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I am always looking for free courses available that can help learn more about with mindfulness. I found the following course offered from the Awake Academy and wanted to share with others. Four top experts get together to teach you Kindfulness: a unique short course that blends mindfulness, kindness and compassion To register and begin go here: http://www.awakeacademy.org/course/free-kindfulness/ Enjoy!

Excerpt 1: TULSA, Okla. — The women’s wing of the jail here exhales sadness. The inmates, wearing identical orange uniforms, ache as they undergo withdrawal from drugs, as they eye one another suspiciously, and as they while away the days stripped of freedom, dignity, privacy and, most painful of all, their children. “She’s disappointed in me,” Janay Manning, 29, a drug offender shackled to a wall for an interview, said of her eldest daughter, a 13-year-old. And then she started crying, and...

“ Troubled children with histories of abuse and neglect who show up in clinics, schools, hospitals, and police stations, the traumatic roots of their behaviors are less obvious, particularly because they rarely talk about being hit, abandoned, or molested, even when asked. Eighty two (82%) of the traumatized children seen in the National Child Traumatic Stress Network do not meet the criteria for PTSD. Because often they are shut down, suspicious, or aggressive they now receive...

It’s midmorning on a Friday in Manukau’s Youth Court, and Judge Philip Recordon is sitting behind the bench, speaking to Thomas, a young teenage boy (his name has been changed to protect his privacy). The others in the room, including police prosecutor Sgt. Richard Spendelow, a lawyer, and representatives from Child, Youth and Family (CYF), are discussing Thomas’ case while he stands quietly. Recordon tells Thomas he can sit down, then sets his curfew: He isn’t allowed out between the hours...

There are many quotations about the importance of the human experience of childhood. The best known is: “Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man.” This is attributed to either St Ignatius of Loyola or St Francis Xavier, the co-founders of the Jesuit order, but also to Aristotle who seems to have said everything before everybody else. Another noted founder, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, is supposed to have said: “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown...

A young man walks onto an empty stage. The spotlight glares off of his white moccasins and crisp long-sleeved button-down, which billows, untucked, over dark slacks. He cuts a slight figure against the venue’s deep, black backdrop, and his clean-shaven face, framed by two long black braids, makes him look younger than his 27 years. He speaks softly into the microphone, first in his native Lakota, then in English: “Hello, relatives. My Lakota name is Walks With Young People. I also go by...

Read the new #SharedLearnings post by Anndee Hochman on the MARC website: http://marc.healthfederation.org/shared-learnings/business-leaders-ace-and-resilience-movement-different-kind-bottom-line Help spread the word! Here's a link to the email announcement: http://conta.cc/2fZWS4g The owner of the biggest construction firm in Walla Walla, Washington , sat through a February 2013 seminar that framed adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in ways a business person could understand: how...

Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs, now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head behind Christopher Robin. It is as far as he knows the only way of coming downstairs, but somewhere he feels there is another way, if only he could stop for a moment and think of it.'-- A A Milne School reform reminds me of the above quote concerning Christopher Robin and Pooh. Note: Our Children are in need of much more support that far exceeds new standards, new curriculum, new teaching techniques and...

Poor, black neighborhoods have persisted in America for decades. And despite a few public-policy efforts to make things better—which include helping families move to other neighborhoods, getting better jobs for parents, and placing children in better schools—there are some signs that poverty is becoming even more concentrated in American ghettos. Yet the government’s interventions have amounted to policy tweaks, and haven’t focused enough on the unjust system that created these areas in the...

The election and its aftermath have posed challenges for many. One particularly difficult question that has come up is this: What do we tell our children? The task of explaining to children the complex feelings and ideas around the election is significant. On one hand, there is an understandable, deep desire to shield children from the burdens and divisiveness of the world. On the other hand, one of the joys and burdens of parenting is to equip children to face that very world. How to...

It was supposed to be temporary. In December 2012, the Federal Bureau of Prisons decided to address overcrowding in men's prisons by taking women inmates out of the only federal prison for women in the Northeast, FCI Danbury , and move men in. The inmates were taken to a jail in Brooklyn but were told the move would only be for 18 months, until a new facility could be built for them in Danbury. Three years later, over one hundred women are stuck in two windowless rooms in the Metropolitan...

U.S. Education Secretary John King on Tuesday urged Tennessee and 21 other states to stop allowing corporal punishment in schools, a practice he called “harmful, ineffective, and often disproportionately applied to students of color and students with disabilities.” The nation’s education chief instead advocated the use of disciplinary measures that create a positive school climate and promote nonviolent techniques for conflict resolution. King outlined his concerns in a letter to the...