A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
Shutterstock With the discovery of Emotional Intelligence (EI), we now know that your professional success is as much predicated upon your emotional intelligence (and some would even argue more so) than your IQ. Your emotional intelligence is at the core of many, if not all critical "soft skills" that influence most of your [...]
gettyimages Many people react to life’s challenging experiences with strong emotions and a sense of uncertainty. Yet people generally adapt well over time to changing situations and stressful conditions. Resilience is the process of learning to ‘bounce back’ from adversity, trauma, tragedy and other significant sources of stress. Resilience is not a trait [...]
Ever been unable to sleep because you can’t switch off that stream of thoughts that seems to flow incessantly, mercilessly through your head? When your mental noise distracts you from the task at hand, makes you forget why you walked into a room, or keeps you awake at night, you’re a victim of what is [...]
The Mental Stillness program is a simple strategy that is aimed at providing students with a secular, meditation-based skill to enhance resilience and wellbeing. The technique has undergone extensive scientific evaluation in Australia as part of the Meditation Research Programme (previously at the UNSW but now at Sydney University). We have now begun exploring formats [...]
Mindfulness essentially involves the passive observation of internal and external stimuli without mental reaction. Ever been unable to sleep because you can’t switch off that stream of thoughts that seems to flow incessantly, mercilessly through your head? When your mental noise distracts you from the task at hand, makes you forget why you walked into [...]
Girl Mag Watch Opening Up About Self-Harm: Dolly August 2013 Melinda Tankard Reist As is often the case, I find the most helpful offering for girls in teen girl magazines can be found in the shared experiences of the girls themselves. A passion of mine is opening up safe spaces for girls to talk about [...]
Dolly tackles binge drinking, abusive relationships and cyber attacks Melinda Tankard Reist Sometimes I wonder if one girl’s mag gets wind of what another is up to and copies it. In this case it’s a good thing, with Dolly also running a feature on binge drinking. I commended Girlfriend for a strong piece on “liquid [...]
By now you’ve seen the pretty pictures: Color-drenched brain scans capturing Buddhist monks meditating, addicts craving cocaine, and college sophomores choosing Coke over Pepsi. The media—and even some neuroscientists, it seems—love to invoke the neural foundations of human behavior to explain everything from the Bernie Madoff financial fiasco to slavish devotion to our iPhones, the [...]
Science is starting to recognise the connection between the ancient and authentic meditation experience and optimal performance states, both at work and play. What the martial artist refers to as "muslin" and elite sportspeople call "the zone" can also be found in the essence of meditation practice. It is primarily useful in stilling the mind. [...]
The emerging youth mental health crisis makes it clear to mental health professionals, educators and researchers that for some reason our young people are having ever-greater difficulty controlling their mental and emotional content, their inner world. The situation reminds me of the iconic book by Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are.4 This book was published in 1963 and [...]
