| Last week we talked about Growth Mindset. But do you know what nourishment you need to grow a big heart and a big mind? Imagine your mind is like a plant. What do plants need to grow? You’ll find what plants need has a lot in common with the Five Powers! Learn more about Growth Mind Elements in this video from our #PowerUp program. |
Did you know that your brain is like a tree? It can grow! There is no limit. We start as a little seedling and have ever expanding capacity throughout life.
Teaching kids from a Growth Mindset perspective invites them to explore the limitless possibilities of their lives. Growth mindset helps our kids succeed with purpose, passion, grace and grit!
Inspire your kids with language and support to help them achieve, to know they can!
Learn more about Growth Mindset in this video from our #PowerUp program.
In this time when we don’t know when or how we will return to school and work, we can embrace the state of not knowing as a chance for us to think outside the box and find creative solutions for new problems. Cast aside “how you’ve always done things” and play a little — kids demand this!
“I don’t know yet” means you have an opportunity to grow. You don’t have to know where you’re going or how you are going to get there; you just have to know you are here, in the present moment, with your breath.
Hear more tips for dealing with uncertainty in the time of COVID-19 and practice a meditation in this “living room” conversation with Stephen Cowan and Daniel Atchinson-Nevel.
In honor of our Executive Director Carey Davidson’s new book The Five Archetypes (currently #2 in new releases for personal transformation and spirituality on Amazon!), we are highlighting the importance of knowing your OWN power as a parent. Carey helps us understand that by knowing and balancing our own secret powers, we can become the most super parents!
THE WATER PARENT
Feed your own Water needs as a parent so that you feel resilient in the face of day-to-day stress. Parenting is tough. When you understand and honor your own needs, you more nimbly and calmly respond to challenges.
Water Parent Exercises:
- Drinking – Water adults thrive when well hydrated. Make sure you’re drinking enough water each day. You may even want to add in some electrolytes as well.
- Sleeping – Sleep is very important to all of us, but is a core part of what keeps Water adults feeling resilient. If you find yourself getting swept up in a good book or an exciting project at night instead of going to bed, try building in a bedtime routine that helps you remember to shut down at a reasonable time.
- Listening – Build in time for quiet, calm listening and reflection. Water types need this space for themselves to keep feeling secure and relaxed. You can listen to gentle music, journal, or even take a nice slow walk outside.
A word from Board President, Tournesol Kids, Harriet Beinfield:
Living With COVID-19: Adapting to a New Reality
by Harriet Beinfield and Efrem Korngold
Our New Reality
Most of us are struggling to reconcile ourselves with a new reality. Habits and routines are upside down and inside out. Economic instability is rampant. Ordinary coping mechanisms have evaporated as we shelter in place. We’re cooped up alone, with family, or friends without the usual breaks. Feelings are raw and some are unfamiliar, like being as out of control as we are. We live as we dream, alone. Yet we’re all in this together.
Uncertainty Is Our New Master
Normalcy is interrupted. Millions of us are caught in one giant pause. We’re just coming out of the initial adrenalized overdrive and it’s dawning on us that we don’t know when or how this will end. Uncertainty is our new master.
Some have extraordinary adaptive skills and know how to make lemonade out of lemons. Many are anxious and weary, exhausted by the effort this adaptation demands. Many are facing the grit of survival. Know that this is a hard time, even for those grateful for a home with food in the fridge.
How Are You?
What’s hardest for you? Are you learning anything about yourself that might qualify as a silver lining? What worries you? Where do you find comfort?
A Pregnant Pause
Because early adoption and strict compliance show the stay at home order to be working, it makes no sense to stop anytime soon. Whatever comes next, it’s unlikely that we will return to what was.
We need a new normal. This event has laid bare how wobbly and poorly organized we are for human good.
The biosphere is faring better without our normal. What will we give birth to on the other side? It’s up for grabs and it’s up to us.
What Will Come Next?
Will we mend our relationship to air, water, forest, animals, climate? Can we fiercely tackle income inequality, racial disparities, health access?
Can we reshape our ecological, political, social and economic needs based upon our humanity and interdependence?
