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Empowering Mindful Connections: Transformative Movement and Emotional Resilience for Kids with Rob Owen · The Spiritual Parent: Mindful Tools for Raising Spiritual and Conscious Kids

0:00
Rob Owen: when the mind and body connect through movement.
0:02
Rob Owen: There you are, all the.
0:04
Rob Owen: There's no need for resilience, you simply are right.
0:08
Rob Owen: It's when you're not in that and you're you the other dynamics happen.
0:13
Rob Owen: You get caught up in the analytical mind or caught up in the evaluative mind and all those things, and that's cool and that's needed for everyday lives.
0:19
Rob Owen: But to not have going back to our practice, to not have a practice mindfulness our practice to not have a practice mindfulness-based practice or mindful movement-based practice that develops a sense of mindfulness, and to help us learn to create that space, it could be quite difficult.
0:36
Carrie Lingenfelter: Hi Conscious Parents.
0:37
Carrie Lingenfelter: It's Keri here and I am here with a little info about raising our mindful kids.
0:41
Carrie Lingenfelter: I've got some tips and tricks about breaking free of the box and becoming who you are and teaching your kids how to do that along the way.
0:49
Carrie Lingenfelter: Join us Hi there and welcome back.
0:53
Carrie Lingenfelter: I'm Keri, your friendly mom, intuitive, here, and I have a real treat for you today.
0:59
Carrie Lingenfelter: I have a guest who has worked in the educational realm with teaching and administration side, mr Rob Owens here today, or Mr Rob Owen here today, and he has that 20 years of experience.
1:14
Carrie Lingenfelter: One thing that I loved and I love to connect with him today on is how he has brought in pieces of Tai Chi and other tools to help reduce stress, to help build that mind-body connection, and I was just telling Rob that I love to focus on these pieces with our kids today and our listeners love these pieces.
1:36
Carrie Lingenfelter: It's really shown so much growth in my kids and I'm hearing about it helping so many other kids, especially kids who are born spirited, gifted and highly sensitive.
1:46
Carrie Lingenfelter: So thanks so much, rob, for being here today.
1:49
Rob Owen: Yeah, thanks for having me.
1:50
Rob Owen: I appreciate it.
1:51
Carrie Lingenfelter: Yeah, so I read that you had incorporated pieces of Tai Chi, and I was wondering if you incorporated pieces into your classroom with it as well.
2:00
Rob Owen: I do.
2:01
Rob Owen: Yes, I've been doing Tai Chi for many years now 20 plus years and I brought it into the classroom many years ago, before mindfulness was a popular thing.
2:09
Rob Owen: It was the early 2000s and it was like what's going on in here?
2:13
Rob Owen: And it was more of a sitting meditation that I was taught and then over the years I was a practicing martial artist Chinese martial arts, mostly Shaolin and Tai Chi and Qigong and yeah.
2:23
Rob Owen: So over the years I just started to bring it into the classroom just to get the kids focused.
2:27
Rob Owen: I'd bring it in the morning right when they get there they line up and you make your eye contact, you give them knuckles, they go and sit down and then I say, okay, time to stand up, and I would just introduce a single movement and just to relax them and ground them for the day.
2:41
Rob Owen: And I started doing that after lunch as well, because the kids are a lot of times dysregulated after lunch as well.
2:49
Rob Owen: They have that outside energy into the Qigong in particular.
2:50
Rob Owen: We'll bring that outside energy more into the internal world.
2:53
Carrie Lingenfelter: I love that so much.
2:54
Carrie Lingenfelter: Do you have any idea of what we could do with our kids at home if we don't know?
2:59
Carrie Lingenfelter: Full on Tai Chi I do a weekly Qigong practice with a group locally.
3:05
Carrie Lingenfelter: For myself, as a mom, I've tried to teach my kids teacups as one.
3:10
Carrie Lingenfelter: I don't know if you've ever done teacups, but I've tried to teach my kids that one at home.
3:13
Carrie Lingenfelter: My son loves it.
3:14
Rob Owen: Do you have?
3:15
Carrie Lingenfelter: any ideas of anything we could do with our kids in these areas?
3:21
Rob Owen: A lot.
3:21
Rob Owen: I would say it depends on the age.
3:23
Rob Owen: It depends on the style of neurodiversity you're working with.
3:28
Rob Owen: Is it a neurotypical child, is it?
3:30
Rob Owen: There's so many elements involved.
3:31
Rob Owen: Excuse me, but maybe I could just throw out a scenario.
3:34
Rob Owen: So let's say we have a dysregulated child, that let's see what could happen.
3:39
Rob Owen: Maybe they're playing their video games and it's time to get off the video games right, and some children have difficulty with transitioning, whether it be out of a classroom into a classroom, off video games, something that's really engaging and then all of a sudden, okay, it's time to do something that they don't want to do, it's time to clean your room, or something like that.
3:58
Rob Owen: I always start with we could go into the ADHD kind of realms or the realms that kids that show that that kind of body-based energy is.
4:08
Rob Owen: I usually start with a timer and then I just remind them hey guys, we're going to about five minutes and then about three minutes and then slowly and then they can see something.
4:18
Rob Owen: So that's really helpful for some kids that that could add an anxious factor.
