Using the Enneagram as a Tool for Empathy
I’ve never had much interest in personality tests, until I was introduced to the Enneagram of Personality by a close friend (and former TREE facilitator!) around five years ago. Since then, it’s something that I reflect on often as a way to have a deeper understanding of myself and to have a stronger understanding of […]
Reframing Self-Care
Lately, I’ve been holding so much appreciation for the ways in which we talk about self-care at TREE. In the third week of our Grade Six curriculum, we discuss stressors in students’ lives that might cause messy emotions and impact how we can approach peace and conflict in healthy ways. Once we unpack our individual […]
Finding Balance Through Yoga: Small Gestures Can Make Big Waves
“Finding balance” is an expression we hear all the time. The phrase is only two words, and sounds simple enough, but it can be easier said than done, particularly when applied to ourselves. For myself, finding balance has meant being mindful of my needs and cultivating self-care practices that help to reduce anxiety and stress. […]
Peace Comes from Within: A Self-Care Reminder
Over the years, I’ve learned self-care is a broad spectrum of methods and ways to support yourself, and thanks to being with TREE, I’ve had the chance to really improve my self-care strategies. One grade 6 lesson in particular has stuck with me, and that is our lesson on living a balanced lifestyle. The lesson […]
How Praising Productivity Influences our Relationship with Self-Care
To begin, I want to challenge you to think about what productivity means to you? You may even go as far as to ask yourself, what it means to be successful in what you “produce” or can accomplish on a daily or weekly basis? How has productivity been viewed in your life? Maybe in school, […]
Mindfulness through Folding: My Experience With Origami
Navigating overwhelming emotions and finding peace during times of misery and pain can be extremely difficult, particularly when we find ourselves facing challenges we aren’t equipped to cope with or are unable to do anything to alleviate the problem. When we are faced with circumstances out of our control it can feel as though our […]
3 Peaceful Ways for Educators to Rest this Summer
I smiled and waved at the screen, thanked the class for their great participation and wished them well for the rest of their quadmester. There were seconds of silence, the “bloop-bloop” MS Teams log-out sound, and an anticlimactic rising in me. “Thud,” is the sound that would come after closing my laptop before I’d take […]
Engaging Mindfully Outdoors: Activities and Strategies for Kids
With greater amounts of screen time and indoor time these days, it’s more important than ever to cultivate healthy habits that get us outside to connect with our natural environment. Practicing mindfulness exercises can help us at any age to pay attention to the current moment and our surroundings. Intentional engagement with the world around […]
Setting Boundaries for Healthy Conversations
Being able to change the subject mid-conversation is really more of an art than anything else; being able to redirect a conversation is useful and powerful. No matter how gracefully you might be able to change the subject, there are some topics that come up again and again that you might not be in the […]
Managing Conflict in Times of Stress
In times of high stress or anxiety, we respond in very different ways (see also: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn); some of us are extroverts, some are introverts, some people process internally by processing over time, others process externally by talking things through with others. All of these are exceptionally valid ways of navigating our […]
