Category: News

Girls Holiday Workshop Friday 21st April SOLD OUT

Building confidence, self esteem and resilience in our kids

Shine from within holiday workshops are a supportive, fun, interactive and uplifting program designed to help girls feel resilient and empowered.

Our holiday workshop includes all three Standing Strong components of;

Strong Body – Movement Strong Mind – Mindset Strong Heart – Mindfulness

We are focusing on positive friendships, how to be a good friend and what to do if someone is not a good friend to you. We will also focus on emotions how they make us feel and what we can do to help feel better. Your daughter will leave with a positive attitude and a bunch of tools to help her navigate the big emotions they go through

We will explore these topics through games, activities, discussions, sharing stories and arts & crafts to give the girls a fantastic well rounded experience and a lovely day.

Whether you choose to bring a friend or come on your own, it will not matter as the first few things we do is build friendships within the group and allowing friendships to grow during the day. The small group numbers allow each participant to be heard, encouraged and involved in all activities and discussions without it being overwhelming.

We will not explore the difficult topics that require group trust and understanding like we do in the term programs it will be kept light and fun while allowing interaction and sharing

Or awesome Collaroy Beach front location makes for a relaxing time and the opportunity for outside activities if the weather is favorable

During the workshop your daughter will learn

Ways to understand thoughts and feelings by learning emotional intelligence, self-awareness and resilience
Build new and positive friendships
To believe in her ideas and share them
Ways to use breathing and meditation to help her calm her mind
That they are not alone in their experiences and feelings – others feel the same too
Different ways to use exercise and movement to help with her emotions
To appreciate others ideas as well as their own
Ways to incorporate gratitude into our day and why it’s important
How to treat others and ourselves with kindness, care and compassion
To use positive self talk and mindset to improve their day
The importance of being her own best friend and why it is the most important friendship of all

Sign my daughter up - she would love to do the holiday workshop

This workshop helps your whole family

After the workshop you will receive an email including the following:

Information about what the workshop and what we got up to
Questions to continue the topic conversations at home
Tips on how to integrate the topics into your family life

Consider this an injection of positivity, connection and support for your daughter

My daughters, 8 and 10, attended a holiday workshop. Mel and her team ran an incredible 1-day program, covering a wide-ranging, fun and engaging agenda that included body movement, mindfulness and meditation, friendships, and personal self-esteem driven activities.

The girls came home so happy on the day, and have referenced back to the event and their ‘super powers’ since. Thanks Mel!

Lisa

Mum of holiday workshop participants

Acceptance, respect, support and encouragement is modeled and encouraged. The activities we do are specifically designed to give the girls something to take away with them and use in their every day lives.

By sharing stories and experiences they will realise they are not alone and they have a wonderful group behind them building their courage, confidence and self esteem which will then spill into other areas of their life

Enrol my daughter into the holiday workshop

Please note: If the government changes regulations due to COVID-19 and we are unable to run in person classes you will receive a full refund

Mel is fully vaccinated and will wear a mask indoors if the government requires. The venue has big windows opening out to the sea which will be open for airflow and ventilation

To keep everyone safe Calm Mind Hub is following the NSW Health and Northern Beaches Council guidelines regarding COVID 19

Anyone that is showing symptoms of COVID 19 or cold like symptoms must not attend the workshop

Refunds are not available but you can transfer you place to another participant as long as they fill in the consent form before arriving

Thank you so much for your understanding

November 9, 2021

Helping our children embrace their individuality

As children get older they want to be more like their peers and may decide to change their likes and dislikes to suit the group they are in rather than being true to themselves and allowing them self to be different to the people around them

Individuality is an important part of embracing who we are and being true to ourselves. It is not always easy. There are some things we can do to help us with individuality.

Below are our tips for embracing individuality

1. Embrace Your Habits and Quirks
Become aware of the little things you do that might be different to everyone else. Embrace these differences, own them and be proud of them, they make you, you!

2. Get to Know Your Personality
How would you describe yourself to others? The more you know about yourself, the easier it can be to embrace your individuality.

3. Find Out What You Like
Take time to get to know what you like and the things that bring YOU happiness, then do these things often.

4. Know Your Strengths
Ask yourself, ‘what are the great things about me?’ Focus on your strengths, lift yourself up and celebrate all that’s great about you.

5. Know Your Challenges
What are your challenges? What situations do you find difficult? It’s important to embrace your challenges as much as your strengths.

6. It’s Okay Not to Be Liked by Everyone
Remember, you are not responsible for other people’s happiness. If they don’t like something about you, that’s okay!

Family Activity:
This week try talking more about individuality at home as a family. It’s a great idea to talk about friends and family, people you know and celebrities who embrace their own individuality. Talk about the positives and how being true to ourselves can boost our confidence. Also, try doing something this week to show your child how you embrace your own individuality! Remember, you’re their biggest role model! Be brave and give it a go.

November 2, 2021

Helping our children choose happiness

Happiness is something we are led to believe we should feel all the time in order to be doing life ‘right.’ The problem is happiness is not always so easy to achieve when we put this much pressure on it. A lot of the time, we don’t realise that happiness can come in the form of simple pleasures, rather than the bigger and more expensive things in life. It’s important to remember that happiness comes and goes and that all our emotions are healthy to feel.

