Mindful Book Reviews By Eve: Gilly the Giraffe Self Esteem Activity Book by Dr. Karen Treisman

Gilly the Giraffe Self Esteem Activity Book: A Therapeutic Story With Creative Activities to Help Children Aged 5-10 by Dr. Karen Treisman

This book puts the B in Brave! Such a useful and accessible book. Just reading the book is inspiring and has helped me to focus on how I can facilitate a positive learning environment for the students and the teachers by incorporating the story and ideas into my in-school yoga classes. The story is one that flows well by adding yoga poses, breathing activities and short meditations and the added applied practices offer many useful ways of building self-esteem activities into the classroom.

Dr. Treisman brings another part of the world to many readers-with new words and ways. This is a great book about diversity. It is colorful, eye-opening and totally relateable. The story promotes creative problem solving, by offering a view from another angle. It is like a game of Statues, where one person sets themselves up as a statue; the next person walks around, looking at the shape from different angles, and then fits themselves into the structure, which is a fun way of promoting this way of thinking.

I highly recommend incorporating these activities throughout the day. Practicing increases personal growth and strength.

Anther great book by Dr. Triesman is Presley Pug, check out my review here.

Thank you to JK Publishing for sending me a copy of this book. All onions expressed are my own.

Kundalini Woman’s Set

Quiet meditation in rock pose 3min

Life Nerve Stretch L-D-B; L/R 3min

Camel var./ Camel pose 3min

Shoulder Stand L-D-B 3min

Archer L/R 5min

Baby 3min

Bow L-D-B 3min

Locust 3min

Cow L-D-B 3min

Cat L-D-B 3min

Stretch B-O-F 3min

Corpse 8-10min

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#flamenco #yoga #kundalini #dance #speedyyogini #inclusive #alwaysbedancing #alwaysbedancingflamenco #olenamaste #evecostarelli #natickma #smallbusiness #kundalinifusion #peacemoji #iameve #innerpeas #todayskriya

Mindful Book Reviews By Eve: A Therapeutic Treasure Deck of Grounding, Soothing, Coping and Regulating Cards by Dr. Karen Treisman

A Therapeutic Treasure Deck of Grounding, Soothing, Coping and Regulating Cards by Dr. Karen Treisman

These cards are fabulous and present numerous varied techniques that incorporate body, mind and spirit to find the best ways to ground, soothe, cope and regulate. From breathing exercises, to yoga and tai chi, to noticing the 5 senses and a plethora of other creative ideas, these cards have something for everybody. The deck is chock full of creative suggestions that can help parents, families and therapists. The deck comes with a very useful guide book which make the cards accessible for both professionals and the non professionals alike.

These cards are yet another great tool from Dr. Triesman and support her Therapeutic Treasure Box for Working with Children and Adolescents with Developmental Trauma perfectly and her other cards, A Therapeutic Treasure Deck of Feelings and Sentence Completion Cards. Your toolbox will be bursting with accessible, creative techniques for socio-emotional learning. I highly recommend all these works by Dr. Triesman. 

¡Olé Namaste! Eve Costarelli

Thank you to Jessica Kingsley Publishing for sending me a copy of this book. All opinions stated are my own.

For more information about my accessible mindfulness/yoga/dance program, please visit https://alwaysbedancing(dot)wordpress(dot)com

Mindful Book reviews By Eve: A Therapeutic Treasure Box for Working With Children and Adolescents with Developmental Trauma by Dr. Karen Treisman

 

A Therapeutic Treasure Box for Working With Children and Adolescents with Developmental Trauma by Dr. Karen Treisman

This book is fabulous. It is an eye-opening approach to engaging children who suffer from developmental trauma through art activities but can be applied to the general population of children, as I believe that any gateway you can find that allows a child to express and release is a sure fire win! The book is stuffed full of applied practices that are easily adapted to classroom work, yoga/mindfulness programming and for anyone who works with children who wants to engage them outside the box. This book is so creative and well thought out and its myriad of applied practices provide a solid foundation for understanding, assessing, and helping children cope with developmental trauma. I am a yoga and mindfulness teacher and the ease at which I can locate and adapt the tools in this book make it 100% accessible for the as well as mental health practitioners, as the book is full of the most up-to-date clinical information too. This book is a must have for everyone who works with children, not just those who are traumatized, as we can reach out with creativity and compassion to all children to help them release what is hidden inside so they can move forward and thrive. I highly recommend this book. It’s sitting right on my work table along with Dr. Treisman’s  Therapeutic Treasure Deck of Sentence Completion and Feelings (please check out my review). This is a dynamic duo of highly accessible, especially for the non-professional, creative, socio-emotional learning techniques and activities for children. They have become indispensable to me.

I’m looking forward to reviewing her latest “Therapeutic Treasure Deck of Grounding, Soothing, Coping and Regulating Cards” 

¡Olé Namaste! Eve Costarelli

Thank you to Jessica Kingsley Publishing for sending me a copy of this book. All opinions expressed are my own.

 

 

Mindful Book Reviews By Eve: A Therapeutic Treasure Deck of Sentence Completion and Feelings Cards by Dr. Karen Treisman

These cards are so engaging and fun and so very useful! I have been using them all month during my “I Am…” unit in my youth yoga and mindfulness classes. The pictures are easily associated with the sentence completion and feeling cards and are great visual cues, making the deck usable with the very young as well as those with special needs. The accompanying booklet is great and offers practical usages for the cards that also allow for a lot of creativity.

The other day in my yoga class (the kids run in age from 5-18), we first went through all the feelings cards and the kids offered up some of their own. I then handed out the more difficult, stronger feelings cards and each child pantomimed the feeling while the rest of the class guessed at what it was. We then played a game of opposites and each child chose a yoga pose that made them feel the opposite of their feeling card (i.e. hurt: choose a pose that makes you feel safe; surprised: choose a yoga pose that makes you feel calm…). We of course played this round robin, so every few minutes I signaled that is was time to switch mats and so round we went making up roughly 20 poses each that helped us to feel safe, calm and in-control of our feelings. To top it off, I set my phones alarm to gently ring every 11 minutes and when it did ring, we all had to stop everything we were doing and do a 5-finger breathing exercises. There was so much fun and play between the laughter and the silence throughout the class. Namaste!!

I highly recommend this deck as an aide for therapy as well as for yoga teachers, classrooms, homes…they are great conversation starters! These cards are excellent for opening up communication all about “I Am….”

Thank you to JK Publishing for sending me this deck. All opinions expressed are my own.

Mindful Book reviews By Eve: Everyday Kundalini: Yoga, Meditation, Mantras and Breathing to Empower and Transform Your Life by Kathryn McCusker

 

I knew this was going to be a great book from the get-go as I have been bit by the Kundalini bug and am hungering for knowledge. This book does a great job of hitting on the main points of Kundalini from the history to the subtle body to the therapeutic benefits and offers up a variety of meditations with easy to follow directions accompanied by clear pictures.

I was most inspired by the Sodarshan Chakra Kriya and have committed to a 40 day journey with it. I am starting a little lighter than the author (I am starting with an 11 minute version) but I was immediately drawn to the power of this meditation and after a little online research, I had the tools to begin.

This is book is a great kick off to the understanding of the amazing power of Kundalini yoga. It is a great addition to my personal yoga and mindfulness library and I highly recommend it. It will be a great companion to my expanding Kundalini practice.

Videos by Kathryn McCusker:

What is Kundalini?

What are the benefits of Kundalini?

Everyday Kundalini: Meditation to release anger

Thank you to Watkins Wisdom for sending me this book. All opinions expressed are my own.