Practical ways to help children navigate emotional storms through body awareness
Click here for Lisa's book Creating Calm in the Classroom
Join our private WhatsApp community for support, insights and real conversations with like-minded parents who truly understand.
www.sendparenting.com
Welcome to the Send Parenting Podcast. I'm your neurodiverse host, dr Olivia Kessel, and, more importantly, I'm mother to my wonderfully neurodivergent daughter, alexandra, who really inspired this podcast. As a veteran in navigating the world of neurodiversity in a UK education system, I've uncovered a wealth of misinformation, alongside many answers and solutions that were never taught to me in medical school or in any of the parenting handbooks. Each week on this podcast, I will be bringing the experts to your ears to empower you on your parenting crusade. If you're looking for a safe space to connect with other parents navigating their neurodiverse journey, our private WhatsApp community offers support, insights and real conversations with like-minded parents who truly understand. Join the conversation today. You can find the link in the show notes.
Speaker 1:In today's episode, we are going to speak directly to something that I know causes a lot of pain and heartbreak for all of us out there. If you are daily navigating emotional dysregulation, school refusal, anxiety or any kind of emotional storms that can leave your entire family feeling drained, then this is the episode for you. My guest is Lisa Donaghy, an educator, yoga therapist and author of Create Calm in the Classroom. But do not let the word classroom fool you. What Lisa offers is much more than just teaching schools. It is a whole body, whole child approach that helps us return to something every human needs safety, connection and calm.
Speaker 1:In today's episode, lisa will explain how understanding our children's nervous system is key to shifting those meltdown moments. She'll share practical breath and movement tools that you can begin using at home, even in the middle of chaos. And, perhaps most importantly, she reminds us that regulation does not begin with our children, it begins with us. So wherever you are in the car, folding laundry or stealing a quiet moment for yourself while walking the dog, take a deep breath. You're in the right place. Let's dive in.
Speaker 1:So welcome Lisa. It is such a pleasure to have you on the Send Parenting podcast today. You know, we often look at children's behavior and we just see the behavior. We see the distress, we see the anxiety and what we don't really see is their need for connection, their need for calm and their need for our co-regulation. So I'm super looking forward today to exploring with you how we can use body movement, how we can use breath to really help our children and, dare I say, ourselves as well feel safe, calm, regulated and seen for what it is, instead of focusing on the wrong area. But before we get into the nitty gritty of that, tell me a little bit about your journey from educator to yoga therapist.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Thank you for having me here. I am so thrilled to be part of this conversation. So I will go way back to when I was a little child and I watched my grandmother moving her body in unusual ways and then sitting really still for long periods of time, seeming to stare out of her window at nothing and just thinking, gosh, that's so odd. And and then fast forward to my mid 30s and I've got two kids and a stressful job and a friend of mine says, hey, I'm getting my yoga certification, Can you come be a student of mine? And I go to her class and I think, oh, that's what my grandmother was doing all those years back, and so it was sort of planted in me a long, long time ago.
Speaker 2:But so right about that time, when I had the kids and the stressful job and you know I was trying to sort of figure out my direction, I decided to take my degree in developmental psychology and my experience in human resources and put them to use at my children's school, and so I went to manage an early childhood program and wrote a curriculum that I really wanted to make sure that children had the opportunity to play and express themselves and to feel supported socially and emotionally. So I wrote a social emotional curriculum for the school and I was there for about almost 20 years and in that time it was a very gradual way that I worked my personal yoga practice into the curriculum at the school. And I remember there was this one moment where a teacher was working with a child in the classroom and I could feel the tension mounting and I finally heard the teacher say to the very upset child you're going to tell Miss Lisa what you did. And the teacher scooped the child up and we've all been there, right, We've all had that moment Scooped the child up, marching into my office, the child's screaming, and they get to the doorway and the child plants her hands and feet in the door jam and just goes. No. And I looked at her and I realized she was right, this wasn't working. You know this attempt to talk our way through, this attempt to muscle our way through, you know there had to be a different way to connect.
