Just Relax sessions and classes are for grown-ups. These sessions are still built on the same 7 steps as children’s sessions are but are aimed at showing you some practices that you can apply to nurture your own wellbeing. You benefit but so do your children because you’ll be able to role model self-care and better regulate your own emotions.
Gentle movement warms and loosens you up. It helps to switch up mood and reduces social anxiety. Play then helps us laugh, giggle and find joy in connection. Stretch helps to activate our calming systems. We are still moving but now we are doing it mindfully and with the aim of easing tension and reducing our stress hormones. A little self-massage lets us benefit from our own positive touch. We mindfully enjoy activities such as hand or neck massage, or we might develop our sense of touch using sensory materials and playing with temperature or texture. We most definitely use our imaginations.
Then we breathe. Our breath is our best and most readily available superpower for activating our calming systems and offers a freely accessible and handy tool for helping us to regulate our emotions. It is so very important to learn how to sit with our full range of emotions rather than supress any, but it is equally important to then find ways to regulate those emotions in a healthy way so that we can respond in a way that supports us and our wellbeing. When we don’t remember to regulate – especially likely when we experience big or overwhelming emotions, or maybe if we aren’t unaware of how we can regulate, we may react unhelpfully – supressing emotions or behaving in ways we may regret. Breathing awareness is a great place to start on our journey of understanding ourselves and how we can best regulate these big emotions. As is believing in ourselves.
Somewhat naturally prone to talking critically to ourselves (believe it or not, as a self-preservation thing), we are wired to recall the negative quickly and easily. But, progress in neuroscience has helped us to understand neuroplasticity (put simply, the ability to learn new things throughout our entire lives) but that we need to focus a bit more on positive thoughts to embed it in our memories so we can thrive as well as survive. This includes believing in our unique and individual worth and value. We practice positive affirmations in support of this.
So, once we have moved and played, stretched and felt, breathed and believed, we are in a great place to RELAX. Relaxation, in whatever form it takes for each individual, is massively important for our wellbeing. Time out from busyness, incessant inner chatter, balancing multiple demands, life changes, shocks to the system and world news that makes us sometimes fearful for ourselves and others is imperative for bolstering our wellbeing and building our resiliency. But it is a skill that we need to consistently practice to master and maintain. This you may recognise as something often referred to as ‘self-care’- finding what allows us to relax and recover. So that, in essence is what makes up a Just Relax session.
Check prices and book classes on my booking tab on this website (coming soon), or contact me for more details via Facebook at (https://www.facebook.com/RKHazel) or search for Hazel on www.relaxkids.com .