4:22
Rob Owen: So it depends Some kids.
4:24
Rob Owen: It's like cool, solid concrete.
4:26
Rob Owen: I know when this is going to stop, I know when I have to turn this game off and some kids it can cause a sense of anxiousness.
4:32
Rob Owen: So it depends on the child.
4:33
Rob Owen: And then once you do that, usually the brain's still in the beehive, it's still in there, and so what I always do is I have the child stand up and turn away from that screen and it could be outside, ideally if you live in an area where you can go outside.
4:52
Rob Owen: Obviously next to a big redwood is ideal because of the rootedness and the energy of the tree.
4:56
Rob Owen: But if you don't have that, then you would just simply go somewhere in your room that you're not pointed anywhere near, so out of sight, out of mind kind of idea, and then you just have them do a simple grounding practice.
5:11
Rob Owen: It wouldn't necessarily be called Tai Chi, we could talk about the differences of Tai Chi and Qigong, but I would start with a grounding practice in Qigong and it could just be a gathering, could be a gathering thing.
5:19
Rob Owen: So the feet are shoulder width apart, the breaths in the belly, the coccyx is slightly tucked, our shoulder with a part, the breaths in the belly, the coccyx is slightly tucked, shoulders relaxed and just maybe just three.
5:29
Rob Owen: I don't know just three of these, just simple.
5:31
Rob Owen: So just a basic inhale and an exhale and as you do that the whole body breathes, so the whole body moves.
5:39
Rob Owen: So when you inhale, all of your energy is moving upward and then your energy is moving downward and you take a moment, like that space between when you're at the beach and the waves go, and there's that little space there.
5:48
Rob Owen: It's the same in breath and movement.
5:50
Rob Owen: You want that space to be there at the bottom for a moment and the knees slightly bent, the intent goes to the bottom of the feet, grounding.
5:57
Rob Owen: You just do three to five of those in general, that'll at least it'll start to switch, it'll switch something in them.
6:05
Rob Owen: If you do up to eight, I think eight is when they start to to get even the mind body really kicks in and the grotton is really kicks in.
6:13
Rob Owen: But if you could just get three and it'll be enough to like okay and depending on who, it is taken by their hand and start grabbing all their dirty socks in their room.
6:22
Carrie Lingenfelter: I love that and for those that are listening online, as you could see it in the video.
6:26
Carrie Lingenfelter: I loved it, you, you, rob, was bringing his hands in a circular motion toward the ground and then up around toward the sky.
6:34
Carrie Lingenfelter: They were going outward up around toward the sky and then back down toward the ground in front of you.
6:39
Carrie Lingenfelter: I love that, and also turning your body away from the thing that you are focused on.
6:46
Carrie Lingenfelter: Love it.
6:48
Rob Owen: Yeah, it's like you, out of sight, out of mind, but I, there's a connection when, like how we are now, it's heart to heart.
6:55
Rob Owen: I had to sorry it's heart to heart right.
6:57
Rob Owen: So if you're, if your intent is here, the mind, the heart, all the chakras are aligned towards you.
7:02
Rob Owen: When you move the whole body away from something else, fundamentally it just switches the experience and then you move into the mind-body connection.
7:10
Rob Owen: But you have to get out of that space.
7:12
Rob Owen: There's lots of ideas about you, are your environment, you are what you are surrounded by.
7:18
Rob Owen: So if you can even leave that room, if you can during a transition and then do it, that's even more helpful.
7:24
Carrie Lingenfelter: Even leave that room if you can during a transition and then do it.
7:27
Carrie Lingenfelter: That's even more helpful.
7:31
Rob Owen: I love it and, yeah, it can be computer games, video games for my son.
7:33
Rob Owen: Right now it's trains.
7:38
Carrie Lingenfelter: Wonderful.
7:38
Carrie Lingenfelter: That's model trains are wonderful, yeah, yeah.
7:40
Carrie Lingenfelter: So I love that idea and I'm going to work with teaching him and also my daughter when we're in that focus state after we've done our countdowns.
7:45
Carrie Lingenfelter: And, like you said, some people, my daughter she likes a visual countdown, so we have a silent clock.
7:51
Carrie Lingenfelter: It doesn't buzz or anything, it's just that visual and you can see the amount of time decrease, Whereas my son if I did that with him, he would just implode.
8:00
Rob Owen: Yeah, yeah, and I think that there's also on our side is really important to honor and recognize that.
8:07
Rob Owen: They're in a flow state, right.
8:09
Rob Owen: So with that, it's really important to to recognize that and to honor that and to give that.
8:16
Rob Owen: Maybe it's just you just walk up and just give it five minutes, you don't even say anything.
8:20
Rob Owen: So, especially with trains, like my boy likes the cars.
8:25
Rob Owen: He just got a new, it's like large I don't know what the term is, it's a model car but he loves just looking at them and taking pictures of them and Mike, that kind of stuff, and I think it's really important to just honor that.
8:37
Rob Owen: He's there in the moment, engaged in something that he really loves and that's so key to build those, those neurosynapses.
8:43
Rob Owen: That's so key.
8:44
Rob Owen: And that's so key to build those neurosynapses.