Speaker 2:So the three of us sat on my floor and started breathing and that began a really significant shift in the way I interacted with children and adults and the way we brought learning to our school. And so I was there doing that work. We actually brought yoga into the school in 1998 as a formal part of our educational programming and, yeah, and I was there until 2013. And at that point I got this little urge after doing some really specific training in therapeutic yoga and yoga for children, I got the urge to go out and bring this program to other people, especially children and families and educators. You know I feel when I say children and families, to me that vision of family includes educators and healthcare care providers and friends. And you know, because that really is that it's family to me is community, with a special focus on helping folks to recover from traumatic experiences and to feel that they can celebrate and welcome their individuality and, specifically, neurodiversity and different abilities.
Speaker 1:Excellent. That's quite a journey and interesting. That's very much. Why I wanted to have you on the podcast today is because of that experience that you've had with neurodiversity and you know you had mentioned to me that I think it was in 2012, you started working with neurodiverse teenagers. You tell me a little bit about that.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so I found in my work with the early childhood education field. You know we weren't really diagnosing early on that neurodiversity, so to speak, but there were a lot of children who processed differently and I was really interested in that. So I started studying. You know what kinds of yoga tools I could use with children, and in my training I opened up an opportunity for a group of neurodiverse teens to come and do yoga with me and it was wonderful. The group there were seven, six or seven, depending on the week children, teens who had come together through therapeutic support and called themselves the tribe and I love that right, isn't that beautiful.
Speaker 2:They're self-named, the tribe, and most of them were non-verbal, some of them had stemming, some of them had, um, you know, unique, um, uh, repetitive behavior, some of them, um, were moreverted. But they all came together and so they came in and I worked with them on a weekly basis doing yoga and meditation and breathing exercises. And one memory that stands out to me in particular, that was really pivotal in my understanding of how yoga works to support all people, but especially neurodivergent populations, was this young man came into class late and, as most of us parents can relate to, his mother was very upset and very embarrassed because they were late, and his mother said, you know, he wouldn't come out the door, he was not cooperating, he just kept on throwing his body against the wall and you know, so I work here and she was very flustered and I said no problem. So I brought him in the classroom and one of the things that I've always done with children is try not to label, try not to bring too much of the story with them. So he came in and I had him get on his yoga mat and he was clearly very restless and I put him in what we call turtle shell in the book. Well, we can. We can actually try it out later. But in turtle shell you curl up belly to your thighs and it's a very inward focused position.
Speaker 2:So I watched as I put him in this position. I watched him become more present in his body and I watched his body start to relax. And then I saw him hitting his head on the floor and I realized that was the behavior his mother was saying she was so annoyed with him because he wouldn't stop. And it occurred to me that we have these acupressure points across our forehead. Have you ever seen somebody go? Oh my gosh, I'm so upset, you know, or I'm just. We need to calm down, right, we're trying to self-soothe.
Speaker 2:So at that moment I realized that this person, who very often does not feel in control of his body, very often cannot verbally express himself in the standard ways we as a culture have framed as expected. He was actually demonstrating his desire and his ability to self-soothe. So I let him be there for a little bit, trying in himself, and then I went and I gave him heavy pressure and I put weighted sandbags on and then I laid him down and let at a place of balance that he very often didn't get to experience and from that moment on I really had this new appreciation for this notion that most children, and most even into adulthood, neurodivergent populations and individuals. They want the same thing as everyone else. They want to feel happy and safe and balanced and very often they just need some extra tools and support to find it in a way that may not look like everybody else.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a real poignant story because he was looking for a way to calm his nervous system down, but in a way that's not, let's just say it's socially acceptable or understood for what it was, which brings. I think you know it would be really super interesting to get your you do a wonderful way of explaining the nervous system and I think that to understand that kind of conceptualizes what's going on in everyone's balance, I guess, is what I would call it. We're all trying to get to a homeostasis point, but we have fight or flight and when we have neurodiverse individuals and all individuals that can get out of sync and then that's often what causes the behaviors that we see in labels. So I think let's take a step back from that and can you explain to my listeners kind of the stress response and how they can contextualize it, because then that will help us when we start talking about some of your solutions.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. You know I will try to be as brief as I can, but I'm a bit of a science nerd around the nervous system, so I love talking about this stuff.
