Love is a Feeling

I began working with elementary age students less than two years ago. I recall sitting at the 'back to school' meeting for teachers and feeling really out of place - as if I had made a selfish decision (for personal reasons) and the kids would suffer from my lack of experience.

The learning curve is still fairly high, however the love fest with the kids is intoxicating. I learn more from the children, the teachers, and the school communities than they do from me - but my own conceptual vision for meaningful change through social and emotional 'embodiment' continues to grow.

The idea of 'embodiment' is to experience transformation on the inside. For example, students can tell you about kindness which would be considered an intellectual exchange (or transaction). To embody kindness is to 'feel' kindness (a transformational experience). When we are busy, we subject ourselves to a misguided notion that meaning and validation come from our external experience; as opposed to meaning and validation being a felt experience found deep within us.

So how do you teach this? Well...you experience it. For simplicity sake, let's talk about the 'feeling' experience of love. Imagine love as a state of being. The opposing state of being, in this case, would be fear. Love guides the body's relaxation response (I'm safe). Fear guides the body's stress response (I'm not safe). If you are familiar with Carol Dweck's book 'Mindset', love would be the growth mindset and fear would be the fixed mindset. Love sets us up for reflection and fear sets us up for reaction.

To facilitate a learning experience for students, let's build off the previous blog: Move. Breathe. Love. http://msseiffer.blogspot.com/2015/01/move-breathe-love.html

Now with the students...

What does love feel like in your body? (what does it feel like in your skin? what does it feel like in your muscles? belly? heart? mind?). Incidentally - there is no wrong answer.

Does anyone know what the body is made up of? (cells)
Imagine this Hoberman Sphere is a cell.
When you feel 'love', does it feel like your cells are growing and expanding? or does it feel like your cells are shrinking and getting smaller?
Do your cells feel light and spacious? Or do your cells feel heavy and tight?
Do your cells feel like they are stuck and energy is having a hard time flowing in and between your cells? Or does it feel like there is a lot of space within and around the cells and energy is flowing? Do your cells feel like they are working in harmony?

When we feel good (ask for examples of good feelings) our cells seem to:

• grow and expand
• feel light and spacious
• flow in harmony

Let's move by pretending:

• You are a cell! What do you look like when you are growing!? Expanding?! (then do the opposite - shrinking...)
• You are a cell! What does it look like to feel light and spacious?! (opposite - heavy...)
• You are a cell! What does it look like to flow?! (opposite - stuck...)

If you work in schools and with children, have you noticed that ADHD 'symptoms' almost seem to be a blanket fit for any behavior that is challenging? These challenging 'behaviors' would most likely be associated with the definition of fear based reacting discussed in a previous paragraph.

We can work on embodiment and personal power by learning to be an observer of the inner experience as opposed to identifying with the inner experience (this difference can be demonstrated by noticing the difference between these two statements: 'I am bad.' compared to 'I feel bad.').

Consider 'feeling' the challenging behaviors by facilitating the inner experience of what 'busy' feels like (consider this 'busy' to be challenging behaviors such as 'easily distracted' and 'impulsive'). The 'busy' feeling would be likened to the 'feeling' state of fear discussed and practiced above.

Likewise, let's use the 'feeling' of love (expanding, light, and flowing) to demonstrate the feeling behind any helpful feeling - like 'calm'. And the 'feeling' of fear (shrinking, heavy, and stuck) to any unhelpful feelings - like 'busy'.

Hopefully this isn't an oversimplification, but here's a potential example of application:
If a child makes the connection that their heart beat is slow and steady when they feel calm, they could potentially use this bodily awareness to tap into their relaxation response by intentionally focusing on slowing their heart rate to create the desired feeling of calm. (Hint: Motivation and desire to feel calm is another skill that may be great to discuss in a 1:1 setting with children who display a greater need for this intervention; whereas the bigger ideas can be practiced in a whole class setting).

