 Alright, hi everyone, a very good morning to all of you. We've gathered here for a very interesting session that's going to be taken by two of my very dear friends. So we'll just wait for all of the students to join in. I can still see some people joining in and we'll just give it another five minutes for Amy to join us. So till then just be patient everybody. And I just want to tell you all that this is going to be a highly interactive session so please participate and get interactive just to make the most of this session. Hi Meg, morning. Meg, you're on mute. Hello, good morning everybody. Guys, y'all can turn on your cameras. Our students generally don't want to turn on their cameras. I understand, trust me. But it would be good to have your cameras on everybody. Yeah, I'm just waiting for Amy to join in. I know that she's coming because I just sent her the link again. I think it was scheduled at 9.30 so we still have seven, eight minutes to go. Yes. Meg, there's a question on chat from Abhas who would like to know what the session is about. Do you want to take that? Oh, sure. So I'm representing kids for peace and so is my friend Amy in a way who's going to be joining us shortly. But this is really just about giving you all tools. I know it has been so difficult being isolated socially and otherwise just the whole pandemic emotionally and socially. It's extremely difficult for anyone, but I think for youth who are your age and this time of your life where socialization is so important, our hearts just go out to you. And this session is really just about giving you tools to when you're feeling anxious and overwhelmed with just the situation and frustrated, giving you other tools to kind of help you mentally and emotionally just sort of release and kind of help you sort of breathe through this really difficult time. And just some things you might have done before or heard of before or used before. I mean, there's so many different tools from yoga to just certain breathing exercises. But Amy is an expert in this area and in terms of emotional IQ and she just has so much to offer. I thought she would be a nice resource for you all to listen to and hopefully learn a little something from and just a friendly reminder that, you know, I know it's probably over said but we all are in it together and just knowing that we have these tools at our fingertips, it might be helpful to to to apply them in our lives, you know, whenever we're at those moments where it feels really awful to not be seeing our friends and being in touch personally. And so we're just hoping that it helps you all in some way. Yep. Thanks, Meg. Abbas, I hope that answers your question. I'm going to allow you all to mute yourself, unmute yourself, so that you can participate and be interactive during the session. Until and unless required, please keep yourselves on mute, so that, you know, the session goes on smooth. Of course, Amy and Meg are going to, you know, come to the points where they would want answers from you already would want you all to participate. And that's where I want you all to unmute and participate. Um, this is done. I, I think we just give another two, three minutes for Amy to join us. There she is. Hello. Hello. Hello. Sorry, I'm just getting a little adjusted here. No problem. Okay. Just trying to make sure that you can see me. Yes, it is. It is nighttime here. So we are fake day lighting. I know. When I saw Meg's background, I could see that. I thought this was appropriate for, yes, for a very soothing, relaxing session. I love it. Okay. Just spotlight on both of you. I'm just trying to get in touch with Dr. Vora, our director principal. And just give me two minutes. We'll just, all right. Okay. Happy to formally begin this session. So students, good morning. Welcome to a session that we've called EQ it up with Amy. And let me first introduce Meg to all of you who has been instrumental in getting me connected with Amy to have a session of this sorts for all of you. Meg is, you know, she started volunteering with Kids for Peace in 2016 as a chapter co-leader at her son's elementary school in Calzbad, California. Now Kids for Peace is a global non-profit youth organization and has over 125 chapters across six continents. They essentially look at just promoting this idea of peace, kindness, mutual tolerance, and respect for everybody through small activities and chapters. And basically just, you know, with the vision of making this world a very, a more peaceful place. In 2018, Meg was asked to fill the role of peace pledge program director without hesitation. She jumped on to board the Kids for Peace team and has been serving chapter leaders and their members ever since. She continues to co-lead the chapter at her younger son elementary school and her older son's middle school. Meg is the point of contact for our Kids for Peace chapter that's Elpro Kids for Peace. And I was very lucky to get in touch with Meg last year and we've spoken a number of times and I just want to tell you all how inspiring and how warm it is to speak to Meg. She's such a wonderful person and she's been really kind in helping us, the school, me, you know, just getting to know so much about what is happening out there, giving me insights timely. So thank you, Meg, and thank you so much for connecting us to Amy. And I know that you wanted to introduce Amy, so I'm going to hand over the virtual mic to you and tell you, request you to request Amy for us. Oh, thank you so much, Aganda. That was so nice. I feel very humbled by your kind words and I'm so happy to be here with all of you and with Amy. I'm so happy to introduce her. She's one of my favorite people on this planet, Amy Clark. She's not only a dear friend of mine, but she's a caretaker of the mind and spirit. She has her MA in marriage and family therapy and she's in the process of completing her dissertation for a PhD in holistic psychology. She's developed and taught self-confidence and emotional intelligence curriculum for children as well as self-care programs for the work environment. She's the Chief Operating Officer and Clinical Supervisor for Caldwell Clark, which is a counseling center that provides low-cost counseling throughout California. And she's an invaluable member of the Kids for Peace Board of Directors and has been co-leading the Kids for Peace chapter at our kids elementary school with me for the last five years. She loves to play soccer and sing with her two daughters, Olivia and Maya and their dog who loves to chime in and play along. And as you can imagine, her work schedule as a therapist has been very busy since COVID started. So I am so grateful that she's taking the time to speak with all of you today. So without further ado, Amy Clark. Well, thank you for that lovely introduction. I would love to just see everybody's faces, whoever wants to just give me a quick wave. Anybody who wants to just say hi really quick. And then you can turn your cameras right off if you'd like, but I just like saying hello. Thank you. Thank you. Nice to see you. All right. Well, today we're going to focus, hi there. Thanks for saying hi. I appreciate that. Okay. So good morning. Today we're going to have a specific purpose, which is to learn some self-care and stress care tools that you can practice and you can teach to others. I love meeting with young men and women that are your age because you are so close to adulthood and living on your own. And as you do that, you'll build a foundation of who you are as a human. And that includes how to take care of yourself and how to interact with others and support others with self-care. I happen to think that self-care is the foundation to support us with being in the most joyful place that we can be. So for those of you who want to be happy, who love joy, I hope that you get something out of this today. And one of the main things that I will teach you about is accountability in your self-care and how that accountability can support you with your everyday life. So I'm going to share everything and then we're going to practice some things together and then we'll have some time at the end for any specific questions that you might have. This