8:45
Rob Owen: That's so key because that's actually they're touching on those grounded natural states in their own sense of being, and that's so key for them to develop that at a younger age until, instead of doing it when you're 20 or 30, you're already creating these connections.
9:00
Carrie Lingenfelter: Yep, and I think for some kids that are able to get into that amazing focus and that flow state, it can be so intense to break away quickly from it.
9:11
Carrie Lingenfelter: And I think parents experience it too when we're on the phone and we're trying to set it done.
9:16
Carrie Lingenfelter: So I try to think of that because it can be hard to tell people they're in their flow state, but if we can help people to understand, this is what your flow state feels like this is when you're in it and this is what it feels like to be pulled out of it so quickly.
9:36
Carrie Lingenfelter: then we can understand why our kids may show frustration or have a hard time coming out of it.
9:40
Carrie Lingenfelter: So I love that.
9:41
Carrie Lingenfelter: Yeah, I was going to mention so.
9:44
Carrie Lingenfelter: I just sent my kids off to school a little while ago and my kids are both empaths and so one thing that we do before we leave for school.
9:52
Carrie Lingenfelter: I tell them to.
9:54
Carrie Lingenfelter: This is an exercise that I started as a teacher, when I would go into the classroom, or as a speech therapist is.
10:00
Carrie Lingenfelter: I would do a white light.
10:02
Carrie Lingenfelter: I picture a white light spiraling around me and then I picture a gold light starting at the top of my head and spiraling around me and I always say no negative energy allowed, only positive energy.
10:11
Carrie Lingenfelter: So I tell my kids white and gold light and I have them do it and I can hear them say it to themselves and it's great, it's a great little, yeah.
10:19
Carrie Lingenfelter: So as they're getting into the car, dad takes them to school.
10:21
Carrie Lingenfelter: As they're getting in the car, I say white and gold light and I just try to remember it every morning.
10:26
Carrie Lingenfelter: Do you have any idea of something that we could do, like a cleansing or anything?
10:30
Carrie Lingenfelter: At the end of the day, when our kids come home, our empathic kids, or even just kids that are holding it together all day to be the best behavior all day?
10:40
Rob Owen: Yeah, there's a lot of elements to that, because when you're working with an empath or an empathic child or human being, as I'm sure you all know, to recognize what's yours and what's not yours is so key to try to what is that recognizes what is not me right, or what is me, what's being given to me, and then where is that boundary right?
11:04
Rob Owen: And so to recognize that.
11:05
Rob Owen: I love how you did the white light, gold light, because it's like the child is able to know before they walk into school that there they are, they're walking down the field, the soccer field, to get to their classroom.
11:15
Rob Owen: There's no distractions, there's no other energies around, it's their feet on the ground and then when they get to the classroom, all these energies come in.
11:25
Rob Owen: It's what do I do with all that?
11:26
Rob Owen: Because it's not just the words that others are saying, it's actually physical space, it's actual emotional energy coming at them.
11:34
Rob Owen: And how do they negotiate that can make a child like super tired throughout the day.
11:38
Rob Owen: Like my boy comes home and he's so tired and it's the classic.
11:42
Rob Owen: How was school son Good?
11:43
Rob Owen: And it's just because he's so tired.
11:46
Rob Owen: And it's the classic.
11:47
Rob Owen: How was school son Good?
11:47
Rob Owen: And it's just because he's so tired Like it's such a big thing.
11:50
Rob Owen: It's not.
11:52
Rob Owen: Oh, we learned this in math and we learned this in science.
11:53
Rob Owen: It's the social element and the energetic exchanges that us humans have throughout the day are, so they can cause such complexities in our emotional selves and definitely in our psychological selves, and then it gets caught up in their bodies.
12:06
Rob Owen: And so to have a practice of, I would say we do this thing in Qigong, it's called dispersing energy, and there's different ways to do it.
12:14
Rob Owen: Sometimes it's like body tapping, so we call it knocking on the gate, so sometimes we'll do that.
12:20
Rob Owen: Sometimes there's like simple stomps at the end of a Badwa Jin.
12:25
Rob Owen: I don't know if you do Badwa Jin, which is a.
12:28
Rob Owen: I don't know what's up with my voice, sorry, badwa Jin is.
12:31
Rob Owen: Are you familiar with that?
12:32
Rob Owen: It's a Qigong set.
12:33
Rob Owen: It's an older Qigong set.
12:34
Rob Owen: Anyway, it's just a set of eight movements.
12:36
Rob Owen: And at the end there's a, there is a energy dispersal, and it's basically you just lift your hands and you lift your heels at the same time and then you stomped.
12:47
Rob Owen: And then you think I was taught by my Sifu you think of black smoke going out of your heels into the ground.
12:53
Rob Owen: So you like inhale once and you boom and you knock your whole body, not so much that your occipital bones shake too much, because that can happen, depending on how sensitive your body is, but you can do that three times.
13:06
Rob Owen: There's also just wrapping that you can do, just like swinging your arms back and forth and gently slapping at the tops of your kidneys and in your heart area, where you do a few of those.
13:16
Rob Owen: And that's for the more sensitive ones.
13:18
Rob Owen: I have two boys, and right now my older one's going to turn 18 really soon, and he's done martial arts most of his life, but now he's into boxing.