Speaker 1:You know, I think a lot of my moms and a lot of the listeners will like it as well, because you know it helps us to understand what's going on and you kind of have to understand it to be able to then support your child with it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And that's, I think that's why I have, I have continued to study it because things would happen and I would feel things that I'd go well, but why, right, and why? Why was he hitting his head Right? Why is it when, when my students tap their fingers, what is that doing? You know so. So I started to recognize that, to recognize that that this mind body connection is really, it's, it's managed on an energetic level, right, and the energetics are managed through what we call the nervous system. And so the nervous system is really that, that space between mind and body. It allows the mind and body to connect right.
Speaker 2:So many of us know there is this stress response. Many of us know that, in fact, stephen Porges has done a fabulous job in laying out the structure of the nervous system and our fight-fight response. You know, when we get stressed out, we either want to run away, we want to hunker down, we want to fight, or we try to please and appease the you know, the stressor, so that we can get back to balance. So the way we're trying to do that is through messaging and modulation in the nervous system. So we have and actually science is catching up on this yoga philosophy that the body is sort of divided into two halves of the right side of the body is the activating side and the left side is the calming side. And so we have this ability, through the central nervous system, to activate or calm the body based on what our needs are. So what's fascinating about this is there's this vagus nerve. It's the longest, most intricate nerve in the body. It goes from the base of the skull, it comes through the jaw, down the neck, down through the chest, down into the belly, and some people are now calling it the gut. What's so cool about the vagus nerve is it's two-way communication.
Speaker 2:So and I mentioned this and I want to talk a little bit more about it in detail, especially around neurodivergence, because what happens with the vagus nerve is we have five regular senses. Right, we have the touch, smell, sight, hearing and taste, but we also have these what they call proxal senses. We have proprioception, vestibular perception and then we have interoception. And the reason I like to talk about them is because the first five are primarily systems that are sending messages to the brain through the nervous system. Other two, proxal, and the other two proxal, the proprioceptive and vestibular. They are perceiving their body in relationship to its surroundings. Right, interoception is the messaging from the inside Am I hungry, am I scared? That's what we tend to assign to emotion. So we send messages up to the brain and the brain sends messages back. And it's mostly through the proprioception and the vestibular perception and the interoception that we are sensing whether we're safe or not, that we are sensing whether we are balanced. So if the bagel tone is weak, we're not getting that messaging.
Speaker 2:So if I have different ways of processing that limit the input from my senses, it's going to limit my ability to engage externally. And what Stephen Porges has found is he ties that to social engagement. So, so, so if I'm not able to activate or calm myself in my nervous system and to accurately receive and respond to stimuli, then I'm not able to accurately interpret my social relationships, my social interaction. And if I can't do that, then it's really hard for me to be socially compliant and to follow the rules of normal. And what I find with adults is we want a lot of control and we want compliance, we want order.
Speaker 2:I can tell you I spent many years as a parent, totally connected to my children's performance as somehow a reflection on me, right? But the reality is, we wouldn't need that compliance and control if we allowed our children to self-manage. And if I'm going to allow my children to self-manage, then I have to allow them to be as much able to get to access the active state as the calm state. You know, we have this notion that we need everybody to be calm, and you know let me ask you this what happens when I say, oh, come on, just calm down. Just calm down. That's not something to be upset about.
Speaker 1:You're not even upset and I could tell you how to reaction, right, yeah, I mean, first of all, like you know, we as humans hate being told what to do. And then, especially if you are upset and someone my daughter and I actually because you know, you know when you take a deep breath, when you're angry, you just don't want to take a deep breath, you know, and you don't want anyone telling you to take a deep breath. So we've actually forbidden those words in our house, it's like you know. Instead, just validate the feeling and say you know what? You look pretty pissed off right now.
Speaker 2:It's okay, be pissed off, you know, and I want to take that a step further, and I don't even want to define it, I just want to. I don't even want to define it, I just want to move in a way that lets you feel what, what that energy is Right. So I may think it's pissed off, you may think it's ecstatic, right, and so let's not call it anything. Let's just move and either make it bigger until it gets absolutely as big as it can be, and then what happens? It falls away or get it, get and meet it and be, get big with it, and then together we move it slower, right? I love that. You said you do away with those words. You know you do away with that. Take a deep breath, you know um a deep breath Calm down, right.
