Practicing Resilience – Self-Care Series: part 3

Leading to the release of her new course, Practicing Resilience, Erin Reed will be guiding readers through her best advice for taking care of one’s self. As professionals shoulder the burden of their students’ or clients’ trauma, it is paramount they keep their own health in mind. Read below for Reed’s final entry in the series.

Click here for Part 1 and Part 2.

Practicing Resilience is out next month – what can professionals expect?

I’m so excited about this course. For those who have taken our courses, whether online or in person, it’s an exercise in absorbing the content and learning to apply it to your work. While any course requires reflection on the material and the practicing of implementation in the field, realistically the direct learning is done in six hours or so. This is a little different. This isn’t a training that you’re going to sit down and say “OK, in six hours I’ve mastered self-care.” It’s meant to be taken over the course of several weeks, as your schedule fits. As you learn to build in practices for physical, mental, and emotional self-care, you will also be challenged to reflect over that time. By working through success and failure over the course of those several weeks, you’ll end with creating a really solid self-care plan that fits your needs. While it seems like a lot, the structure of the course allows you to grow at a natural pace with the pattern of the curriculum.

Each section of Practicing Resilience has a theme. Each of these themes has a combination of physical practices, breath practices, meditation, and reflection. While each is unique, the body of content amounts to something wholly different than all the other courses I’ve taught.

I am so proud of all of our courses. But with Practicing Resilience, I have to say, when you work on something super close to your heart and you just want it to be so good—it’s terrifying and exciting. I can’t wait to share it with everyone.

Self-care is obviously the focal point of the course. In a broader sense, however, what does Practicing Resilience champion?

Above all, I want to center on hope. When we’re faced time and time again with the burden of trauma, it can be so easy to lose all hope. But, when we focus on what is going well and you can constantly build on that promise that hope brings, we can lift each other up in such powerful ways. And it’s contagious! When you work with professionals each day and are able to empower them through your hope for their abilities, and especially their importance to children, it helps everyone remember just how resilient we can all be. With Practicing Resilience, we can build an individual plan for how you remain centered on your hope and resilience. Imagine a teachers’ lounge filled with professionals living full of hope because they have a plan for when times are hard, and are able to reinforce the strengths of their students. Little Suzie may not yet have that mastery or independence that we’re working on with her, but because her teacher is supported in her own self-care she has the hope she needs to not give up on the student. With a commitment to self-care, professionals have the energy to share experiences of hope and compassion. And that is where everything ties back to who we serve—the kids! We want professionals to say, “I feel better than I ever have with myself, because I have nurtured my hope and resilience, so let’s get to work helping our kids discover how great they can be as well!”

Practicing Resilience will be released in January. Until then, enjoy the all-new Mind Body Skills (2nd edition).