13:26
Rob Owen: So for him, he doesn't want to do something so subtle such as Qigong or Tai Chi.
13:30
Rob Owen: He's an 18 year old, so he just he exerts physically on the bag, which is great.
13:37
Rob Owen: That is very grounding as well, because you're exerting all the stuff and he's yeah, he has a huge internal world and he's yet to learn how to navigate it there, but he's starting to and it's such a beautiful thing.
13:50
Rob Owen: But there's the social facade, there's, there's that hard edge logic that can get in the way of the intuition and the empathic kind of energies.
13:59
Rob Owen: So for him, if he just throws a bunch of blows for a minute straight, it'll release all that energy outward and then his body will relax Not necessarily anger, just releasing energy.
14:12
Rob Owen: I think others can maybe run.
14:15
Rob Owen: So sometimes they need to exert it outward to be grounded after they come home from a day.
14:20
Rob Owen: Sometimes they need to be a little bit more subtle in the movement.
14:25
Carrie Lingenfelter: Yeah, I love that I actually use the movement a little bit for myself before.
14:31
Carrie Lingenfelter: If I have nerves about a podcast interview or something that I'm doing public speaking sometimes, I will instead of being Zen and meditating and grounding myself.
14:43
Carrie Lingenfelter: I get out there and I dance, and you move that energy out, because sitting and meditating it doesn't help me.
14:50
Carrie Lingenfelter: In that moment, with those nerves, I have to get it out.
14:53
Rob Owen: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
14:55
Carrie Lingenfelter: So I love that one.
14:56
Carrie Lingenfelter: I was going to ask you you had mentioned earlier daily mindful practice.
15:02
Carrie Lingenfelter: What does that look like for you or for families?
15:05
Carrie Lingenfelter: What would you say?
15:07
Rob Owen: Yeah, for me, where do I start?
15:09
Rob Owen: So I'll keep it simple.
15:10
Rob Owen: So I do myself.
15:12
Rob Owen: I do a simple stretching practice.
15:15
Rob Owen: It's all Qigong and Tai Chi based stretching, and then Qigong and then Tai Chi, and I can do anywhere.
15:20
Rob Owen: If it's morning time and I woke up late and blah, blah, blah, I'll get about seven to 10 minutes in, but in general it's between 20 and 40 minutes in the morning.
15:28
Rob Owen: For some people that's not even doable.
15:31
Rob Owen: I also teach it at the school.
15:33
Rob Owen: I'm blessed to be able to teach it at the school that I work at.
15:35
Rob Owen: I'm the Tai Chi guy, the mindful movement guy, and we've brought it into PE, so I'm able to do it about three times a day.
15:48
Rob Owen: So I'm really lucky.
15:49
Rob Owen: But I think what's really important is to have at least I would say at least if you can put aside five minutes, if you can do five minutes and just pay attention to your body and what's going on somatically or what's going on emotionally or psychologically, and move that and move it around.
15:59
Rob Owen: I think that's really key.
16:01
Rob Owen: So for me it's usually from 10 to 20 minutes in the morning and then I do it throughout the day and I do teach others, like I teach students and I teach an afterschool teen class and I teach adults as well, teachers as well as whoever else wants to learn a practice for, just like an essential practice in the morning, the five minutes that you wake up before after your cup of tea.
16:22
Rob Owen: It just sets you off on the day.
16:25
Carrie Lingenfelter: Yeah, yeah, that's wonderful, and sometimes I have to get it in the afternoon because mornings are crazy in our house.
16:31
Carrie Lingenfelter: So little ones going to school.
16:34
Carrie Lingenfelter: I have a six-year-old and a nine-year-old.
16:36
Rob Owen: Okay, so you're in it Busy.
16:37
Carrie Lingenfelter: Yeah, we are busy in the morning.
16:39
Carrie Lingenfelter: So, yeah, I definitely.
16:40
Carrie Lingenfelter: Sometimes I send them off to school do some work and then I have time.
16:50
Carrie Lingenfelter: So, even just finding that five minute or I'll tell my husband sometimes when he's at work for busy parents, schedule a five minute meeting for yourself, go in a conference room and meditate, get it in for yourself?
16:55
Rob Owen: Absolutely yeah, it's on my phone, for sure, and I put a timer because I practice what I preach, I model it.
17:00
Rob Owen: So I'll put a timer for myself.
17:02
Rob Owen: Okay, rob, I look at the clock.
17:04
Rob Owen: You got seven minutes.
17:05
Rob Owen: Click.
17:06
Rob Owen: And then sometimes I'll do with music, just some ambient music.
17:11
Rob Owen: Sometimes I'll do it silently.
17:14
Carrie Lingenfelter: Yeah, that's good.
17:15
Carrie Lingenfelter: And then?
17:16
Carrie Lingenfelter: So what would you share with parents of kids that are six and nine?
17:23
Carrie Lingenfelter: In this era, we have a lot of these kids being born that are so sensitive, so gifted, learning material so quickly, having this zest for life and these big personas coming in right.
17:37
Carrie Lingenfelter: What would you tell parents in my era?
17:40
Rob Owen: Oh boy, I would say model mindfulness, model it spend as much time in nature as possible.
