Adapting Mindfulness Techniques for Children, Teens, and Adults

Course overview

With the surge in mental health challenges across the lifespan, and the surge in business and distraction, more clinicians are using contemplative practices like mindfulness, compassion-based resilience, and self-regulation tools for their clients and themselves. Join author, psychologist, and consultant Dr. Christopher Willard for two days, one dedicated to learning the core tenets of mindfulness, self-compassion, and positive psychology techniques and the next to adapt those practices across the lifespan and across differences and diagnoses. We will practice and learn practical, creative techniques including awareness, movement, play, and creative activities. Cultural differences, developmental differences, and, of course, mental health issues all affect how we and our clients learn best, and we will explore ways to adapt mindfulness rather than take a one-size-fits-all approach. We learn to make mindfulness trauma-aware and the best practices for depression, anxiety, executive function challenges, and more. Practical physiology and neuroscience will be explored, along with motivating clients to practice outside the clinical hour. We will discover a range of techniques from beginning to advanced that complement not just therapy but the workplace, performance, relationships, and more for attention spans ranging from 30 seconds to 30 minutes.