Mindful Mama Mindful Child With Guest Josephine Atluri

Episode 65: Mindful Mama Mindful Child With Guest Josephine Atluri In this episode, we discuss surviving quarantine with kids, while keeping your mind and relationships intact. Guest Josephine Atluri discusses tips to survive quarantine. She recommends giving yourself space and being flexible and kind to yourself. She suggests allowing yourself to feel your feelings. She reminds us that COVID is a marathon and not a sprint, and we can to cope differently than we initially did at the beginning. She highly recommends frequently utilizing breathing techniques, including box breathing, the ocean breath, or matching your inhale length to your exhale length, increasing by a second as often as you can. This helps change your moment from something negative to something positive. These are strategies that are great not only for parents, but also for kids of almost any age! For parents who don’t get breaks during the day, during online learning, it is helpful to get creative and find ways to find short breaks, whether to do breathing exercises, using an online meditation app, or practicing affirmations. Jessica recommends doodling or using watercolor pencils or other short creative activities. Quarantine has also been hard on marriage and relationships. To help strengthen relationships, Josephine recommends taking a date day/night/afternoon/hour and checking in about how each other’s days went, ideally once per week. Also, talking with friends, taking a few minutes alone, and doing mindfulness to tune into how you are feeling and also how your spouse is feeling. For mindfulness for parents, Josephine recommends breathing techniques, affirmations, gratitude practices, and a body scan. Josephine offers guided meditation on her website too (see below). When getting started with meditation, start with short sessions, tie it to an existing ritual, and be flexible and kind to yourself. To help your child engage in meditation, start modeling meditation, place importance of self-care for yourself, show them how you handle stress and overwhelm, make a gratitude journal, use affirmations, use chimes, follow audio guided meditations, engage in breathing exercises, do meditations with your children, and do walking meditations.     Links: Josephine’s Web The Mindful Mama Moments Instagram Responding to Life Podcast Headspace Calm   Email us if you have any questions or ideas! We are now on instagram! Check out updates on our website. Follow Thriving on Twitter. Check us out on Facebook! We are also on Pinterest!   Please subscribe to our podcast in the iTunes store, or wherever you find your podcasts, Leave us a 5-star review, to help us know what you like and what you don't like, and to make sure other like-minded people find support through this podcast. Show Music: Intro Outro: Intro Outro 2 by Mattias Lahoud under CC-BY 3.0 License (www.freesound.org) Theme Song: 90s rock style by monkeyman535 under CC-BY 3.0 License (www.freesound.org) Self Care Song: Green and Orange No Water by Duncan Alex under CC-BY 3.0 License (www.freesound.org)   Hosted by: Jessica Temple and Lewis Temple   Disclaimer: Our show is not designed to provide listeners with specific or personal legal, medical, or professional services or advice. Parents of children with health issues should always consult their health care provider for medical advice, medication, or treatment. Copyright 2020 Jessica and Lewis Temple