Speaker 2:You know what? I have another little anecdote for you. I had a four-year-old who came to me with his mother and his mother said we're on the verge of getting kicked out of our second preschool. He doesn't get invited to birthday parties anymore. He was just being diagnosed as neurodivergent and she said I don't know what to do. He has two hours. He just goes off and he's unconsolable and it's horrible. We don't know what to do.
Speaker 2:So he and I went in the room together and I just sat for a few moments and I could tell he was waiting for me to tell him. And I just sat for a few moments and I could tell he was waiting for me to tell him and I just started breathing. I started breathing in a pattern that I knew was going to match his lung capacity. You know I'm not going to sit there with a four year old and go right because his little lungs aren't going to go there. But so I took a few breaths and I curled myself up again in a turtle shell, right. I pulled myself up very small, and he followed and and in that moment we were breathing together and and our energy became synchronized and he felt this connection. So after that we were able to play with, getting super big in our energy which mimicked the tantrum energy which mimicked the tantrum right, we were able to to kind of play with and create a tantrum in our playful, energetic yoga movement and then come out of that tantrum back into our calm breath, without me telling him what to do, without me, you know, needing anything out of him, and in this playful way.
Speaker 2:After two sessions of doing two times, we met. His mom, came to me in tears and said Rex, his behavior, in less than 20 minutes he's been helping his friends in his classroom go to their turtle shells and calm down, he said. And just the other day I was really upset and he invited me to take balloon breath. So sweet, right. And she said, the only difference between what I was doing and anybody else was doing, I'm not, you know, some, some magic person that gave him the tool, I showed him how, but I let him do it you know, because she said everybody was telling him just calm down.
Speaker 2:You know, just stop calm down. And and if he knew, how don't you think he would? And that's all.
Speaker 1:And also important there, though, that you also were having that energy time as well. You know that you can go into both zones, that you know. I think that, like you said earlier, it's we can't expect our kids to be calm all the time, and they need to be able to express and feel the emotions that they're feeling, but it's then being able to control how, when they want to come in and out, versus it controlling them. So I think that's that really beautifully shows that kind of um way that he could understand by actions and by seeing what you were doing, to be able to, to learn how to self-regulate. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And you know, and we know this about children they're like these little super high-powered antennae right and they pick up on everything. So I think, just as important as giving them the space to explore and play and the tools, I think we have an obligation to get our act together too a little bit Sorry was an indication, you know.
Speaker 1:You know my hand is itching, okay, which means I was about to get a smack on the bottom. There was, you know it was. There wasn't any of that, but none of that. You can't meet them in their dysregulation. You have to meet them, you have to learn how to regulate and I mean, I've talked to many moms and really you learn how to regulate better because you know your child needs you to regulate and if you're not regulated, there's no hope.
Speaker 2:Right, right, and, and that's the you know, that's. That's the beauty of it, too, though, is, you know, none of us got a manual. None of us, none of us got the secret book on how to do this way, and, and I find actually so much joy now in having my, my missteps and my, my emotional imbalances and work on them and own them with my kids, you know, and and to be able to, I mean, it's actually kind of joyful to say, oh my gosh, I'm freaking out. And they're like, oh my gosh, you're freaking out, you know, and it kind of makes them feel better, because you know a lot of kids, they see this perfect adult, right, and they see this way they're supposed to be, and they're not aligned with it. So they start to think there's something wrong, something wrong with them, right, I can't do this, I'm not good enough. All those narratives, because? Because you know, we're telling them, you know we're not showing them our instability, our vulnerability, our imperfections, our ability to to re-regulate, because we're not practicing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my daughter gets a lot of experience seeing me do that and and and. It's good, though, because then we can talk about it. You know what I mean Like and and and, and you know it's also like you know if I haven't been sleeping well or if I haven't been able to exercise, if I haven't done this stuff, and then she's like mommy, you know why are you so grumpy? She goes I know why you're so grumpy. It's because you haven't done this and this.