It requires enormous courage, creativity and will to reinvent the structures we’ve put in place that threaten us. Stakes are high. But isn’t it in the darkness that we see the stars?
In honor of our Executive Director Carey Davidson’s new book The Five Archetypes out TODAY, we are highlighting the importance of knowing your OWN power as a parent. Carey helps us understand that by knowing and balancing our own secret powers, we can become the most super parents!
THE GOLD PARENT
Feed your own Gold needs as a parent so that you feel safe and secure and more resilient in the face of day-to-day stress. Parenting is tough and when you honor your own needs, you have an easier time responding to the ups and downs you face from a place of calm.
Gold Parent Exercises:
- Eating – Gold adults like structure when it comes to food. They like to eat the proper food, in the proper amounts, and at the proper time.
- Breathing – Stay in touch with breath. Schedule time for a few nice exhales at a couple times during the day. This practice helps regulate emotions and calm the nervous system.
- Gratitude – Upon waking and going to sleep at night, think of three people for whom you are grateful. Think about what they contribute to your life and focus on them and their gifts for a few minutes.
We’re super excited for today’s launch of The Five Archetypes, a book about the five elements written by our Executive Director, Carey Davidson!
The book shares a self-guided system of personal transformation based in the five elements of traditional Chinese medicine and the Hero types we use here at Tournesol Kids. Once you discover your primary elements, you’ll begin to see how they determine your thoughts, motivations, strengths and challenges for yourself. They reveal the reasons behind why you feel uncomfortable around some people in a room and completely at ease around others.
When you understand your elemental makeup and that of the people in your life, every relationship becomes clear. This realization can lead to increased happiness, reduced anxiety, being secure in who you are, feeling confident, loving and compassionate.
Many of us are cycling through stages of emotion: What if things never return to normal? What if my children never see their grandfather again? What if the virus has screwed up our kids for a lifetime? This is the language of grief.
During this time difficult time our children can be beacons of meditation for us: we get to focus our attention on grounding them and in doing so, we ground ourselves. We must embrace the teachable moments that our children give to us.
Kids of each of the Five Powers will react to this unprecedented situation differently. We must meet them where they are and be emotionally present ourselves. Rather than asking your child, “what’s wrong?” you can ask “where are you feeling it?”
Hear more tips on building a connected household in the time of COVID-19 in this “living room” conversation with Stephen Cowan and Daniel Atchinson-Nevel.
A word from Board President, Tournesol Kids, Harriet Benefield:
How Are You Doing in the Grip of Uncertainty?
by Harriet Beinfield and Efrem Korngold, Chinese Medicine Works
Not being able to predict what will happen makes it easy to experience this as a surreal time. Being tossed by heavy surf that no one waded into by choice, it’s easy to feel out of control. One coping mechanism is understanding. There may be comfort in having a conceptual frame within which to hold unfolding events. If you prefer, jump right to the end of this article to learn about how Chinese medicine remedies fortify resistance and recovery.
Paradigms Shape Us: We Make Our World
Reflecting upon our worldview, values and beliefs is a way to understand the deeper source of the dramatic disruption we’re experiencing. The pandemic is itself a symptom of pre-existing problems in our social and natural world.
We who believe that we are interconnected and interdependent, existing within a macrocosm that has intrinsic balance and counterbalance borne from diversity know that the whole suffers when any part of it does. Yet our economic, social, political structures reflect the opposite. We value private rights over public welfare. Our institutions are organized to protect individuals (including corporations that enjoy legal status as persons). Property and the amassing of capital is paramount, superseding human and ecological welfare, not recognizing that they are the same. Humans have fouled our global nest rather than protected it. What kind of sense does that make? Perhaps this mess is one of the many consequences.
How Chinese Medicine Frames the COVID-19 Viral Disease
In China, herbal formulas have become an integral part of the care of infected patients. During the incubation stage and the early symptomatic stage, herbal medicine alone has successfully treated and resolved the disease in many cases. Chinese medicine understands this illness as a Wind/Heat/Damp/Fire toxin epidemic disease. Let’s break this down.