17:52
Rob Owen: And the third one would probably be have a gratitude practice.
17:54
Rob Owen: Have a gratefulness practice.
17:55
Rob Owen: Those just off the top of my head, those three are ideal.
17:59
Rob Owen: The mindfulness, the nature we all know it, but it's actually putting in the time and doing it and doing our best not to be distracted.
18:08
Rob Owen: And that's difficult to do in this modern day and age.
18:11
Rob Owen: Everyone wants our attention.
18:12
Rob Owen: Our attention is worth money.
18:14
Rob Owen: It really this is what's wanted In nature.
18:17
Rob Owen: I thank God I live right down the street from the beach so I spend lots of time at the beach.
18:24
Rob Owen: It really brings us back to our own ground of being our own nature, to be in nature.
18:29
Rob Owen: But I would say those would be the top three things Model mindfulness for your kids.
18:34
Rob Owen: Bring them out in nature and really make sure that they realize well.
18:39
Rob Owen: One, so they don't become the next entitled child because we don't need any more of those.
18:43
Rob Owen: But two it's so important, for gratefulness is so important on so many levels.
18:50
Rob Owen: Yeah.
18:56
Carrie Lingenfelter: What does a grateful practice look like for you?
18:57
Rob Owen: I think that's one area that my family probably could improve on.
18:59
Carrie Lingenfelter: We model it a lot.
18:59
Carrie Lingenfelter: We talk about how much we have in our own house.
19:03
Carrie Lingenfelter: Wow, we're so gifted, we have all these things, we're so lucky and blessed.
19:07
Carrie Lingenfelter: And what does it look like for you, or what would you recommend?
19:11
Carrie Lingenfelter: Yeah, yeah.
19:12
Rob Owen: I don't care, I'll throw it out pretty personal.
19:13
Rob Owen: When my feet hit the ground from a good night of sleep, I go right into the practice.
19:18
Rob Owen: I'm grateful for blank, I'm grateful.
19:20
Rob Owen: So it's almost like you're half asleep and you're almost still channeling the subconscious world.
19:27
Rob Owen: It's the same when I go to bed.
19:28
Rob Owen: When you're falling asleep, you almost program your unconscious mind as you move into the dream world, which will then move back into your conscious world when you wake up.
19:39
Rob Owen: So, for example, if you do that right before bed, I'm grateful for my love, I'm grateful for my children, I'm grateful for my health just basics, but right before falling asleep and after, and then that moves through your conscious world and it becomes part of part of your paradigm in life, and I believe it.
19:59
Rob Owen: Sometimes I'll have symbols too.
20:00
Rob Owen: Throughout the day I have pictures and symbols that are thematic with what I say.
20:04
Rob Owen: I think I change it up every few months just to be more conscious of it.
20:08
Rob Owen: So I'm not just so.
20:09
Rob Owen: It's not a there's not necessarily automaticity to it, it's more of a conscious choice of what am I grateful for in this season, if that makes any sense season.
20:27
Carrie Lingenfelter: If that makes any sense, yeah, it does, and I think maybe it's something that I might try to incorporate into a breakfast thing of like, maybe modeling for my kids.
20:31
Carrie Lingenfelter: I'm grateful in this because, even though we have a busy morning, breakfast is something that we sit down together.
20:38
Carrie Lingenfelter: Sometimes I'm in the kitchen but my kids are sitting down with my husband but, yeah, modeling that for our kids in the morning and then maybe at bedtime with reading books, or, I think, when you can find it in your routine, when you can find a place for it then you can be sure to try to hit it and modeling that for our kids, teaching them young so they can internalize that and learn it for when they're older.
21:02
Rob Owen: Yeah, I really like that idea Just real quick is that if you are training a new behavior, if you can grab the just one part of something else.
21:11
Rob Owen: Of course the kids are going to eat breakfast, hopefully in the morning, Right, and so if you can just embed that one little right before or right after in an already developed behavioral pattern, it's a lot easier to do.
21:25
Rob Owen: It's a lot, especially with the little people.
21:27
Rob Owen: And that's going back to the Tai Chi and the Qigong in the classroom.
21:31
Rob Owen: I do that so they know okay, I get back from lunch and they're going to get back from lunch.
21:40
Rob Owen: That's what they do in school.
21:41
Rob Owen: It's the same thing every day.
21:42
Rob Owen: So if you can just add on one little bit and just start with one little bit, just to get that going, I think is key.
21:50
Carrie Lingenfelter: Yeah, love that.
21:51
Carrie Lingenfelter: That's great.
21:52
Carrie Lingenfelter: I'm going to try that out.
21:53
Carrie Lingenfelter: I'll report back to you, Rob.
21:54
Rob Owen: Yeah, I want to hear it.
21:57
Carrie Lingenfelter: And I was going to ask you what does modeling resilience look like?
22:02
Rob Owen: Oh, modeling resilience?
22:03
Rob Owen: That's a good question.
22:04
Rob Owen: I think resilience starts with mindfulness.
22:07
Rob Owen: There's this space between, when you're talking about the internal environment, the perceiver and the emotions, the perceiver and the thoughts, right.