Speaker 1:I said you're right, so can you be a little bit kinder to mommy? Because mommy's up here right now and I'm trying to get back down and she's like okay, but it's that normalization of emotions and that normalization of we're all human and it's okay. Because she sometimes says mommy, I cry sometimes too much at school. And I said you know what, you're just expressing your emotions. I said you feel you feel love and happiness really strongly like, more so than other people, but you also experience downs a little bit stronger than other people too. There's there's two sides to that, and you know people have to accept you the way that you are and not to be ashamed of how you feel, because it is, you know, it's who you are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if you think about it, I love that example you gave because your daughter is big, right, she's big energy and it, and sometimes our communities will label that big energy as really good or really bad, and the truth is it's neither. It's energy, and because we need order and structure, we put a tag on. But if we can step back from it and go, okay, it doesn't matter if what it's called it's just this energy, you feel intensely right, you engage in your environment fully. And if that ever gets to a place where it's too big whether it's, you know, because I can tell you I probably yelled at my kids just as often when they were joyfully playing and you know, running around chasing each other naked because they laughed and thought that was funny, and I'm telling them be quiet. You know, running around chasing each other naked because they laughed and thought that was funny, and I'm telling them be quiet.
Speaker 2:You know, stop, stop as much as when they were fighting, right, because it was too big for me, too much, exactly. So, whatever it is, if I can just say, okay, that energy, without labeling it, that energy is big, maybe it would be good to pull it in a little, or that energy is too little, right? On the other hand, how many times have you needed to get out the door and your kid is feeling really tiny and small? Right, and you're going to put your clothes on. Let's go right.
Speaker 1:Quickly, quickly, quickly. We're late, we're five minutes late. Come on, come on, come on, come on.
Speaker 2:Right. So their energy's right here and you're needing it right here and so you know. So we know they have it. And then we get frustrated because we know you can turn it on. But instead if I start jumping like a monkey, right, and I'm like oh, oh, oh, oh, and I start building my breath and I'm jumping like a monkey, then my kid is going to be like, oh, that's kind of cool. And then next thing you know we're jumping like monkeys, I've raised the energy. Then I can say let's go Right. So I'm putting all of that demands before the action. Yeah, and I really need the action first. So I want to.
Speaker 2:You know, very often I'm working with nonverbal children and so I try to be nonver and so we play in a non-significant space, I'll say, where it's a lot crucial that we have an outcome. But we play in my office or wherever that space is in school, with going up and down and up and down, over and over and over, just through these movements, just through breathing, because then it becomes familiar and then we can use those same pieces in the moment, in the need. You know, in the place that we need to have corrective action where we have a goal or outcome that has to be reached. We can use those same tools and they're very familiar, and I'm more confident because now you're asking me to come along with you in a place I'm familiar with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's already become something that's it's already become part of their nervous system by doing the action outside of the kind of crisis moment that then like the story you mentioned earlier with that little boy, four-year-old, then seeing others and saying, hey, this worked for me, let me show you how to do turtle pose, because I've known how to do that. Now, outside of that, so that makes absolute complete sense. They're learning how to regulate their nervous systems and then being able to apply it in situations which is really, I mean, yeah, it's, it's, it's so key and so important to everyone, neurodiverse and neurotypical.
Speaker 2:Right, right. And I think, you know, I think the more we can take language out of it and labels and and that kind of thing out of it, um, the the less um intellectual it becomes Right. So, um so long ago, in fact, I had um, so, um so long ago, in fact, I had um teachers who, uh, yoga teachers, and and um professors who often critiqued me because long ago I gave up this notion of left and right because I would be leading these yoga experiences. And I take your left foot, well, immediately you're in there, going okay, what's my left foot, which is, which is my left foot right? And if you put your left foot, well, immediately you're in there, going, okay, what's my left foot, which is my left foot Right. And if you put your right foot forward, what happens?
Speaker 2:You go, oh, you knucklehead, you got the wrong one you know, and then you have this whole conversation going on in there about how messed up you are and how you're not smart enough, or you know so.