is really different. Like I've learned how to present in silence. It's a new thing that we do now as teachers and presenters is, you know, teaching without anyone saying anything back. So I kind of like it sometimes. Like I definitely encourage all of you to enjoy the little moments of silence that we might have because that's usually a moment for self-reflection and a moment to take some breaths. So I'm going to start first with an overview of self-regulation and self-care. But first, I would love for all of us to do this one breath together. This is called the stress relief breath and we'll do more of it together shortly. But it's just a sharp inhale through the nose like this. And then an ah. So if everybody could just take a breath in through your nose, breathe up any stress you have and then let it go with an ah. Good. Okay. So stress, self-regulation and self-care. I feel that those are three things that really help create a strong foundation for your future. Stress can come two ways. It can come in an acute way or in a chronic way. Acute is like a blast of stress that happens in a moment or over a short period of time. It's not as cute as it sounds. That's the time where you guys would all laugh at my joke. Like that's what I would hear as a little laughter. So I'm going to pretend that you did that. So the acute stress is like a blast of stress. It's like a bee sting or a wasp. So it like hits you really hard and then it passes. Then chronic is a lot different. That's like a daily stress that can be long term. And sometimes you can feel it like an underlying vibration of stress for a long period of time. It's like a net or a fruit fly that flies around your fruit. So I'm sure everybody knows what a net is. It's kind of like this annoying little bug that you think. I mean, many times when there's a net flying around, I think I get it. Like I'm pretty sure I squashed it and then it comes right back again like days later. So that's what chronic stress is about. And what most of you are experiencing now is chronic stress because it's been around for a while just underlying feelings of stress. And it's still here. So what does that mean? What does that mean? Well, logically when you have underlying stress that happens over a long period of time that shows up daily, that means you need to meet it with long term daily self-care. And that's what I'm here to help you do tonight. So there are two major ways that we can nurture and support our stress. The first one is by creating joy and by doing things that bring joy inside of you, inside of your heart, your mind and your body. And the second thing is stress care. So let's talk about joy first. So when we're stuck inside of the house, we have to get kind of creative with our joy. Many of us have had to find simpler things that bring us joy, like watching something that makes us laugh, doing artwork, games, playing games. I know for us we have like a small backyard. So what we did is we kicked the soccer ball, but like in like very small spaces. So we creating sports in smaller spaces, whether it's inside of the house or outside of the house, reading things that bring up joy or bring us hope, inspirational readings or books that have like uplifting messages, writing. I know for me like I did some poetry. I did a podcast like things to kind of help me to not just bring up joy inside of myself, but to try to spread the joy outward. Eating a treat. So if you can imagine, like when we're in long term daily stress, sometimes we kind of regress a little bit. We're not our like 16, 17 year old, 40 something like that. So we kind of shrink down into like age four or five. And so sometimes we need to meet that joy, that joy and that play energy at that age. So that's where like singing and dancing and like getting a little treat, like something that sweet that you like, singing loudly at the top of your lungs, like dancing, like nobody's watching. And just any way to find like laughter, all of this can help with stress to be released. Because when we laugh and when we smile and when we move our body, it really does relieve stress. It's one of the main ways that I personally teach all adults to relieve stress. So I hear a little music. Is somebody relieving stress right now? That's actually in the chat somebody. Music. Yes, music. Exactly. Yes. So like listening to music, like even sometimes like when we're having part of that wave of stress have like a little bit of sadness, even sometimes like listening to something sad or watching something sad to help us like to let the tears come out. Because sometimes especially, I'm not sure how it is with each of you, but definitely in America, as humans get older and teenagers, they try to hold their feelings inside a little bit more. And so to give yourself permission to like be sad and to cry and to let some of the feelings out. And we're going to do a little bit of that, not the crying part, but to let the feelings out. And yes, somebody just said sports and fitness absolutely like anything that we can do to get our bodies moving and like moving the energy out. And I'm going to show you some variations of the stress relief breath that you can incorporate into like dance, music, exercise, just ways for you to just push out the stress so that you can make room for the joy. So I would love for you to just take a moment to think about things that bring you joy. And some of you have already started typing it in and like please just type it into the chat something that you think brings you joy that helps you to relieve that stress a little bit. And it can be something that I mentioned. And if it's a song that you'd like to sing, I would love to know what song that is. Definitely singing is one thing that we do. And like Meg knows this about me, pretty much anything we're talking about, we make into a song. She was just with me the other day and we probably made up like we probably started singing like six or seven different songs just in conversation of what we were doing. And that definitely like and then we would laugh and so like it's a combination of singing and laughter that's just relieving stress and like bringing up little joyful moments. So just thank you for sharing like I see some of the things in the chat journaling, singing, painting, meditation. That brings me so much peace to reading different genres of books, eating. I have to say Suganda eating makes me so happy. It's one of my most favorite things in the world to do. Oh, somebody said sleeping. Yes. Rest. Rest brings us joy memes. I am a meme passer. So like sometimes somebody won't even hear from me in words, they'll just get a meme. So, oh, your dog. Yes. We just did. I mean, I don't know if you can raise your hand. Yes, you can. There's little way to raise your hand. Anybody who got a pet during COVID. We did first time in like my whole life. I ever had a pet. Yes. I love this sitting on the balcony at night. Oh, listening to music by Taylor Swift. I happen to know every single Taylor Swift song except for not everyone in her new album, but pretty much crocheting post Malone. I like to, we like to sing post Malone at the top of our lungs dancing in the rain. I happen to know most Olivia Rodrigo songs who the moonlight. I have to look up some of these names, Matt Maltese and yes, friends. Oh, I didn't mention that about friends. Friends are so important. Like connection. Like doesn't that help to bring us joy? Eminem, whoever wrote Eminem, he just released a new song with one of my favorite rap artists, Nas, and it's so good. It's so good. And yes, the office. We watched the office two times during the pandemic all the way through. So anime. Yes. Oh, Mama Mia. That's a good one. I love ABBA. So going out with the boys. That's important. So these are all great ideas. So like I would love for everybody to just really look in the chat. Like these are great ways to bring joy. I don't know if anybody likes like musicals, but like pretty much we have like Hamilton and Frozen several other ones that are memorized at this point in these home in our home. So yes, Disney movies, jazz music. Thank you so much. I am just, if you get a chance, read through the chat