22:18
Rob Owen: So the idea of metacognition, thinking about what you think, there's a space in between the perceiver and your emotions, because you are not your emotions, you're not your thoughts.
22:27
Rob Owen: So if you think about the perceiver, your thoughts, the perceiver, your emotions, that space, right.
22:31
Rob Owen: There is what some call mindfulness, right.
22:33
Rob Owen: So if you recognize that space in between and you're not living 100% in the world of your mind and emotion and riding the back of each little bee that's your beehive mind, right, and you step back, you can see the normal tendencies of your interaction with the external world and how your internal world relates, right.
22:56
Rob Owen: And so if you can stay within that space and be present there, you'll see it's just a simple ebb and flow.
23:02
Rob Owen: So if you notice the ebb and flow and you see it happening, you can therefore not buy into all of that.
23:08
Rob Owen: And if you decide not to buy into all of that which is a choice your levels of resilience are much stronger, because if you're caught up in the mess all the time, you're just moving with all of those dynamics and you're going to expect to fall down on your face over and over and that's just not healthy, right, but to step back and be able to see it happening and then choose.
23:35
Rob Owen: You know what I do want to.
23:41
Rob Owen: I do want to go with that, I do.
23:42
Rob Owen: Okay, cool, do it.
23:42
Rob Owen: That's your choice.
23:43
Rob Owen: So resilience comes from, ultimately, a sense of mindfulness that lets you see all of the ups and downs and dynamics that come from you or come to you, and then you have a choice because otherwise, after a while, if you're living in that world, you're just going to get burned out, no matter how tough and calloused your heart gets that world.
24:04
Rob Owen: You're just going to get burned out, no matter how tough and calloused your heart gets, eventually it's going to take its toll.
24:10
Carrie Lingenfelter: Yeah, and I feel like as we look into these pieces for ourselves and we start to practice this more and more we realize how often we are in our minds, how often we are living in those pieces and cycling.
24:22
Carrie Lingenfelter: And the more I practice it, the more I started to recognize it and try to live in that space between.
24:28
Carrie Lingenfelter: The better it feels, the easier it gets.
24:32
Carrie Lingenfelter: I always say it's like lifting weights right, the more you practice it it gets easier.
24:36
Rob Owen: Yeah, it's like a muscle.
24:37
Rob Owen: And then, of course, like the mindful movement is key, right, because then we're entering the body-mind connection and the flow states and that's ultimately how at least I believe how reality works.
24:47
Rob Owen: All the other stuff's kind of just an extra.
24:49
Rob Owen: If you look at all the animals in the world and everything else in the world, they simply are right.
24:55
Rob Owen: And so when the mind and body connect through movement, there you are, there's no need for resilience, you simply are right.
25:04
Rob Owen: It's when you're not in that and you're you, the other dynamics happen.
25:09
Rob Owen: You get caught up in the analytical mind or caught up in the evaluative mind and all those things, and that's cool and that's needed for our everyday lives.
25:15
Rob Owen: But to not have going back to our practice, to not have a practice mindfulness-based practice or mindful movement-based practice that develops a sense of mindfulness, and to help us learn to create that space, it could be quite difficult, yeah.
25:33
Carrie Lingenfelter: I love there's.
25:33
Carrie Lingenfelter: I feel like connection is such a big word connection with ourselves, connection with others, connection with our kids.
25:40
Carrie Lingenfelter: I wanted to ask you what does focus on emotional connection versus correction look like for when we're raising kids?
25:53
Rob Owen: What does focus on?
25:54
Rob Owen: Say that one more time.
25:56
Carrie Lingenfelter: So what does if we focus on the emotional connection with our kids versus always correcting our kids?
26:04
Rob Owen: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
26:05
Carrie Lingenfelter: What does that look like?
26:06
Rob Owen: Yeah, so it's funny you put them in a dichotomy.
26:10
Rob Owen: Unfortunately, our school systems are based on the deficit paradigm and so definitely our parenting should not be.
26:16
Rob Owen: It's just not the way to go.
26:18
Rob Owen: There should be an underlining strength that is always recognized.
26:24
Rob Owen: And if we'll just stay in the context of emotions because you brought in emotions I think it's key to have an emotional connection with the child, obviously, and when you're talking about deficits, I don't even know if I want to go there right now, because that's the thing, that's the thing as a teacher.
26:41
Rob Owen: It is because people get then you just get caught up in your own negativity.
26:48
Rob Owen: And if you're perfectionist and that's a big thing, and usually the deficit based paradigm doesn't involve strengths, so there's no balance, therefore it's just really not useful.
26:57
Rob Owen: Emotional connection with kids is key and I think I think that it happens in different ways.
27:05
Rob Owen: Some kids you can say, hey, I'm noticing that you're, you're upset, right.
27:12
Rob Owen: And then that'll turn them around and let them not saying you're sad, you're, don't tell them I'm or I'm noticing you have your head down a lot, I'm noticing you've been by yourself a lot.
27:23
Rob Owen: And then they have to figure out where they're at and then go back to themselves.
27:26
Rob Owen: I think that emotional connection with self is really key because if they don't have it with themselves, it's going to be difficult for them to have it with you.
27:37
Rob Owen: So first they have to recognize that they have emotions and they have a lot of thoughts.