Speaker 2:So long ago he said move your foot forward, lift your arm, take both arms out to your sides, right, and and so so to me, I had to get out of my head in in the logical way and allow my nervous system to interpret my experience and manage my experience instead of my thought. Now, does that mean thoughts you know are not going to happen? No, Does that mean I give thoughts away? No, but it means that the thoughts are balanced and they're assisting my nervous system instead of the other way, controlling it right or overriding it. You know? I mean, how many times have you seen a child in tears and you see the adult with them and I am guilty of this going? Stop crying, that's nothing to cry about, right? And so what happens is the thoughts go that's nothing to cry about and the intuition is going. I don't know. It kind of feels like something to cry about. And the thoughts go no, that's not something to cry about and the intuition goes. My bad, I'm going to step back.
Speaker 2:And so then we start to doubt our gut and we start to disconnect the nervous system and weaken its ability to help us navigate these life experiences. And this world is super complicated. This world has gotten much more complicated much quicker than our bodies have advanced to keep up with it and still our nervous systems are like I got you right, but but we're we get caught in in, in discrediting our own inner note? And especially, I think, for neurodivergent children, who already have less control of the body, sometimes less ability to manage the thoughts or to direct them, to direct sensations and communication. I think, more so than with anybody else, I want them to know they can trust their inner, know develop that skill to be able to know that, no matter what they're okay on the inside, they're okay.
Speaker 1:And and to validate it, you know, I think it's been you know to be able to validate when your nervous system needs to rest, when you need to to go into a room and be by yourself, you know to to validate, you know to be able to validate when your nervous system needs to rest, when you need to go into a room and be by yourself, you know to validate. You know, maybe Joe standing over here doesn't need to do that, but you do. So. There is a real sense of knowing yourself and knowing what you need and being able to meet that needs.
Speaker 1:And your book that you've written, creating Calm in the Classroom, kind of goes into some of those techniques that children can use. And it's a little bit of a misnomer the classroom, but I'll let you explain it because it's not. You know, when you, when you see well, I shouldn't say that because it's your title of your book, so I'm not, please don't take it the wrong way but it's not just for people in the classroom, but that's where the impetus came from. But it does. It does kind of go into this and how you can navigate those big emotions using movement and breath work.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and you're allowed to say it's a misnomer. You're not the only one who said that.
Speaker 2:You know everybody said to me this is for everyone, why did you call it for the classroom? And I said, well, that was my roots Right. And and I do, I do feel that you know, to be honest, I feel that it lends a little more credibility to practices for parents to say, well, they do it in schools. So you know, then I'll give it a try. And I do think, like I mentioned earlier, I feel that family or you know that notion of that support system for children. It includes school, it includes home, it includes wherever that is, and more and more, actually, children are in school at home. So the classroom now is the living room or the patio or, you know, the car, and so, in that way, I feel like you're right. Some folks they pick it up and they go oh, I'm not a teacher, never mind, you know. But my hope was to provide accessible practices that could be used at home, in school, by any adult with any relationship with a child.
Speaker 2:And all of the activities in the book are organized by energetic purpose, right? Because, like I said, the nervous system, it wants homeostasis, we want homeostasis and in order to have that, we need to be able to access that sympathetic side and go up or that parasympathetic side and go down in our energy levels. So so these these groups of activities are breathing exercises and movements and and mindful moments, you know, meditation practices. They're all packaged in really simple ways to meet you where you are energetic and or you can take them and, you know, put them together in different ways and and give yourself this up and down sort of experience of the emotions or the energy of the emotions, you know emotion is which is valid, based on what you've just said in terms of being able to practice outside of a crisis or a difficult moment, to be able to navigate the ups and downs, then you can put that into practice when you need it.
Speaker 1:So that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I had a lot of fun doing it too, because, as I packaged it for a classroom, I wanted to be very clear in when you use it and how you use it. So in each exercise I tell you what it's for, I tell you in terms of what it does in the body and what it does for the nervous system, and then I tell you when might be a good time to do it during the day, during the school day, or, you know, there's those parallel experiences everywhere and then I give you the how to and pictures. So I have a lot of young children that I work with. They will open the book and they will turn to a picture that interests them, and nine times out of 10, it's an exact match for what they need. So, without them even reading right, they look at the picture and we do that activity. So I sometimes let the kids pick the activity, or sometimes I will pick the activities, because it's something I want us to practice.
