 This is Linda in Gabby from Brain Education TV. If you haven't done so, please like this video, hit the subscribe button down below, and click the bell to receive notifications of our new videos. We wanted to share about a project we just wrapped up with a school in LA. If you didn't know, we do short and long experiential workshops for high school students to teach them tools to manage their mental health, especially on the topics of loneliness, depression, and anxiety. We had the chance to do a seven-week pilot program with USC Hybrid High School in Los Angeles, California with freshmen and sophomores. We went into their PE class every Friday for seven weeks and did a 45-minute-long brain education-based class with mindfulness exercises and meditations. What are brain education-based mindfulness exercises? Well, we first start with a lot of stretching. Most students have muscle tension because they sit down at desks for so long. So we do stretching to get the body opened up first. Then we do coordination exercises to work out the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Most people are either left-brain dominant or right-brain dominant, but the ideal state is for both sides of your brain to be equal and working in the same way so that you're balanced. Once we do that, we go into meditations with positive affirmations. High school is such a tough time when we're so self-conscious of our image, reputation, identity, grades, that it's so easy for students to have a lot of negative self-talk. The positive affirmations teach students to use loving self-talk to build self-esteem and confidence. After that, the fun added element is building peer relationships. Two of the pillars of brain education are community and camaraderie. So we do group games where the students can tap each other's backs to release tension, and also we do some games where they can only complete them by communicating with and trusting each other. Mindfulness programs are so vital for students who need help managing their mental health. We think brain education, exercises, and meditations are so useful for them during this critical time of their lives. We had some students who wanted to volunteer to share about their experiences with brain education. Before this program, I didn't really know what the understanding of relaxation was, and with this, it just, like, actually made me calm. I got to learn more techniques and strategies to try to relax myself, because in school, it was very stressful. There are a lot of kids here that are going through a lot and just, like, stressed overall that they can't even concentrate in school, and just with these exercises, I feel like it would help them a lot, because it helped me a lot too. You should try it out. It's very, very fun. You get to, like, know different things about your body and your mental state and how this could really benefit you. When we did the stretching, I felt like I was letting go of all my tension from my body, like, there was no more tension. I remember my back would crack, and I'm like, I feel so much better. Sophomore year, junior year, and senior year. You've got a lot more work, and you know, this is your pass to graduate. This is your pass to college. So you get a lot of work, and you start stressing out, and then, like, if you fall behind, then, yeah, you start to stress out a lot. And if you're involved with clubs and organizations, then you get more stressed, because you have less time. So I think this is something that almost all high schoolers need to just, like, escape from all this. Meditation has helped me with my stress, because I have, like, I feel like I have, like, sort of anxiety, and I feel like meditation helped me release some of it and find a better way to deal with it. I definitely think that mental health is a big issue because I feel as though lots of high school students are going through things and they keep it inside, and I believe these exercises can help high school students in releasing their stress and helping them in different ways. I just want to say that you're not alone, and that these exercises can definitely help you, and these exercises can be a way for you to relax and put your mind at ease. This whole project was made possible by Christine Resney, the social worker at USC Hybrid High School, and also a huge shout out to Mr. Keaton Scott, the PE teacher, who invited us to join his class and facilitated them. We want to work with more schools to share our mindfulness tools. If you work with a school or connected with a school in some way and you really think that that school can use this help, please let us know. Direct message us, email us, comment on this video, anything, anything that's convenient for you, we just want to help, so get in touch with us. Let's connect and help our youth. We can all use more mental health tools in our toolbox. Thank you.