The expansive, light, flowing inner experience allows for creativity and problem solving (among many other things). Additional blogs will discuss this inner 'I Am.' space to be where creativity, inspiration, and possibility live. As well as, a seven step 'Check In' to tap into the I Am. space. I also continue to work with teenagers and the skills can be adapted to all levels. Self care is crucial when facilitating this inner experience. We all respond to our environment. Which is another way to say that our 'moods' are a reflection of the way we feel. When we slow ourselves down to recognize the power we possess over our feeling state, we can live from and within the state of love: the I Am. space where creativity, possibility, and inspiration are always available.

Move. Breathe. Love.

I have this personal habit. I tend to feel overwhelmed and my mind goes blank when I consider creating activities for the upcoming school week. What helps me begin is to go back to a simple formula and then build from there. I would like to share one of those formulas with you: Move. Breathe. Love.

I'll share a little background that may also be helpful:

A broad tactic I use to 'keep things simple' is to focus on three main skills: self awareness, emotional regulation, and social awareness. I create all my lessons and intervention around these three skills. Building from and within those three skills, I return to one more guiding insight: I desire to teach Kindness, Compassion, and Belonging to dissolve bullies, violence, and suicide. Notice what happens in your body when you consider teaching Kindness as Bully Prevention, Compassion as Violence Prevention, and Belonging as Suicide Prevention. Teaching Kindness, Compassion, and Belonging is more inspiring, meaningful, and (most importantly for our own well being) sustainable.

Move.
I have done a number of different things for movement. From dance moves (to fun music) that intentionally cross the body's midline, to Brain Gym http://www.braingym.org/ exercises (again crossing the midline - much more practical for test taking or independent exercises that don't draw attention). For simplicity sake, are you familiar with GoNoodle https://www.gonoodle.com/? My favorite duo is Koo Koo Kanga Roo. KKKR make me laugh out loud which relaxes me and helps me be my best self with the students. Are you a yogi? Bring it to the classroom! I am a wannabe yogi - and I find such great moves and ideas on YouTube. I also use resources like Yoga Calm http://www.yogacalm.org/and Little Flower Yoga http://littlefloweryoga.com/.

Breathe.
I desire to facilitate an 'inner' experience for and with the students. We pay a lot of attention to what is going on inside the body. We talk about BIG feelings and how these BIG feelings want to stick around and they tend to get 'stuck' inside. We can teach movement as a way to get the energy of the BIG feeling unstuck. Once that energy is unstuck, we can use our breath to channel the energy back to where it belongs. Have you ever used a Hoberman sphere? The students love this little toy. It serves as a great visual for belly breathing. We can create our own Hoberman sphere by putting our finger tips together and expanding the hands as we breath in and out. I'll show you this on the video. Mindfulness has become quite popular, and for good reason! Your school district may offer a Mindfulness course if it is something you would be interested in learning more about - and mindfulness strategies could be incorporated into this 'Breathe' segment.

Love.
So now we have moved and hopefully the energy is flowing a bit more. We used intention with our breath to bring the energy in our body back into balance. Now we are going to take our hands that are still touching from the breathing activity, and lower the thumbs as we turn in our fingernails toward one another to make a heart. We put this heart over our heart space to help us channel our breath in a way that we are breathing directly into this space. You may be interested in HeartMath http://www.heartmath.com/ which specializes in the intelligence of the heart. I have learned that the energy of the heart space radiates 12 feet in each direction - and within three feet our heart beat can be measured with 100% accuracy. I understand the energy around the heart is up to 1000x more than the brain.
As we intentionally bring our breath into our heart space, we can share with the students that 'any feeling in your body that is not helping you now can be breathed into this space...imagine that the heart expands as you breathe in the feelings that aren't serving you...and trust that the heart can handle it.'
Building off of this, now suggest that the students think or imagine something that is really easy to love. Ask them to allow this feeling of love to fill their body: their skin, muscles, belly, heart, and mind. If they were able to create a good feeling, guide them now to share that feeling. You can do this simply by guiding their breath: 'As you breathe in allow your body to be filled with the feeling of love, and as you breath out give that feeling to the world.'  You can play with this and share that love with a special person, or a person in the classroom that you choose, or if you are in a small group and it feels safe, you can go through each person in the group and send love to each person individually.