27:44
Rob Owen: There has to be a way for us to teach them to recognize that and six and seven is a great time to do it and just to know that they have that, and then to say, oh, my gosh, and then you can empathize with them.
27:58
Rob Owen: Oh, my gosh, my, I'm trying to figure out.
28:00
Rob Owen: I can't come up with an idea.
28:01
Rob Owen: Yeah, I just knocked my plant over and now there's dirt everywhere.
28:06
Rob Owen: I'm feeling so upset and so frustrated.
28:08
Rob Owen: I think I just killed the plant.
28:10
Rob Owen: What I'm going to do is I'm just going to pick it up right now and so to model that like your emotionality towards an event and how you dealt with that, and then you verbalize what you usually say to yourself, whether verbally or non-verbally.
28:25
Rob Owen: It depends if you think spatially, visually or linguistically.
28:29
Rob Owen: That is key.
28:30
Rob Owen: So the child learns about their own emotions and about their own thoughts, and then you can start connecting with them even deeper.
28:40
Rob Owen: When you start saying you know what?
28:42
Rob Owen: This is really bothering me, does it bother you?
28:44
Rob Owen: And then, or this is amazing, isn't this?
28:49
Rob Owen: And then you connect through that.
28:50
Rob Owen: So, yeah, I think it's really important to get the child to recognize their own thoughts and emotions before maybe not before during the process of you connecting with them as well.
29:01
Carrie Lingenfelter: Yeah, I love that.
29:02
Carrie Lingenfelter: I think there's so many parents in this new era of trying to connect with our kids and trying to do less correction.
29:11
Carrie Lingenfelter: We're really headed in that direction.
29:14
Carrie Lingenfelter: I still feel like sometimes it's speaking another language.
29:19
Carrie Lingenfelter: From how I was raised and I think a lot of parents run into that is it's so easy to fall back into what we were raised like and how we were spoken to and it's so easy to go there again.
29:29
Carrie Lingenfelter: And sometimes I'll see in my kids' faces if I say something or make a face and their response is like oh wait, let's try to model this a different way, let's try to approach this in a different way.
29:41
Carrie Lingenfelter: So also, yeah, modeling that for them, having compassion for ourselves too if we mess up and we go back to the way we were raised or some other mindset, doing it a different version.
29:52
Carrie Lingenfelter: So I wanted to touch, rob, on your move to focus program.
29:57
Carrie Lingenfelter: It sounds really neat.
29:58
Carrie Lingenfelter: Can you tell us about it?
29:59
Rob Owen: Oh, thanks, yes, I had been.
30:01
Rob Owen: I got a story.
30:02
Rob Owen: Do we have a few minutes?
30:02
Rob Owen: Yes, okay, cool.
30:04
Rob Owen: Okay.
30:05
Rob Owen: I've been teaching for many years and obviously doing Tai Chi and Qigong for many years, and I recently four or five years ago started working at a school that we work with neurodiverse children, so we do have some neurotypical kids, but we have all the kids that show the signs of dyslexia, dyscalculia, adhd, processing all the good, magical gifts that kids are given to work with.
30:28
Rob Owen: And I came in as most of the teachers were 10 years younger not that I'm that old, but most of them were 10 years younger and it just so happened that we had eight, 10 eighth grade boys all I'd say about six, maybe seven, with hyperactive ADHD, and then the other three maybe processing things and dyslexia or something, and they're like, let's just give him to Rob, because he's the guy with the gray on his beard so he can handle it.
30:56
Rob Owen: And these boys were notorious and I saw them in me when I was that age Classic, rambunctious, very energetic.
31:04
Rob Owen: So I get in the class and I start doing my thing just the first couple of days, meeting up with them.
31:10
Rob Owen: It's all about relationship first, all about connection first, all about respect, first getting at that level, but then making sure that there's a separation between the teacher and the student, but then letting them know that I can talk eighth grade shop as well, if need be.
31:23
Rob Owen: So they see me like that.
31:25
Rob Owen: And after about a week or two, the honeymoon phase went away and things just started to go chaotic in the classroom.
31:32
Rob Owen: So I'm like Rob, why aren't you?
31:36
Rob Owen: I'm thinking to myself, why aren't you doing this?
31:39
Rob Owen: So I'm like okay, hey guys, today we're going to go out to the yard and we're going to do some movements.
31:43
Rob Owen: And they're like oh, hey guys, today we're going to go out to the yard and we're going to do some movements.
31:46
Rob Owen: And they're like oh, mr, oh, no, I was like it's just cool stuff.
31:47
Rob Owen: And so we start doing it.
31:48
Rob Owen: We start moving real slowly.
31:50
Rob Owen: And it was like a minute in and the kids yelling at another guy, this guy grabs a basketball, this guy okay, this isn't going to work.
31:59
Rob Owen: So this group of kids needed more of that.
32:00
Rob Owen: They wanted to get a little more martial.
32:01
Rob Owen: They wanted to.
32:02
Rob Owen: You know, they're thinking about Bruce Lee, they're thinking about Jackie Chan, they're thinking about.
32:05
Rob Owen: So this group.
32:06
Rob Owen: I brought in more of a martial way.