Speaker 1:It sounds fantastic. And can you tell? Could you give us maybe some examples of real life scenarios of how you've used the strategies from your book for, let's say, how you cope with anxiety? That's a big topic. It's a big topic in my life too. My daughter's 13 and she's got a lot of anxiety about different things. So how talk through me some of the tools and strategies that you would share in that book, that you could share?
Speaker 2:with us today. Yeah, anxiety, you know, anxiety is, I think, so prominent because anxiety shows up in different ways, right, anxiety can show up as very frenetic or as very lethargic, and so it's a really interesting. I consider it a quality, a state of being that informs us, right. So anxiety tells me something's not feeling down, something's feeling out of whack. So if I have a really anxious child with high energy, they're kind of like this I'll do volcano, and if you'd like, we can give it a try.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and talk through so that listeners can hear Okay, right, I think we can do it. They won't be able to see.
Speaker 2:No, that's right. So you can. Actually. Ideally, you want to do it standing up, but you could do it in a chair and any listeners listening right now, as long as you're not driving, give this a try as well. That's right. I was gonna say, yeah, you can't do a drive, all right. So pull over, put your feet on the ground, either in a chair or standing up, and just stand there for a moment and feel yourself like a mountain. Feel the big heaviness of that mountain, the big tallness of the mountain. Feel that mountain. Now take your arms out to your sides and just breathe in like you're filling a balloon, right Arms. Come up overhead and breathe out and bring your hands right down through the middle. Hold your hands there for a moment and just feel yourself this big, strong mountain. Now start to stomp or move your feet on the ground like lava in the middle of the earth at the base of this mountain.
Speaker 2:Feel the lava growing a little more. Stomp your feet a little quicker, maybe a little harder. Make your body start to move like lava, big and flowy. Maybe your shoulders and your head start to go. Feel it, feel it. Feel it feel it really, really big. Now I want you to squat down, get yourself really, really tiny, take a big breath in and jump up, stretch out, explode that lava. Yeah, let's do it again. Make some lava, put your hands together, squeeze. Take yourself a little tiny, squat down. Put your hands together, squeeze, make yourself a little tiny, squat down, take a big breath in and then explode it out. Now let your arms come down to rest. Big breath in, get out and relax. Notice how you feel. Maybe you feel your body. Maybe you noticed your thoughts are shifting.
Speaker 1:It almost takes the tension down. You know it feels like a release, yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm going to do that with my daughter this afternoon.
Speaker 1:I think that's brilliant.
Speaker 2:That's exactly what it is, so it's a release of that tension that you don't even know, you right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I was having a lovely chat with you there was no tension Right, but it was in there.
Speaker 2:It was hanging on from earlier last week, and you know this morning, exactly, exactly, getting ready for school?
Speaker 2:Yes, and that's the thing is. Is we care? You know, we've we've adapted now and we've gotten this ability to carry our emotional stressors with us even when the stressful situation is gone, and we hunker it down in our bodies and we don't even know. And so you know. So that volcano let us tap into it and gave us permission Get it out, gave us permission to be big, and the awesome thing is it gave us permission to be big in a really limited space, a very linear space.
Speaker 2:You didn't take up much room as you exploded that energy, but you still let it out and you let it out, and and then what happened was, as you let it out, there was this spaciousness that naturally filled in Right and I and I probably didn't even have to cue your breath. And if we were doing it together, if you were in my office with me, I would just do it and we would mirror each other and you would feel even more intensely into it, because you weren't thinking about breathing, you weren't thinking about moving, but I had to talk to you too.
Speaker 1:I want to hear it.
Speaker 2:But but yeah, so imagine, just silently, I'd love for you to do this with your daughter. No words, just you know. Say hey, do this with you, know, and start moving your body and breathing and breathe loud enough that she can hear right and tune it. And then, after it, make sure you all give yourselves this juicy space to integrate, because we tend to go, okay, done, done, done, done, done, yeah, take three breaths, do those balloon breaths, right the arms out up overhead, breathe in, bring the hands together as you breathe out down the middle, do three of those and then just sit and if it's hard to sit, count to 10. You know, but give your body that chance to report back, because chances are it's going to report back and go oh yeah, do that again. And that's when it's stored in your memory, that's when it becomes an accessible thought in addition to all the other ones.