because it lifts my spirit up just to read what people are writing. La La Land. That's a good one. Yes. Look at all these. Okay, so everybody keeps sharing. Justin Bieber. I happen to know many Justin Bieber songs and will have been known to sing some at the top of my lungs. I like his I like his old school songs like baby. I sing that one all the time. I don't know why. Okay, so we have some people sharing about joy like keep it coming. I love that. And now we're going to practice some stress care. So just a little bit of education about the stress response system. So anytime that we have a moment, even if someone goes boom, did I scare anyone? Sometimes when we even have a moment like that, it causes us to go and then hold our breath. And that means our stress response is kicked in. And some of the symptoms like some of the way the body reacts to stress is holding up the breath or a shallow breathing heat coming up through the body. So if you've ever been embarrassed where your face gets read, that's a stress your stress response kicking in your blood pressure going up a little bit your heart racing sometimes there's like tension in your jaw or in your temples, sometimes right here in the third eye a lot of people will experience the frow, the burrowed frow, and then the belly muscles, the digestive muscles kind of grind a little bit. And you might feel that as a little bit of tension, upset stomach or butterflies. So that's part of how we know, Hey, I'm stressed right now. And if you can imagine like all the nerve endings from your brain going down along your spine, they're all kind of dancing, like vibrating really, really, really, really high. So when that happens, what we need to do is help these nerve endings to soften and breathing and using stress relief breath starts to slow them down, and calm them down, and soothe them and settle that so make and subtly sedate them. And that helps us to do what's called self regulation. And so I'm going to teach you some ways to do that. I'm just like make a just a check in right now, do you know what your but like what the key sign is for you when your stress response kicks in. For me, it's always the same thing. I have my breath becomes a little more shallow. I hold my breath a little bit. And I feel like tension in my jaw. I start to bite the inside of my lip. And that's something that I've done since I was a little girl. So I know when I start doing that, I know, Okay, your stress. Yes, someone just wrote that they lose their appetite because that's that's those belly muscles, they're starting to grind, they're starting to tense up. And that sometimes can cause us to not want to eat anything. So just take a note of what happens to me. When I what's my sign that my stress response is kicked in. Now, when our stress response kicks in, your brain can go, Oh, I'm fine, I can keep going. I don't need to do anything. And the beauty of the body is that the body always tells the truth. So even if our brain is going, trying to make us like kind of push through something, or trying to tell us to, you know, be quiet when we're feeling stressed out, our body will be like, pay attention to me, you can try to ignore me. But, you know, my stomach hurts, I feel nauseous, I can't breathe. So that's something that I want you to always know is that even if your brain tries to push you through and try to ignore your stress, your body will always say, pay attention to me. And the moment that you start to recognize that you're stressed, the first thing you could do is do the stress relief breath. So we're going to do the stress relief breath. One, two, three, four ways. Okay, one you already did with me. So when we do the inhale, it's a sharp inhale like this. And when we do the exhale, it's a long exhale like this. So anybody who's science minded, that you probably know about the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems. So the sympathetic nervous system is activated on the inhale. And the parasympathetic nervous system is activated on the exhale. So the sympathetic is fight, flight, or freeze. The parasympathetic is rest and digest. So guess what we want to be in? We want to be in rest and digest. So that's really why these the I'm going to teach you three different three different tools total. Although with the stress relief breath, I'm going to teach you some variations of it. And all of them are meant to support you to get into that to get move up the stress and move it out and get into that parasympathetic rest and digest mode. Okay, so the stress relief breath, we tried it together is a sharp inhale. So you're gathering all the stress like a magnet through your body. And you're breathing it up to the back of your throat. And then letting it go with an sound. So let's do one of those together. Breathe all your stress up right here and let it go. Good. So now I'm going to teach you how to do it with laughter. So you're all on mute. And so this is a chance for you to kind of like let go. Most of you have your cameras off. So feel free to get silly right now. Remember, laughter is one of the best stress relievers. So the way that this is going to look is you breathe all your stress up with a sharp inhale. And then laugh as hard as you can. Okay, so let's do it together. Breathe all your stress up and let it go with laughter. And sometimes you end up really laughing when you do that because it's kind of silly. Okay, so let's do it again. Breathe your stress up and let it go with laughter. Good. For those of you who did it, good. For those of you who didn't, do it when you're ready on your own. Now we're going to do something more fun. We're going to, someone said, I scared them. Did I have like an evil laughter? Sorry about that. So now we're going to do one where we're going to do the stress relief breath, but we're going to let out a sound like a, like a la. So this is stress relief breath with singing. Okay. So everybody breathe all your, you can feel free to turn your mic off if you want, if you want to sing with me right now, but I'm going to demonstrate so you know what we're doing. So it's a sharp inhale up and then a la. Okay. Here we go. A one, a two, a one, two, three, four. Breathe up and then la. Good. One more time. Breathe your stress up. Yes. Opera. La. Unmute and do it. Please feel free to do it. Let's do it one more time. Who wants to sing with me? Everybody go unmute yourself. Whoever wants to do that. Meg, unmute yourself. So Ganda, you two at least have to sing with me. Okay. All right. Let's breathe all our stress up. La. Yay. That was beautiful. And then I laugh. That's good. And for those of you who love to own, you can do the one. Anybody who'd like to do that with me will do one together. So breathe your stress up. Thank you so much. Okay. So this one gets a little loud and I'm not going to scare anybody. So I'm just going to do it with like a little subtle growl. But for those of you who have like higher levels of stress, you can let out a growl sound or you can take your pillow and let out the sound into your pillow. So here's an example. And then I'm going to add something. I'm going to add the breathe and squeeze. So the breathe and squeeze is you breathe and you squeeze your whole body on the inhale and then exhale and you shake it out. So the purpose of this is to get your body and like breathe up any tension you have and then exhale, let it all out. So everybody try that with me together. Breathe up any stress you're holding and squeeze and exhale, relax, shake it out. Good. Let's do it again. Breathe your stress up, breathe and squeeze and exhale, shake it out. And if you're alone in your room, you're at home and you're super frustrated and you feel like you really need to get sound out. I just got distracted because Kim Kardashian is coming into the room. Let's let her in. Did you see that, Suganda? Someone named themselves Kim Kardashian. Okay. So here's how it goes if you want to make a lot of noise but you don't want to be heard. If you have a lot of stress, you get a pillow, you inhale and squeeze and then exhale. I have to say it always feels good. Like even when you think you don't need to let that out, you might surprise