The Restore Method's creativity section is a vibrant and colourful offering for parents, homeschoolers, workshoppers, caregivers, facilitators, teachers and guides. It is a step-by-step manual with myriad regulation techniques, practices, games and creative activities for children aged from 5 to 15 (saying that, older children and adults benefit from it just as much).
Use it for your kids at home, or if you're a wellness practitioners and you enjoy the modalities offered here, you'll have plenty of content for private client sessions and/or as workshops or for creative group regulation sessions.
If you're a wellness practitioner, you can tailor the content to work around your own offering.
Every session has a step-by-step index with:
The 1-5 sequence with tools/techniques/scripts for each element
An opportunity to rehearse - The Restore Method is BIG on embodiment and rehearsing!
Information on items required for the creative activity
Hand-outs you can download to print and/or email to kids/attendees/parents
During every session:
First, we check the body baseline to get an idea of what we are regulating for, e.g. feelings of anger/frustration vs feelings of sadness/disassociation. In a group you may have 3 who are hyper-aroused and 3 who are hypo-aroused and 2 who are calm. The session index is tailored to suit any ratio and the Body section explains which tools to use for adding energy to Dorsal Vagal state/removing energy from Sympathetic state and anchoring the Ventral Vagal state.
Next, we correct energy polarity. The check is optional as The Restore Method does the correction regardless because everyone benefits from it. Kids spend a lot of time on technology and it's one of the major reasons our polarity switches. Groups really enjoy this element as they enjoy checking whose polarity is 'in' or 'out'. It's a simple check using the head, arm and hand and as they become accustomed to the checks, they will excitedly check each other after and spontaneously move into correcting their energy flow.
Next, we move on to the breath with simple breath awareness, checking for reverse breathing (and not mentioning it, simply correcting it) and matching specific breaths to match either the hyper or hypo-aroused baselines. The breath element is designed to bring everyone into a state of calm after the excitement and activity of polarity corrections.
By now, the bodies are properly grounded and have reached a parasympathetic sense of calm and safety and it's time for an embodiment practice, guided awareness and/or simple meditation.
To conclude the session, we get creative!
The content is created to be flexible and fun and to repeat and rehearse the tools. The more we understand what we are doing and why we are doing it, the better the result.
Rehearsing teaches the body emotionally and chemically what the cognitive mind understands. Repeating new tools and techniques that feel pleasant in the body will become easy to remember, sustain and maintain.
Every session is designed to rehearse techniques from the content that precedes it. You can even repeat a session twice and simply add a new creative activity, or create a theme from a session and present is over several weeks.
Depending on the day, group and energy, the guided awareness can be left for last.
Although, in my experience and as our biology proves time and again: when the body feels safe and calm in its Ventral Vagal state of social engagement, it's ready to create and play!
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