Speaker 1:That's brilliant and thank you for that, and I think you know it's just. Your book is full of lots of good tips like that. So, and we will have the link to your book in the show notes because I think it's really valuable and it's a look how simple that was. Do you know what I mean? That's the beauty of it. It's so simple, but it really has a big impact and a big feeling of release and calmness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and sometimes what I'll do is because that volcano, I can use it for anxiety, as you probably figured out. I can use it for anger, I can use it for any big emotions right, and big emotions whatever I call them at big energy. But sometimes what I like to do after is a meditation. That's in the book. That is really powerful, especially for neurodivergent young adults and children, and this was something that was one of the most requested of all the practices of my tribe as teens that I worked with, so I'd love to share it with you if you have a moment.
Speaker 2:So, after we've done that volcano, you know, and we sit and take a few breaths and we feel into where we are, I'm going to ask you to imagine we just did our volcano. Right. Let's do a balloon breath, big breath in. Reach your arms up overhead, breathe out. Bring your hands down the middle. Now let your hands come to rest in your lap with your palms up. Take your thumb and touch the first finger and press the tip of your finger right, just the pad, that first pad and then take your thumb and press the second one and the third one and the fourth.
Speaker 2:Come back to the first one, and then the second one, and the third one and the fourth. Now we're going to say what they call seed sounds in yoga, and the reason I like these seed sounds is they naturally press the tongue against the roof of the mouth, which is an acupressure point for activating focus. So it's sa na ma.
Speaker 2:So sa to the first finger, ha to the first finger, pa to the second finger, na to the third finger and ma to the fourth. We're just going to do that a couple times. Sa pa na, ma, sa pa na, ma, sa pa na. I want you to pause for a moment and we're going to exchange those sounds for an affirmation. I am so calm. I am so calm.
Speaker 2:I am so calm, one more time. I am so calm Now. Let your hands rest, breathe in and breathe out naturally. Allow your mind to just process those words and the feeling of the feeling in your body. Know that you can access that anytime Simple as touching those fingers and remembering those. And you can come up with your own words too Any four syllables.
Speaker 1:That's so brilliant, you know, and it's yeah, it's easy, but it's very impactful. And I hope people did it who are listening too, because and if you don't rewind and give it a try, because I think the proof is in the pudding when you do it, you do feel a sense of calmness, which is lovely, and that's something that you know, it's so hard. I know from my daughter too, when she's in that red zone or out of it, that things that can help her to calm, to regulate herself she wants to regulate and maybe she can't and so things that can help to do that both of us actually to do that is wonderful, brilliant, and I, you know this is the first time I've actually done anything like this on the podcast. You know, a live demonstration and you just you narrated that so well. I got it and hopefully everyone else got it.
Speaker 1:And you know, I think it's an amazing thing for us to implement, not just in the classroom but at home too, Even when you just get home from school, when they're you know what I mean they just need to release and just to take it down a notch. This would be a brilliant thing to do at that time, you know. So I would highly recommend getting your book. I can't believe it. We've almost been talking for an hour. Lisa So-.
Speaker 2:I know it goes way too fast.
Speaker 1:I would love it if you could. I always ask my guests to give us me three top tips that parents could take home with them. I know you've given us a lot of good advice today, but if you can think of three more that they can take home with them after listening to this podcast.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, I think my three top tips, uh, would be lighten up on yourself, trust your children you know how to do this and be playful. Stay in that space of play right, whatever the movement, wherever you are, incorporate that playfulness. Wherever you are, incorporate that playfulness because play is what takes us back to joy and what takes us back to that space of our own inner goodness, without judgment and expectation. So give yourself room.
Speaker 1:I think those are three wonderful tips to end with. Thank you so much, lisa. I really appreciate you coming and sharing your knowledge and helping us all be a little calmer, a little bit more regulated and a little bit more seen. So thank you, thank you. Thank you for listening. Send Parenting Tribe. If you haven't already, please click on the link in the show notes to join us in the private Send Parenting WhatsApp community. It's been wonderful to be able to communicate with everyone in the community and for us to join together to help each other, to navigate challenges and to also no-transcript.