32:08
Rob Owen: Okay, we're going to, we're going to.
32:10
Rob Owen: So I grabbed their attention that way because they wanted to get more into self-defense.
32:13
Rob Owen: So I did a lesson on that and then all of a sudden they were really engaged, like, oh, this is cool.
32:25
Rob Owen: And so after I did fast, I said, you know what, let's do it real slow, let's see what it's like, because Tai Chi fundamentally is a martial art, right, in comparison to Qigong, right.
32:32
Rob Owen: So we go real slow and we do it through movement.
32:33
Rob Owen: And they're like, oh, that's pretty cool.
32:35
Rob Owen: And then I use that movement to slowly teach them their first Tai Chi form, right.
32:40
Rob Owen: And then one of the teachers walks up.
32:43
Rob Owen: They they're like what did you do with these boys?
32:45
Rob Owen: I'm like I don't know.
32:46
Rob Owen: They just they like to move their bodies, they're super physical.
32:49
Rob Owen: And and then slowly teachers started to stand behind the boys and I, they started doing the tai chi with me.
32:55
Rob Owen: And then admin walks by and they're like that's really cool.
33:00
Rob Owen: I'm like, okay, yeah, it is.
33:02
Rob Owen: And then slowly they're like hey, why don't you offer Cause?
33:05
Rob Owen: We had a mindfulness program a little bit before, but it's more about sitting or thinking or visual or audio based mindfulness.
33:12
Rob Owen: It wasn't full body based.
33:13
Rob Owen: They're like why don't you, why don't you teach a class?
33:15
Rob Owen: Sure, and then the last couple of years they've brought me in to teach literally classes in Tai Chi.
33:22
Rob Owen: But also in there'll be kids that that are more ball based, kids like external energy, and then kids that are a little bit more internal, but not necessarily they're a little more quiet, and so I'll take that group of kids and we'll go off into that.
33:36
Rob Owen: We have a force surrounding our school, which is awesome, so my classroom is in the forest and then we do our stuff.
33:42
Rob Owen: So after that happened for a while, I'm like I just need to, I need to get this out to the greater, and so I started.
33:49
Rob Owen: I got a.
33:49
Rob Owen: I'd started a business before, so I started to.
33:51
Rob Owen: I have that entrepreneurial spirit that comes with the ADHD, of course after years of refinements, of course and so I started the business and I started picking it up, and then I went off to Las Vegas to push it a little bit and there was a big conference.
34:05
Rob Owen: There was a lot of really cool feedback and they're like I've heard of yoga in classrooms but Tai Chi.
34:11
Rob Owen: I'm like, yeah, tai Chi and Qigong in the classroom.
34:13
Rob Owen: It's just like yoga, but a little different.
34:16
Rob Owen: The kids are standing, they're not necessarily sitting down.
34:19
Rob Owen: And then I started putting it together.
34:20
Rob Owen: Now I have a company called Move to Focus and I train faculty and staff and also teens the practice of Qigong and Tai Chi for the classroom and also teachers and other adults if they're interested.
34:32
Rob Owen: I have therapists as well just to give them their own practice, and it's short and sweet, just so when they start the day, the teacher's grounded, the teacher's balanced.
34:42
Rob Owen: So when the teacher walks into the classroom, we know how the students are going to be right.
34:46
Rob Owen: They're going to be right, grounded and balanced.
34:49
Rob Owen: So, um, it's been going well and I'm super happy to mention it on your podcast too, just to get the word out.
34:55
Carrie Lingenfelter: That's so cool.
34:56
Carrie Lingenfelter: I I love meeting.
34:57
Carrie Lingenfelter: I have you heard the term change makers?
34:59
Carrie Lingenfelter: I don't know if you've heard that.
35:01
Carrie Lingenfelter: So just making a difference, raising our consciousness as humanity and being a change maker.
35:07
Carrie Lingenfelter: I love what you're doing.
35:08
Carrie Lingenfelter: That's so powerful, Rob.
35:09
Carrie Lingenfelter: Thank you so much for being here today.
35:12
Carrie Lingenfelter: And I'll put all of your contact info in our show notes for our listeners.
35:16
Rob Owen: All right, sounds great.
35:17
Rob Owen: I really appreciate it.
35:18
Carrie Lingenfelter: Well, that's a wrap.
35:19
Carrie Lingenfelter: Thanks so much for tuning in.
35:21
Carrie Lingenfelter: Change makers.
35:21
Carrie Lingenfelter: Thanks so much for tuning in Changemakers.
35:22
Carrie Lingenfelter: This is Keri, and if you haven't done a review for us, five stars and a little few words about what you've enjoyed in our podcast episodes, we would really appreciate it.
35:32
Carrie Lingenfelter: If you guys would like to ever message me, I would love any questions you have or any feedback.
35:37
Carrie Lingenfelter: At info at hearttoheartlifecom, we also have a brand new website which we're super excited to share it's hearttoheartlifecom.
35:46
Carrie Lingenfelter: We also have a brand new website which we're super excited to share it's heart to heart, lifecom.
35:48
Carrie Lingenfelter: Thanks so much for tuning in and happy life, happy times, change maker families.
35:52
Carrie Lingenfelter: Bye.