Upcoming Classes:
Check back in 30 days for our fall schedule!
Contact
Susan Lubar SolvangGrowing Minds
414-949-5690
info@growingmindstoday.com
Foundations of Mindful Living
This course has been designed to assist you in developing the skills necessary to reduce stress and step back from your non-stop, problem solving and “getting things done” routine. Our research based techniques can improve your sense of physical and mental well-being, increase mental clarity and help you cultivate peace and happiness in your life.
- Decrease stress and anxiety
- Increase clarity
- Cultivate empathy and compassion for yourself and others
- Enhance relationship satisfaction
- Improves sleep
- Diminish emotional reactivity
- Deconstruct challenging patterns and habits
- Improve focus and concentration
- Understand the science related to mindfulness practices
Develop nurturing habits rather than feeling progressively drained from wrestling with recurring thoughts and strong emotions. Incorporate purposeful pauses in meaningful ways to cope with stress and reactive patterns. When practiced regularly, these simple skills can encourage us to see the world with greater clarity and compassion.
Incorporating mindfulness based practices into our lives has been shown to positively influence our health and happiness. It is more than a good idea or a technique. Richard Davidson from the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at UW-Madison, has demonstrated through brain imaging, that mindfulness promotes stress reduction, promotes increased happiness, increases compassion for oneself and others, and reduces anxiety, depression and pain.
This training employs concepts from Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction and Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy, both of which are used in businesses, hospitals and schools across the United States. It also incorporates strategies based on Mark Williams and Danny Penman’s book "Mindfulness: An Eight Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World”.
Growing Minds Curriculum Training
This class is designed for those who have taken our Foundations of Mindful Living (or similar class) and wish to further their work with students in school, home or therapeutic settings. Instruction is provided for the Growing Mind’s curriculum, delivery and implementation. An in-depth understanding of the related brain science that supports the curriculum will also be presented. Upon completion, the essential characteristics of a “mindful” classroom or home will be developed. Participants will have the opportunity to receive and work with the curriculum and our trained and certified instructors.
Graduate Credit Available!
Up to 2 graduate credits are available for the Foundations of Mindful Living class through Edgewood College, Madison, WI. One graduate credit is available for Growing Minds Curriculum Training class. Additional fee paid directly to Edgewood College applies.
Our Instructors:
Susan Lubar Solvang is the Founder and President of Growing Minds, a non-profit whose mission is to provide adults and youth with strategies to enhance their capacity for well-being and clarity. Growing Minds has written their own curriculum for Mindful Behaviors in Schools and is partnering with Mindfulness in Schools Project in England to teach .b Foundations, a mindfulness class for adults. Susan began learning about mindful awareness techniques over twenty years ago has been teaching in Milwaukee for four years.
Anna Silberg is the Director of Instruction and Research for Growing Minds. She has a PhD in Education with a specialization in Urban Education and Curriculum and Instruction. For 9 years she taught as an Assistant Professor at National-Louis University, where her research and expertise extended to teacher action research, authentic assessment and instruction, curriculum development, educational foundations and urban issues, and teacher mentorship. Her path of mindful awareness practices began as a way to bring stress reduction to herself and the teachers with whom she worked. Both Anna and Susan teach mindful awareness skills to adults, including those in business, mental health and education, and to youth of all ages in the Greater Milwaukee area. They are certified trainers in two curricula: MBSR and Mindful Self-Compassion, both through the UCSD Mindfulness Center. In addition, they have been trained in the following curricula: 1) Mindfulenss in School's Project ".b", 2) Mindful Schools, and 3) Learn to Breathe.