BC 6 Elementary School pilot...Self regulation....based on recent neuroscience

http://www.vancouversun.com/mobile/news/vancouver/schools+promote+student+self+discipline/7287707/story.html

Teaching children to self-regulate is key to this pilot.  This means raising the child's awareness of how they are interacting with their environment, managing their emotions and bodies and learning how to bring themselves to calmness.  My hope is this isn't viewed as a classroom management tool, but rather as empowering children for the rest of their lives.

Attending A Silent Retreat - this is on my bucket list

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janet-kinosian/the-sound-of-silent-retre_b_99685.html

I surely want to experience a silent retreat.  I wonder about gathering a few people together and putting our own on.  I would love to go to Ireland and silently listen within ancient walls, contemplating, reflecting and discovering.

Invitation to a walk in silence

Buntzen Lake BC - SFU HEAL Cohort

What a fabulous way to begin our 2nd year!!  This was a new place for me to discover, yet a replica of many spots of our beautiful West Coast.  The 15 of us trekked along together, in silence.  The hour carved out a space for me to reflect, wonder, wander and best of all, to be.  To just be in this living forest.  At the beach, we took out our notebooks and wrote whatever came to mind.  The invitation to write, "When I walk in silence I notice..." was a starting point.  

My writing begins with the patch of huckleberry bushes as tall as basketball players, the golden sunlit path and then I remember I am in the middle of the 31st season of my first son's short 42 days life.  I flow along the river of my heart, thoroughly taken with the experience of the invitation to walk in silence.  Here's a portion of my writing, toward the end of my piece:

The green water covers the resting rocks

That edge the lake

A dreamy feel, a moving scene,

A mystery unrevealed

Hidden darkness recessed

Among the shafts of bright

Hiding under the light

Like the obvious that stares at you

Hiding the unspoken, the unnoticed

A deepness camouflaged by activity

No beckoning or signs on how to enter

Rather once I slow, a passage seems to appear

As clear as evaporating mist 

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