The neuroscience of self care

Putting yourself first-why you need to

Put yourself first-being calm
Keep yourself calm

Stress response
Red brain-lower brain
Upper brain cortex

Sandpaper brain concept-
acknowledging and setting yourself back

Reactive-------------------------Rational  Empathic/logical---creative brain  

Sandpaper-build resilience-let yourself reset (recognising this and responds to it)
Moments of red brain moments (red brain-friendly staff room)
We cannot sustain having green brain all the time.

Reset really early

Give yourself a break -it deosnt take much to be sandpapred

Stress response
Stressor-assess the situation-activates the stress response (fight/flight response) -irrational
Keeping ourselves alive at red brain
Some of the children live in that space all the time
Teachers need to stay at the green brain
Takes a long time to calm down once the stressor is activated

How do we calm the children down?
Children become highper vigilant
Fight/flight response dry mouth, breathing changes, sight and hearing sharpen, stomach purges heart beats faster, blood increase in large muscle of arms legs

Checking in-resetting

Perfect practice makes perfect

1 Identify what calms you down (walk, run, yoga)
2 Do that until you create a physical calm state in your body
3 Condition this moment
4 Practice practice practice

Breathing: Deep breathing
Pulling the rope down -activate our lungs- Teach our children to take a deep breath