yourself. So if there's anybody that's experiencing any stress like at a six and above out of 10, you are someone that probably needs to scream into the pillow on the exhale. And you know, that's something like we don't want to scream in public. Like we don't, sometimes that's something we want to do very privately that's one way that you could do it. So maybe you as your 16 to 18 year old self doesn't think that you need it, but I can guarantee that your three to four year old self that needs a temper tantrum once in a while would really, really, really appreciate it. So and that's something that I teach here. I teach all of my adult clients how to have, how to help their wave of yuck pass through and their wave of stress pass through by having adult temper tantrums. So they're done, you know, just in the privacy of your home, but it helps to take that stress and help that wave of yuck move through. Okay, so that's our practice of the stress relief breath with an ah sound. If you just want to like let the stress out gently with a little bit of laughter or some singing with an ohm sound, or if you really feel like you need to move that stress out, breathe and squeeze, exhale, shake it out, let it go. And then of course, if you really need to really let it out to use a pillow or something that helps you to scream as loud as you can in a safe and comfortable way. So if you have any questions about the stress relief breath, now is a good time to ask. Is there anyone that has a question specifically? Yes, punching bag, for sure, like anything. Oh yeah, that's what I wanted to say, the stress relief breath with exercise and dancing, dancing, right? And then punching bag, or if you're running, you know, or exercising stress relief breath and on the exhale, do whatever strenuous activity. So inhale, exhale, sit ups, inhale, exhale, punching bag. So whatever is going to give you the space to do the stress relief breaths. My point is, do the stress relief breath. It's a scientifically proven way to help that wave of stress move through. And if you are experiencing the chronic stress, doing it a little bit every day, like even having a regimen where you wake up every morning and you proactively do five stress relief breaths to let it go. When you, somebody asked how, what happens if you're in public or you're outside? So the wonderful thing about the stress relief breath is that it is considered socially acceptable to just take a breath and kind of let out a sigh, just like a gentle breath. And then I always say that if you're having a stressful moment and you need just to take a minute to excuse yourself to go to the bathroom or like find a way to just like step away for a second and just do a few stress relief breaths. So I have a couple questions coming in. These are really good questions. So I'm going to talk to you about how to help others with the stress, with their stress towards the end. Since all of you are the, are the elders in your school, I want to talk about a little bit how you can support the younger children in your, in your school as well. Some, so there is a, somebody asked a very important questions, which is how do you know if you're going through a panic attack or just high stress? I work a lot with individuals who think that they're having panic attacks. And I can tell you whether it's a panic attack or high stress moment, when you start to regulate and slow down your nervous system with the gentle breathing, that's, that's the answer regardless. So a panic attack usually feels like a, like a big jolt of like fear that comes up. And some people will have the experience of where they feel like they can't breathe. And that's usually just a high peak stress happening. Of course, like, you know, there are exceptions to that. But regardless, like how we treat someone who's having a panic attack and how we treat someone that's having like a high stress moment is the same, is we're trying to like support the person with regulating and slowing down their nervous system. And so that's where the more gentle breath comes in. So not necessarily the stress relief breath, but the relaxation breath, which is a deep diaphragmatic breath. So if some of you are familiar with like Pranayama breathing, it's a deep inhale, deep belly breath. So everybody try that breath with me. So breathing like there's a balloon in your belly, filling the balloon up and exhaling feeling the balloon deflate, almost like there's a string pulling your belly button back towards your spine. When we do this breath, it's almost like all the nerve endings are being pet, like slowly, gently being massaged to help calm it. And so usually, whether it's a panic attack, or a breathing challenge or a stressful high stressful moment, when you start to slow down your breath and slow down your brain, somebody had said talking to themself. Yes, like, those are the times like whenever somebody's having a moment like that, well, I'll tell them to start using their breath and like slowing it down, and just repeating something short, but calming like I'm okay, or even just trust, or calmness. So breathing in calmness, and exhaling calmness down through your toes. So try that with me and you can close your eyes if you'd like, breathing calmness, and then exhale the calmness down through your body. And sometimes it helps to place your hand on your chest, when you're having a stressful moment, because this is usually where in our lungs, where we need to activate and like breathe the breath into so you can place your hand on your chest and your lower belly, so that you can feel the feel you the the lifting. Good. So now I'm going to teach you. And I see some questions and I will get to those. So just hold those for a moment. And I'll get to those once I'm done teaching the tools. I want to teach you about something called counting palms while you're breathing. So just with that same breath we're doing, you can use the relaxation breath, or you can use the stress relief breath, but it goes like this, it's a breathe and squeeze. And then switch hands and exhale. And then again, breathe and squeeze. And then switch hands and exhale. Breathe and squeeze. And then switch hands and exhale. Breathe and squeeze. And switch hands and exhale. So what I'm doing here is called bilateral stimulation. So whenever we are having a challenging moment, we can use bilateral stimulation to help to regulate our nervous system. So this, the counting palms is one way, breathing, exhaling, inhaling, squeeze, exhaling, release. And then the other bilateral stimulation is butterfly tapping. So if everyone can please try this, you just cross your hands like this and you start to tap, you start to tap right, left, right, left. So you don't tap at the same time. Good. And then you just start breathing as you do that. You can do the stress relief breath or you could just do the relaxation breath. And when you're doing this one, it's good to pick, to say words out loud like I'm okay, calmness or trust. Those are my three favorites when you're having a stressful moment because they're simple and they have such a deep meaning. I'm okay. I'm okay. Trust, calmness. So I'm not sure if you notice this, but I'm saying I'm breathing in and on the exhale, I'm saying the words. And even if you can't even like let's say that you're such in a high stress moment that you can't think of words just sitting down and laying on your bed or sitting in a chair and doing this or counting doing the bilateral hand counts, that will help you to help that wave of stress move through. So that's what we're always trying to do is help the wave of stress move through. Okay. So the next thing I want to teach you is the stress massage. So using the stress relief breath and then helping it to move through helping that wave of stress move through with the massage. So I'm going to show you just the three key places that we usually hold stress, which is from the third eye across into the temple. And then I'm going to show you how to do your shoulders tension right here. There's a reason why that happens. It's because when we start to feel either down or stressful, we start to sulk a little bit. And so that means