Today’s meditation and mindfulness classes are typically not geared toward creating little monks, and instead focus on stress reduction, developing executive functioning skills, and creating positive brain changes that come as a result of a meditation practice. A new study from the Max Planck Institute (advances.sciencemag.org, Structural plasticity of the social brain: Differential change after socio-affective and cognitive mental training) found that three different types of meditation training are linked to positive changes in their corresponding brain regions. Meditation, even for just 3 months, literally increases your brain's ability to focus your attention, access compassion and empathy, and become more aligned with stepping into a non-judgmental mindset and understanding of others’ perspectives. This study is exciting because it suggests that we CAN nurture social and emotional intelligence in our children verses relying solely on nature.

So to help you keep you from having the stress and feeling of overwhelm, here are a few tried and true resources that we have found to be really helpful both with our own kids and our clients at Unbridled Change during our Equine Partnered Psychotherapy and Learning sessions.