Grace Reynolds on ”Mindfulness Neurocoaching: The Quickest and Easiest Path to Post-Traumatic Growth”

"Self-regulation will always be a challenge, but if somebody's going to be in charge, it might as well be me." Daniel Akst Watch this interview on YouTube here https://youtu.be/xjPY1-gmuNk On Today's EPISODE #298 we will cover:  ✔ What exactly is trauma and what does it look like in our brain? ✔ How do we become “traumatized”? (as an adult or child)? ✔ How can we recognize “traumatic” experiences in our life, so we can address them, (trauma-informed strategies) heal from them, and prevent them from holding us back? ✔ If our Primal Emotions are hard-wired into our brain, then how do we overcome them? (FEARS, ANGER etc)?  ✔ How can we eliminate things that are worrying us? Our CRAP (conflicts, resistances, anxieties, and problems)?  Welcome back to Season 10 of The Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast, where we connect the science-based evidence behind social and emotional learning (that’s finally being taught in our schools today) and emotional intelligence training (used in our modern workplaces) for improved well-being, achievement, productivity and results—using what I saw as the missing link (since we weren’t taught this when we were growing up in school), the application of practical neuroscience. I’m Andrea Samadi, an author, and an educator with a passion for learning and launched this podcast 5 years ago with the goal of bringing ALL the leading experts together (in one place) to uncover the most current research that would back up how the brain learns best, taking us ALL to new, and often unimaginable heights.    For today’s episode #298, we will be speaking with someone I got to know well, as we both took and became certified with a neuroscience certification course, through Mark Waldman[i], learning the basics of neuroscience and a unique technique called neurocoaching that we can both use to help individuals, schools or organizations. Grace Reynolds, who lives in Tasmania, Australia, (near Antarctica) went on to achieve a deeper level of certification as an advanced certified trauma centered neurocoach. We’ve been friends and colleagues for years studying and learning brain-based coaching strategies, and she recently asked me “have you covered neuroscience and trauma yet?” I knew that we’ve touched on it, but hadn’t covered it thoroughly yet. We have covered trauma and the brain in pieces with Dr. Bruce Perry’s[ii] What Happened to You book, Sarah Peyton[iii] and her work on anxiety and self-regulation, or Dr. Lori Desautels’[iv] work on rewiring our perceptions of discipline in our schools, and it was even a part of our interview with Hans Appel[v], a school counselor whose book, Award Winning Culture took off in schools across the country.  I remember while reading Hans’ book, it was in the first few pages that he mentioned how he had a difficult childhood, and he talked about how the sound of his back door opening after school would make his skin crawl as he remembered the trauma that would occur for him in his life after school, urging him to spend more and more time at school, away from home. I wonder how many of our students have stories like this. I remember in the first few pages of Dr. Bruce Perry’s What Happened to You book, he talked about a student who would act out in class. It turned out that the teacher’s cologne was triggering him to a bad memory of a past experience, showing us that triggers can occur and set us off when we least expect it. I wonder: How do past traumas show up and do they impact our life?  What Can They Teach Us About How We Might Respond to Certain Situations? What strategies can we use to help us to maintain balance in our life? While I didn’t have an experience as painful as Hans Appel’s, or the student with the cologne, these stories made me remember something from over 20 years ago that made my skin crawl, and still does. Psychological trauma impacts our brain, and can trigger us to feel threatened even when we are not in a threatening situati