that we change, we go from sitting up straight to moving down and like losing our posture. And if you notice that when you move your neck forward, it creates the stress and lower and the upper neck and the trap and the traps. And so it's important to try to roll your shoulders back so everybody right now roll your shoulders back. Good. And just if you even make that correction throughout your day, that's really helpful. So, so I'm going to teach you that and then the hands and massaging hands, hands are where we hold a lot of our stress, because when we start to feel stressed, we start to tighten and tense up. And so that's why I'm going to teach you just those three, those three ways. And so let me demonstrate. We take our two peace fingers. Okay. And we put them right here. And we take an inhale and on the exhale, we go across the brow and massage the temples. Good. Back to the center with your peace fingers. Inhale, push up, exhale across the brow and massage the temple. Wow. Feels so good. One more time. Peace fingers. Inhale, push up, exhale across the brow and massage the temples. For those of you who like to do the full massage, you can inhale and exhale, go across with all your fingers across your whole forehead. And you notice that I'm doing it a little slow. That's the important part, because we're trying to slow down your nervous system during a stressful moment. And we do that with slower movements. So, inhaling up, exhaling, moving across slowly and massaging. Good. So now I want you to take your right hand and put it on your left shoulder and take an inhale and on your exhale, massage where you know it hurts, whatever that part is for you. Good. Take an inhale, exhale and massage that area where you hold your stress. Good. One more time. Inhale, exhale, massage. Good. Shake out your hand and then take your left hand and put it on your right shoulder and go ahead and inhale and exhale, massage. I tend to hold it more on my right side than my left. Maybe you notice that about yourself that you hold stress in one side more than the other. So inhale and exhale, massage. Good. One more time. Inhale your stress up and exhale, massage. Good. Now shake your hands out. Good. So now the last one is you want to take your right hand and take an inhale and exhale, just massaging your hands, making sure you get your fingers. Again, inhale, exhale, massaging your hand. Good. One more time. Inhale and exhale, massaging your hand. Good. Now switch left hand to right hand. Inhale and exhale, massage slowly. Make sure you get your fingers. If you're typing on the computer a lot, your hands need some love. So inhale and exhale, massage. One more time. Inhale and exhale, massage. Good. So take a breath. Exhale, shake out your hands. Good job, everybody. So those are the three major tools that I wanted to teach you. Stress relief breath with the four variations, the counting palms, I guess it's five because then there's the butterfly. And then the stress relief breath with the massage. And these are the, you can always massage where you hold your stress, but these are the key places that most humans hold it. In the temple, headaches, right? In the shoulders and in the hands. Okay. So everybody take a breath and roll your shoulders back. Exhale, roll them down. Just that little correction. Good. So there are two types of self-care. There's internal self-care and there's external self-care. The internal self-care exists within your own vessel. So the, the theory of the internal self-care is that whenever you have stress come up, that you do everything inside of yourself to calm your stress, to help the wave of stress go through. So it's just you and your own vessel, your own body, your own mind. And that's something that's empowering. Like we want to know that if it's just us in our car or us in our home that we're able to help the stress move through us. And those tools that I gave to you will really help you with that. And then the external self-care are things that we do outside of ourselves in order to relieve our stress. And that's like meeting with friends, talking with friends, talking with someone like myself, who's counselor, singing with a friend, karaoke. Like I think karaoke is one of the best stress relievers. So even if it's just you and like your parents, right, that's cool to do, right? Sing karaoke with your parents, dancing, like anything that's going to help you outside of yourself. It's usually when we need a little bit of help to move the stress through. And so those are the times like where you'll find someone or something outside of yourself to help that wave of stress go through. Really anything with movement. So even if like you're feeling stuck, sometimes just getting up and like walking around the house or changing positions can help. So if you're sitting, you know, in just in your desk chair and you take your computer and you go and you sit by the window with your computer instead, just anything that's going to help you to move with some movement. And then the other types of self-care are proactive self-care and reactive. Proactive is, okay, I just learned these really cool stress relief tools from that awesome woman named Amy. And so I'm going to wake up every morning and I'm going to do five stress relief breaths and then set an intention to take care of my breath, to take care of my stress throughout the day. And before I go to bed, I'm going to do five stress relief breaths, even if I'm not stressed. That's called proactive. It's like the nurturing for the nervous system, the nurturing for your stress that you do so that you're ready, you're more prepared when the stress comes up the next day. It's basically like, you know how an exercise, like we exercise and we get ourselves and we look healthy, but we still exercise, right? We don't just stop because we, our bodies are where we want them to be. We keep going. And I always like to look at the breath, the stress relief breath and any type of breathing is like the stretching for the emotions. So you stretch your body all the time. I'm sure many of you do yoga. And so this is your way of stretching for your emotions. So that's proactive self-care. Reactive self-care is, oh my gosh, something just happened. Now I need to use my tools. So out of nowhere, something happens and a wave of yuck starts to, a wave of stress starts to come through and you have to react to that with stress care. So internal self-care, external self-care, proactive stress care and reactive stress care. So we want to, the goal is to really practice internal and proactive self-care because the more we can do that, the more we can prepare ourselves for stressful moments. So and you know, there's a really big part of this that helps you to feel empowered is when you're able to teach this to other people, these breaths are very simple. These tools are simple. And I actually, I told Suganda that I would send over both a written and a video of some of these tools that you can all have. You'll get to see my face again because I'm the one doing the tools. But I also have like my children, like it demonstrates like how easy it is to do the stress relief breath. Yeah. So that's the main thing I wanted to teach you and what I visualize is I visualize all of you going to your siblings, your younger siblings, or your younger classmates and like being kind of a leader in that way and helping to pass some of this information along. So if you can picture yourself like seeing another student, a fellow student, a younger student, like having a stressful moment, just sitting with them and saying, Hey, try this breath with me. Just take a sharp inhale through your nose and then let it out. Or you can say breathe and squeeze and exhale, shake your hands. Or you can say, Hey, just sit with me for a second and just breathe and butterfly tap with me or like, let's count our palms one, two, one, two. Give me a thumbs up if it feels like it's pretty easy. Awesome. Thank you. Okay, so I am going to answer some of these questions. I have a lot of people asking me questions. Oh, someone. Oh, I love all as well. That's another one. All as well. All as well. There are some people cracking