Wind refers to any pathogenic agent that penetrates and overcomes the body’s external defenses. The symptoms and signs of Wind-induced illness include headache, mild fever, easily chilled, shivering, aversion to drafts, sore & scratchy throat, body ache and sometimes dryness or thirst.
Heat refers to the mobilization of Yang Qi (metabolic energy) to temporarily raise the body’s temperature to cope with the pathogen. Generating heat activates the Wei Qi, the body’s capacity to expel pathogens. This happens when we mount an inflammatory response to any infection or toxin. It’s the normal, healthy way we cope with a pathogenic invasion. Fever is produced by increased metabolic activity. An elevated core temperature creates a hostile environment for the virus, bacterium or toxin. Evidence from China and France shows that suppressing inflammation with steroids or NSAIDS worsens the condition and undermines recovery.
Damp refers to the body’s mobilization of fluids and blood to increase delivery of nutrients and anti-pathogenic agents to the organs and tissues in which the infection has taken up residence. Dampness is characterized by the manifestation of edema, swelling, and accumulation of excessive phlegm and fluid in the lungs associated with pneumonia.
Fire Toxin refers to the infectious agent, COVID-19, that acts like a poison and causes an accumulation of Phlegm, Stagnant Blood and trapped Heat. This toxic accumulation is the result of accelerated metabolism and immune cell activity that the body must detoxify and eliminate.
At the same time as the body uses its energy to cope with the disease, it must maintain its strength and equilibrium in order to survive and recover. When faced with acute and extreme stress, the body draws on energy reserves in the muscles and fat, a process activated by the adrenal glands. In Chinese medicine, this is called Kidney Qi. The Kidneys are said to consolidate and store surplus Qi that we can draw upon in times of need when the daily energy generated by digestion and respiration is insufficient.
Treatment principles are to Clear Heat, Dispel Toxins, Drain Dampness, Expel Phlegm, Replenish healthy Qi and Moisture (body fluids) by supporting Kidneys (stored Qi), Spleen and Stomach (Qi from digestion) and Lungs (Qi from air). This strategy helps people sustain themselves and optimally recover once the disease is resolved.
In honor of our Executive Director Carey Davidson’s new book The Five Archetypes coming April 7th, we are highlighting the importance of knowing your OWN power as a parent. Parenting is tough and when you honor your own needs, you have an easier time responding to life’s ups and downs.
THE EARTH PARENT
Feed your own Earth needs as a parent so that you feel safe and secure and more resilient in the face of day-to-day stress. Parenting is tough and when you honor your own needs, you have an easier time responding to the ups and downs you face from a place of calm.
Earth Parent Exercises:
• Eat – Make sure you find time to eat meals during the day and don’t skip meals.
• Connect – Stay in touch with your networks for support. This could be parenting groups, religious or spiritual groups, or even get togethers with your friend.
• Care – Find small ways you can give back. Offer an uplifting poem to your Facebook group, teach an online class to friends or co-workers, or consider donating to a local food pantry.
Pre-order The Five Archetypes
We’re super excited for the April 7th launch of The Five Archetypes, a book about the five elements written by our Executive Director, Carey Davidson!
The book shares a self-guided system of personal transformation based in the five elements of traditional Chinese medicine and the Hero types we use here at Tournesol Kids. Once you discover your primary elements, you’ll begin to see how they determine your thoughts, motivations, strengths and challenges for yourself. They reveal the reasons behind why you feel uncomfortable around some people in a room and completely at ease around others.
When you understand your elemental makeup and that of the people in your life, every relationship becomes clear. This realization can lead to increased happiness, reduced anxiety, being secure in who you are, feeling confident, loving and compassionate.
In this time of rapid change and radical uncertainty, we are all students. This kind of crisis is all new to children and it’s up to adults to model spirit and heart connection to help them be resilient.
This historic time is an opportunity for parents to be creative and build a new intimacy with their children by being adaptive in play time.
Unsure of what to do with your kids today? Watch this “Living Room” conversation with Stephen Cowan and Daniel Atchison-Nevel for ideas about staying grounded in the time of COVID-19 and for teaching your children through play.