Free Mini-Series
The Science & Soul of Building Resilience
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A 4 part video series integrates science-backed strategies from psychology and complementary and alternative medicine that cultivate key pillars of resilience including:
Body awareness to help us center ourselves and live in a present-focused & embodied way even in the midst of stress
Decreasing our stress response so we can access intuition & connect to our needs
Values clarification to guide decisions about prioritizing our time, attention, & energy
Self-compassion to soften our harsh inner critics & facilitate growth following mistakes
The Science & Soul
of Building Resilience
These tools are intended to:
be customizable and integrated into a busy lifestyle
help you feel more confident in your ability to cope with and recover from life stress
target common challenges like anxiety, self-doubt, self-judgment, and confusion about direction, meaning, or purpose
In this first video, we focus on body awareness, which helps us tune into important messages from the body and enhance our ability to perceive and process internal sensations. Research shows that enhancing body awareness can inform decision-making, foster intuition, and facilitate emotional processing. In addition to discussing the importance of body awareness (e.g., both embodiment and interoceptive awareness) from the perspective of science and ancient wisdom, in this video I share two different practices: 1) a chair-based yoga and movement sequence and 2) a body-oriented mindfulness practice meant to deepen different facets of body awareness.
video 1
🔸Understand our needs more clearly ~ physically, emotionally, relationally, sexually, spiritually
🔸Stay in the present without autopilot or disconnecting from ourselves & our inner desires, goals, & values
🔸 Establish an embodied foundation in order to make decisions, access intuition, & clarify what matters most
🔸 Identify when we are in a state of stress or overwhelm so that we can intervene accordingly
In a nutshell, so many skills involved in building resilience depend on being able to be aware of and listen to our body and its cues.
When we disconnect from our bodies, we disconnect from ourselves.
video 1 - summary
With increased body awareness we can:
video 2
In Video 2, we focus on the second key pillar of resilience, which is downregulating our nervous system and shifting out of “fight/flight/freeze” mode when we’re stressed, through the vehicles of the breath and body-centering. Research shows that in addition to bringing us to a calmer state, slowed breathing practices improve mood & coping and have a variety of mental and physical health benefits. Moreover, research also shows that being able to access intuition and a sense of higher knowing, can help us manage self-limiting beliefs and self-doubt, which can lead to enhanced relationships, self-esteem, and willingness to take risks.
🔸A specific breath practice known to put the brakes on the body’s stress response;
🔸Body-based way of connecting to intuition that can allow us to ground and find our center in times of stress (that integrates core skills from Videos 1 & 2: embodiment, interoceptive awareness, and breathwork.)
video 2 - summary
I also introduce two important practices:
video 3
In Video 3, we focus on the third key pillar of resilience ~ values identification and clarification ~ which can be an antidote to struggling with a sense of meaning and purpose. It can also help us decide how to prioritize our time and where to focus our energy when we are feeling lost, overwhelmed, and confused.
In this video, I guide you through a mindfulness practice that sets the stage for a
1) written reflection
2) self- assessment
in order to help you distill your passions and interests into core values AND evaluate alignment in your current life (e.g., the ways in which you are and are not living in accordance with your truest and innermost needs and desires.)
Having a values roadmap is so crucial to the practice of living in alignment. Research shows that having a clear sense of our core values can help us engage in behaviours that are consistent with those values, enhance well-being, reduce burnout, and reduce stress hormones in our bodies. Incredible, huh?
Values clarification is not possible when we are disembodied or in a high state of stress.
In order to be able to differentiate between values that are truly ours and values that we are holding onto because we’ve been taught to believe they are important, we also need to be able to center ourselves and access our inner wisdom.
video 3 - a summary
Why does this matter?
video 4
In Video 4, we focus on the fourth key pillar of resilience ~ self-compassion ~ which can help us respond to our inner critic in a way that facilitates growth and change, rather than keeps us stuck in toxic cycles of guilt, shame and self-blame. We’re covering this topic last because meeting self-criticism with self-compassion is a multidimensional process ~ we demonstrate compassion for ourselves through nurturing our bodies, managing stress, & living in alignment with our values…it’s not just about changing our thoughts or how we talk to ourselves. So the self-compassion skills in this 4th video build on what we’ve talked about in the prior three.
Research shows that enhancing self-compassion has a variety of benefits including increased:
🔸 Perseverance in difficult times
🔸 Empathy and care for others
🔸 Accountability, which helps us repair & commit to changes & values-consistent behavior going forward
🔸 Persistence after mistakes and failures
🔸 Ability to acknowledge the complex reality of what is
video 4 - a summary
why does this matter?