me up in these. Okay, so I'm trying to look and see where there's questions. This is question and answer time. Suganda, did you want to add anything before we go into question and answer? No, not really. I mean, I'm happy to get onto the Q&A because, yes, there are students who generally have some really important questions. So Amy, if you can take that up, it would be great. Yes. Okay, so I'm just going to go back as far as I can. Oh, I love all these comments. Okay, so there's a couple of people talking about sleep and rest. Those are really, really important. And the breath that we were doing together, the one that was slow, really slow and sedating to your nervous system, these deep belly breaths. If you've ever watched a baby breathe, babies have it dialed in. They know how to breathe properly. You watch them and their bellies go up and their bellies go down and their bellies go up and their bellies go down. Normally with adults, we tend to start to reverse breathe. We start to breathe into our chest instead of our belly or we start to, when we breathe in, suck our belly in. And when we breathe out, push our belly out. The correct way is visualizing that balloon in your lower belly, filling the balloon up as you inhale. So you want your belly to get really big and then it's a roll up to your chest. And then exhale, feel your belly deflate. And I always say like there's a string pulling your belly button back towards your spine, like really exaggerated. Everybody do exaggerated breath right now, fill the balloon up and then exhale, feel the balloon deflate, pull that belly button back. So picture yourself, those who have difficulty falling asleep. Always take two things I have for people who have difficulty with sleep is at some point during the day. I'm not sure if they do siestas in India or your version of a siesta, but I feel like any time that you can just lay down for 15 minutes during the day and slow down your breath, you don't have to necessarily sleep, but just lay and do nothing. That's going to help to sedate your system and rest. And then before bed, doing some of these stress relief breaths and then also the relaxation breath, it simulates the alpha breath when we're in a deep sleep or in an alpha state. And if you ever watch somebody while they're sleeping, you can see that they are breathing, their bellies are going up and their bellies are going down. So even if they, unless they have a condition of some kind like sleep apnea, a lot of the times you can watch somebody sleep and they resort back to how they used to breathe as a baby. Their bellies go up, their bellies go down and they're in alpha state. And that's what you're trying to simulate when you do that really deep relaxation breath, that diaphragmatic breath is to help you to simulate that alpha breath so that you can get into alpha state and have a more restful sleep. So the other thing you can do, if you're, if like you tend to have like your mind moving a lot while right before bed is you can do the butterfly tapping. And if anybody knows anything about gardening, you can pull a weed and plant a flower. So the weed that I would pull before bed is I'm letting go, I'm letting go of stress. No more stress. No more stress, letting go of my stress. I'm letting go of my stress because you're choosing the thoughts that you say, because if anybody has a racing mind, there's all kinds of thoughts coming. So if you can pick one phrase that you choose for yourself, that's going to help you to kind of reign in and like have a choice in whatever that voices. And it can even go like this, no more, what was the voice I was saying, no more spiraling, no more overthinking, no more overthinking, no more thinking too much, no more thinking too much, no more thinking too much. And then take a breath, relax your hands and then start to plant the flower. I deserve rest. I deserve rest. I will rest my mind. I will rest my mind or all as well, all as well, all as well. I deserve rest. So that's just one example of what you can do before bed. So I'm going to keep going down. There's a question, Amy, that says, you know, what are some unhealthy ways of dealing with stress in case, you know, they're handling it in a wrong way. So thank you. Yes. So unhealthy ways of dealing with stress are typically taking whatever the stress is and projecting it outward, either onto somebody or onto something. So if you find yourself if like you're a person like tends to take your stress and then like be short tempered and like maybe snap at people you care about or snap at people, that's an unhealthy way. It's basically taking, trying to take your stress and give it to somebody else, right? Other ways and it might be different where you are, but in America, these are the ways that I see that are unhealthy. Alcohol, drugs, shopping, eating. And you know, of course I mentioned give yourself a treat here or there, but like doing things that are like habits like that are trying to like help you distract from their unhealthy distractions. So maybe some of you can share like what are examples of unhealthy distractions that you see with teenagers with with teenagers that are your age? Like what are examples that you see? Because really anything that we do that might be detrimental, that might be harmful to our bodies or to our relationships, our ways that are unhealthy. Okay, so yes. Oh, I like it. Okay, I know I'm probably going to pronounce names incorrectly. So I'm just going to skip names. And also some of you are writing me privately. So I'm not sure if you want me to share that you're asking. So I'll just answer it. There, when we have yuck come up, yuck can be stress or sadness. We can do a couple of different things. We can help the wave of yuck go through, or we can get stuck in the yuck, or we can suck in the yuck. And when we suck in the yuck, that can be known as eating our emotions, right? Taking them and stuffing them down. We don't ever want to just suck in the yuck. If you're having any yuck come up, if you're having any emotions, that's why I taught you the stress relief breath with the screaming into the pillow. If you need more, you can lay down in your bed and do a stress relief breath and then have a temper tantrum on your bed, but never ever keep it inside. You want to help it to move through. So another person mentioned caffeine. If like your go to all the time is to do something outside of yourself like go to your phone or to, yeah, the phone is like something that like it can have a positive and a negative effect. If you're watching something happy, you know, that can be helpful. But if you're noticing that you're just mindlessly going through your phone, we don't want you to check out. When you check out from the stress, you're not taking care of the stress. Your stress is like a little baby that needs to be nurtured and, you know, and soothed. So yeah, so like binge watching and things like that, you know, that kind of stuff where you're like over you, especially like some social media can cause more anxiety and more stress. So like you want to the best thing you can do is go as internal as possible and use those tools without any devices, without any phones, any, any caffeine, you know, just going inside of your body. Yeah, definitely. Some people are talking about some of the things that are unhealthy ways to take care of your stress. You know, a lot of the times like teenagers, you know, it's, it's, they do things like self harm. That's definitely an example of an unhealthy stress. All you're doing, like the thing about self harm is that you're trying to like move something through your body, right? Like that's what's happening is like you're feeling like an urge. So that's why I say to do it safely. If you're having, if you're somebody that needs to move it out of your body, to do it with pillows, do it with screaming, do it with a punching bag, something that's going to help you to kind of have that tactile release of stress. So that's what self harm usually is. It's like a need for a release of some kind in a tactile way, you know, with, so you can simulate that in a safer way. Somebody mentioned putting, you know, an ice cube, eating