Awakening Joy For Kids

Awarded the 2016 Nautilus Gold Medal for Parenting and Family! Spirit Rock founder, author, and teacher James Baraz’s Awakening Joy offers his large and devoted readership a program to gain contentment and happiness by cultivating the seeds of joy within. Here he joins with Michele Lilyanna, a classroom teacher for 25 years, to offer caregivers and children ways to find joy in each day together. This unique offering nourishes both adults and kids. James shares the practices for the adults—parents, caregivers, and teachers. Michele offers her own experiences as a parent and as a teacher, showing how the themes work with kids, followed by the tried and true lessons that she's used herself in the classroom and at home. Packed with practices and activities that James and Michele have gathered over their many years of working with thousands of adults and children in retreats, workshops, and the classroom, Awakening Joy for Kids is imbued with compassion and delight. Part of Parallax Press' growing curriculum for parents and educators designed to cultivate joy and mindfulness in children.

Baraz helps readers discover a path to the happiness that's right in front of them, offering a step-by-step program that will reorient their minds away from dissatisfaction and toward the contentment and delight that is abundantly available.

Awakening Joy is more than just another book about happiness. More than simply offering suggested strategies to change our behavior, it uses time-tested practices to train the mind to learn new ways of thinking. The principles of the course are universal, although much of the material includes Buddhist philosophy drawn from the author’s thirty years as a Buddhist meditation teacher and spiritual counselor. In these times of economic uncertainty Awakening Joy shows we can get through hard times and use our experience to keep the our heart open while moving from discouragement to well-being, regardless of the external circumstances. Genuine well-being is not expensive. True happiness is not about acquiring anything, but rather about opening to the natural joy and aliveness right inside you. In this practical down-to-earth guide, readers will learn how to • make happiness a habit by inclining your mind toward states that lead to well-being • find joy, even during difficult times, and avoid the pitfalls that prevent you from achieving the contentment you seek • cultivate effective practices for sustaining joyfulness, such as reclaiming your natural sense of wonder and finding joy in the midst of everyday experiences. Each chapter of Awakening Joy consists of one of the steps in Baraz’s ten-step program and includes engaging exercises and practical advice to make happiness your natural default setting. For everyone from the cynic who is despondent over life’s many sorrows, to the harried commuter raging at freeway traffic, this book offers up a simple yet powerful message of hope grounded in the realization that joy already exists inside every one of us. Like a precious child, it only needs to be recognized, embraced, and nurtured in order to grow to its full potential.

Now in 15 languages. Understand the different types of upsets and traumas your child may experience—and learn how to teach them how to be resilient, confident, and even joyful. The number of anxious, depressed, hyperactive and withdrawn children is staggering—and still growing! Millions have experienced bullying, violence (real or in the media), abuse or sexual molestation. Many other kids have been traumatized from more “ordinary” ordeals such as terrifying medical procedures, accidents, loss and divorce. Trauma-Proofing Your Kids sends a lifeline to parents who wonder how they can help their worried and troubled children now. It offers simple but powerful tools to keep children safe from danger and to help them “bounce back” after feeling scared and overwhelmed. No longer will kids have to be passive prey to predators or the innocent victims of life’s circumstances. In addition to arming parents with priceless protective strategies, best-selling authors Dr. Peter A. Levine and Maggie Kline offer an antidote to trauma and a recipe for creating resilient kids no matter what misfortune has besieged them. Trauma-Proofing Your Kids is a treasure trove of simple-to-follow “stress-busting,” boundary-setting, sensory/motor-awareness activities that counteract trauma’s effect on a child’s body, mind and spirit. Including a chapter on how to navigate the inevitable difficulties that arise during the various ages and stages of development, this ground-breaking book simplifies an often mystifying and complex subject, empowering parents to raise truly confident and joyful kids despite stressful and turbulent times.

Discover the revolutionary way to harness the brain's capacity to heal itself Supported by the latest brain research, The Anat Baniel Method uses simple, gentle movements and focus to help any child, who has been diagnosed with autism, Asperger's Syndrome, ADHD, Cerebral Palsy or other developmental disorders. In this supportive and hands-on book, Anat Baniel guides parents through the nine essentials of the method, each one designed to harness the brain's capacity to heal itself -- with remarkable and sometimes immediate results. By shifting the focus to connecting rather than "fixing," this powerful yet simple method helps both children and parents to de- stress, focus, and grow. Most of all, the it helps all children maximize their potential, no matter what their diagnosis.

The lives we lead, particularly in the Western world, are technologically overburdened and spiritually impoverished. Our children can tell us the various merits of different operating systems for electronic devices, but are rarely in touch with how different emotions are experienced in the body, or how it feels to bring kindness to a moment of difficulty. They are bombarded almost constantly with information at a rate that mankind even 50 years ago would have struggled to begin to comprehend, and mental illness is at an all-time high. Research indicates that one of every four adolescents will have an episode of major depression during high school, with the average age of onset being 14 years of age. The human race is at a tipping point, and we have no sane choice but to begin to awaken the capacities within us that have too-long lain dormant. We can choose to lead a child towards awakening, and thus awaken ourselves.

Engaging students in artmaking, Lily Yeh transforms a derelict Beijing factory into a vibrant beautiful school for migrant workers' children.

Based on the most recent contemporary research, this is a wide-ranging and practical guide to parenthood and early childhood education. 7 halftones.