an ice cube. That's a good one. That's a nice one. And there's another one where you can put like a hair tie, a scrunchie. He was a little bit softer, but every time you start to feel a little bit of stress, you can like tap it if like you're in public. And you can also like take it and switch to the other side. But these are just tactile ways that you can do it. Let me see if I can answer some of these other questions. Some of them, if I skip your question, it's because it probably is a lot of a, it's a deeper answer than we have time for. I do want to answer this. This is kind of a, somebody's asking a question about how do you know if it's shifted into depression? And so this is why I say you want to meet it right away where it is in the stress, because when stress isn't taken care of, it elevates to anxiety, which is where we start to feel worry, right? And when that worry isn't taken care of, it elevates to depression, which is that sense of helplessness. We start to think nothing can change. And so even though you may, if some of you are sitting there going, well, I'm elevated, you know, I'm here already, still starting to treat it by like moving the stress up and out of you, you can do the same thing. Like you can move up the worry and let it go. You can move up the sadness and let it go. And then I always say, if you're not able to do this on your own, like let's say that it's, it's, you're getting stuck in that yuck and there's, you're having trouble moving out of it, then definitely that's when you want to probably get some external support and have someone help you, even just like processing and talking about it to help you to drop back down into anxiety and drop back down to stress. Because when we're in stress and even anxiety, at the beginning levels, it's manageable. It's, you can still thrive and like take care of yourself. But if you end up, if you're in a place where you're like, well, I keep trying these things and they're not working, then that's just your sign that you probably need a little bit of extra help. So, and as a therapist, I strongly advocate for that. So, and, you know, therapists, like we, I love, love, love, like I was so overjoyed to be able to do this because this is something that I have a passion for is to help people who are feeling stressed and anxious and depressed to come out of that. So, let me look at some of these. Yeah, somebody's asking, like, how do you not feel self-conscious? You know, I think that's kind of across the world that we feel a little self-conscious when it comes to something vulnerable, like taking care of yourself. And isn't that kind of silly, like we think, why would I feel self-conscious about self-care? But I think like any time that we are, you know, doing something that might draw attention to us, like a deep breath and things like that, there's a chance where we start to have that dialogue of, oh my gosh, people are watching me. And the one thing I've learned in my 40 plus years of life is that people aren't watching me as much as I think they are. And then I've also learned that I can always take care of myself and nothing's ever going to stop that. And that's something that I would really love to bestow upon all of you young adults is that become entitled about self-care. Like be really, really, really strict with your self-care. Like if somebody is like looking at you funny, look at them and say, look, I got to do my self-care. And that's that. Like start to own how important your self-care is. There are many things that we own, right, that we say, well, I'm going to do it whether anybody likes it or not. Self-care needs to be one of them. This is the one thing, like if we never see each other again, I would love for you to always remember the stress relief breath and internal self-care. So if you're going to take anything away, taking care of yourself internally and the stress relief breath. So let me see. Yes. Some of you, like if you want to just, some of you have asked questions privately that I'm not going to answer out loud. I might, if we can stay on for a little bit after we're done, I'm just going to answer the questions like probably with like one sentence with, I'm not going to dialogue just because it's, I don't want to take up too much time. But there are some of you that are asking good questions that are very specific, that are related just to you. And so I'll just answer those once we're done. Somebody's asking, what are the symptoms of stress eating? That's a good question. So stress eating is different than like eating a treat, right, to help relieve stress. Usually stress eating is, it's a reaction. You know, it's not a choice. It's not something that you are taking your breaths and you're going, you know what, right now, in a grounded way, I'm going to go eat, give myself permission to eat five cookies. It's, I feel stress. I'm going to the refrigerator. I'm going to the cabinet and I'm starting to eat without thinking without any steps towards stress care. It's a reaction instead of a choice. Does that make sense? I know that a choice can sometimes feel, I mean, a reaction is a choice in some ways, but there is a difference between like a knee jerk reaction where I feel it, I do it or I feel it. Let me do a couple of stress relief breaths and let me check in with what I need. Oh, I need a snack. That's different than absentmindedly eating the cookies or eating a bunch of food and then sitting there afterwards and go, Oh my goodness, what did I just do? That's stress eating. It's when you do it absentmindedly and you're sitting afterwards and thinking, why did I do that? So that's the big difference. Somebody's asking, what are my views on social detoxing? And I think you mean like social media detoxing? You can just put yes or no if you're still on, but I'm not quite sure what exactly you mean by social detoxing. So I'll wait to see if that person responds. Okay, so social media addiction and so there's actually, somebody just said in the comment, yes, okay. So social media detoxing is actually a thing. I'm not sure if it's happening yet in your part of the world, but I mean, Meg and I know the same teacher who sent her son to a six week, I think detoxing program because he was so addicted to social media any time that and that's kind of a thing that has happened because even with myself, like I try to be as conscious as possible. But during this time, I had to work, my husband had to work and sometimes we had to have, we couldn't monitor the kids as much as possible. And so now we're having to set boundaries. And so like in terms of like how to control social media addiction, usually it's a way that you would control any addiction. You would first try to see if you can replace that, that, that vice with something else. So like instead of like going up when you go to like pick up your phone, you go and you pick up like a stress ball or you go when you pick up a pillow and do stress relief breaths, or you even go and you pick up like a ball that you can throw against the wall or you, you start to try to replace that's it's hard to go into like exactly what to do because that's like a much longer answer. But I'm giving you one thing you can do, which is immediately pick three things that you can replace the picking up of the phone or the picking up of the device with three things that you can do. And then to start to see like what happens when you do that, see if like it's hard to control or see if like you're able to do it. So try that first is finding and then of course, use your stress relief breaths, like take your hands and or and count palms, do something else with your hands that's tactile besides picking up the device. And I think somebody is asking, okay, so when someone's having a panic attack, someone's asking, how do you help someone with the panic attack? And I had mentioned it earlier, but the way that you want to help somebody who's having a panic attack is you want to help them to try to slow down their breath. There used to be like in all the all the comedies in at least America. And you can let me know if it's in India as well, where whenever somebody was having a panic attack, somebody would pass them a paper bag. And the person would start breathing in and out of the paper bag in order to calm themselves down. And the reason why that was happening is because we wanted to see that bag open and the bag close and the bag open and the bag close. Of course, like in the sitcoms, it was like hilarious because like they were just and like, it definitely wasn't helping. You want to do it as slowly as possible. So what I would do if I had someone that was having a panic attack is I would take them and I would help them to sit down and hopefully in a place where they're away from other people, and I would hold their hands and I would have them squeeze my hands and I'd have them mimic my breath. Now, you know, with COVID, we don't want to necessarily sit face to face. So I might hold their hand and I might say, breathe with me, follow my breath and then relax. So the when you're helping someone through a panic attack, you want to have them mimic you and and usually something tactile with their hands because almost always they're like gripping, like they're they're squeezing their hands. That's usually like a panic attack. We start to tense our whole body up. So the most that you can do to help your friend or help someone, your family member to just like slow down. And you know, that's why copying your breath and modeling for them is usually helpful because they won't be able to do it on their own most of the time if it's a true panic attack they'll need. The one thing that it's been scientifically proven is that even though many people feel like they're going to die during a panic attack, you actually cannot die of a panic attack. And that's a known medical fact. So just having that in mind knowing like I really actually can't die from a panic attack, you it's it's not physically what you could ever die from. And so having that kind of fact in there and then slowing down the breath as much as possible, because you remember all the nerve endings through your brain and down through your spine, you want to relax them. We want them to be pet and comforted and soothed. I think that's all the questions. Let me just see. Hmm. Oh, somebody's asking a good question, which is is getting into relationships at this age at your age, sometimes a rebound to stress and yes, like a lot. Some people when they have like an unhealthy way of dealing with stress will go outside of themselves and try to get someone else to soothe them and take care of them. And or they'll try to get like they'll try to get their stress relief and their self confidence boost through other people. And I can say not just with stress relief, but in any time of life, you always want to make sure that you're not in a relationship in order to feel whole. Like we never want to rely on somebody else to make us happy. I'm purposely saying the word make to add to our happiness. Sure. To help to relieve our stress, but to be the answer to be the person that we go to that we rely on to relieve our stress or we rely on to make us happy. That's where it crosses the line into unhealthy stress relief. So I think answered a lot of the questions. There's a couple of you that I'm going to answer privately. And I'm a co host now. So I'm going to answer those questions privately if everybody else needs to go. I'm actually just going to respond to you and say I will answer your question. So you know, that I'm talking to you, okay. Amy, you know, if students want to reach out to you ever, you know, just for a session, I'm sure you will be open to that, right? I mean, sure. I mean, I technically, we have to I have to be licensed. I think I have to be licensed. I think I have to figure out like in India, like how that works. But I can share with you that I would be happy to do this again. If like, there are smaller groups that you know, would like to that reach out like and say why I'd like to have like a more, you know, another opportunity to like ask questions. I'm happy to on another time just do like questions and answers with everybody. So awesome. Thank you so much. You're welcome. I want to say thank you to everybody for being here. You're going to get like a written form of these tools. And you're also going to get a video that demonstrates the stress relief breath. So look out for those like I probably won't be able to really get them sent to you. So gone to until Monday. But then but then like I'll put it in a Google Drive link so everybody can access it. You can just share the link with whoever wants it. Or do you think a Google link or is Vimeo better? Like Vimeo is something like a Google link is fine. It's okay. Okay. Thank you. I feel like I've breathed more deeply in the last hour than I have that week. And it does it helps to do that or just the reset. And I'm ready for bed now. Yes. I know it must be so late for you. And I really wanted to thank both of you on behalf of the school or behalf of our director principal Dr. Vora. You know, it's just so kind of you to take out time. It's it's very late for you. I think it's almost 1115 in back in California at night. So I think our students are extremely fortunate to get a time just to interact and understand. So thank you, Amy. And thank you, Meg. You guys have been simply wonderful. You're so welcome. And it's been an honor to spend the time with you. So thank you. I hope all of you will move go forth and do great things and also support like your your younger siblings and your classmates, like just help teach them if each of you can just make it your goal to teach one person the stress relief breath. I always say like if one person, everybody taught a new person the stress relief breath, we would have a less stressed world. So please pass it on. Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Amrita ma'am, are you here? I can see Amrita ma'am in the meeting. Probably a bad connection. But on behalf of Amrita ma'am, I'd like to thank you, Amy and Meg. We'll catch up soon again. And thank you so much for giving us the time today. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you, Amy. You're welcome. Thanks, everyone. I'm going to turn my camera off. I'm just going to answer these two questions. But I'll turn my camera off and I just want to say good night and good morning to everybody. Okay. Take care. Those who want to leave can leave now. Students who have asked questions to Amy personally can just wait for her to respond. Thank you, everybody. Ma'am, yes, Amy and Meg, please meet Dr. Amrita Hora. I'm so sorry. It's my fault. I did not realize that ma'am is on her phone and I need to give her the commerce rights. Ma'am, I'm so sorry. Amy, Meg, please meet Dr. Hora. Hi. Nice to meet you. Yeah, same here. It was a pleasure listening to you and I'm sure the students are very benefited out of today's session. And yes, the host was not allowing me to unmute, so I couldn't speak to you. Wonderful. I think the session was great. And yes, in this kind of a session, it's best that everybody just listens and absorbs, you know, like you can do the talking later on. So thank you so much for everything. And I think you can go ahead with your questions that you need to answer. I think a couple of them are still pending. Yep, I just have one more question to answer. My appreciation for the session. It was extremely, extremely engaging and also I think very, very productive. Students would have gained a lot out of it. I don't know about them, but definitely as Galtz, we were, you know, now we've been self-reflecting a little bit, yes, we need to do certain things that we keep pushing back for a date. I think we need to take care of ourselves, definitely. Yes, yes. And it's definitely a practice. So, you know, that's something that can be reinforced. And like even if you'd like, you just say to your students, okay, now's a good time to take a stress relief breath. This is, you could do it together. Thank you. So it was wonderful to meet you. Thank you. And I hate to have to leave, but my youngest is waiting for me to put him to bed. To go to him. Amy, thank you so, so much. I'm so grateful for you. Oh, you're welcome. And thank you. I'm grateful for you. All right. Good night. Good night. Good night.