Below are our top tips on choosing happiness

1. Gratitude Journal
Try creating a daily habit of focusing on the good things in your life. A great idea is to write down three things you are thankful for each day. Gratitude has been shown to improve our levels of happiness.

2. Don’t Let OthersGet You Down
Try not to get caught up in other people’s negativity. Although it can be hard, trying to stay out of unnecessary negative situations is good for your happiness levels. You can still love and care for your friends without being caught up in their negativity.

3. Create Happiness Goals
Spend time writing a list of things you would love to do, see and achieve in your life. Happiness goals can help to create a sense of excitement and anticipation for what’s to come in your life. It also feels great when you actually achieve your happiness goals!

4. Healthy Lifestyle
Regular exercise and eating healthy nutritious foods can help to boost our happiness levels. When our body feels good, it helps our minds to feel good too!

5. Spend Time with Loved Ones
Spending time with the people you care about is a great way to boost your happiness. Other people can bring great joy into our lives. Often, when we are feeling down, we can spend less time with others. It’s important to keep our connections going to help us feel happy.

Family Activity:
Bring gratefulness to the dinner table! Make a little routine of sharing something you’re grateful for each day when the family comes together (dinner time/breakfast/car ride etc). Make sure everyone says at least one thing they are thankful for. You might need to offer some suggestions on those tough days. A grateful heart is a sure fire way to boost happy feelings

October 26, 2021

Exploring Gratitude

Expressing gratitude has been shown to increase our happiness levels and reduce stress and anxiety. Thinking about the wonderful things in our lives is a great daily ritual which we can all benefit from. It can help us to appreciate what we have and stop focusing on what we don’t have. Below are our top tips for helping you bring more gratitude into your life.

Here are our to tips on gratitude

1. Start a Gratitude Ritual
Start a small daily ritual where you stop and think about the things you are thankful for in your life. Starting a daily ritual can help us to make time to think about the great things in our lives E.g. Write down 5 things every day that you are grateful for.

2. Be Mindful
There are so many things that happen to us every day that we can be grateful for. Often, these things can be so small we don’t even notice them. Take a moment to think of the things around you that other people don’t have, things as simple as hot running water. Some people don’t have access to things as simple as clean water.

3. Be Grateful for People
Think about the people in your life who bring you happiness. A great idea is to write them a letter to let them know how special they are to you. Sharing your gratitude with others for what they bring to your life is a special way to bring joy to you both.

4. Affirmations
Write positive affirmations about the things you are grateful for and place them up in your room. This is a wonderful way to be reminded of all the little things that make our lives so special.

5. Share Your Gratitude
Don’t be afraid to share your gratitude. Often, we can be influenced by other people’s lack of gratitude. Instead of switching off your gratitude, share it with the people around you. Your positivity might just rub off on them!

6. Help Others
Help others to think about the things they are grateful for in their lives and teach them how to express their gratitude by asking them what they are thankful for.

Family Activity:
Gratitude rituals are a great way to bring families together and to appreciate each other and the great things you have in your life. An example of a simple gratitude ritual is going around the dinner table and asking each person to share three things they are thankful for each night. You can be more specific and ask everyone to say something from their day or week that they are grateful for. It’s a great idea is to add in why you are grateful

October 19, 2021

Getting out of your comfort zone

It can be tough building up the courage to try something new and get out of our Comfort Zone. However, when we do, we have the opportunity to learn so much more about ourselves. Getting out of our comfort zones can be exciting, fun and very rewarding! We just have to build up the courage to give it a go!

Below are our top tips for getting out of our Comfort Zones

1. Start with Small Things
Take baby steps. You don’t have to take huge leaps out of your comfort zone. It’s a great idea to start small and make your way up to bigger activities. Be kind and don’t put too much pressure on yourself.

2. Get Support from Positive People
Surround yourself with people who love and support you. It’s much easier to find the confidence to get out of your comfort zones when you have supportive people cheering you on. Surround yourself with people who want you to succeed!

3. Do It with a Friend
You don’t always have to get out of your comfort zone on your own. Often trying new things with people you trust can make getting out of your comfort zone much easier.

4. Think of the Benefits
If you’re struggling to find the confidence or courage to get out of your comfort zone, try making a list of the potential benefits of trying something new. Often, when we look at things on paper, it can help us to see things more clearly.

5. Reflection
Reflect on times that you’ve had positive experiences from trying new things. This can be your inspiration to continue getting out of your comfort zone. This is also a great activity to do if you do something that you don’t enjoy. Take time to remember the last thing you did that turned out to be great!

6. Return to Your Comfort Zone
It’s important to always return to your comfort zone. Although getting out of our comfort zone is great for learning and growing, returning to our comfort zone is important as it helps us to settle and relax after a new experience.

Family Activity:
Getting out of our comfort zone is a wonderful way to learn new things about ourselves. As a family, try an activity together that encourages you all to get out of your comfort zones. You could try a new food together or go somewhere you have never been before? This will be a great bonding experience and will help you to learn more about your likes and dislikes. Getting out of your comfort zone can also help to boost your confidence, resilience and self esteem.

October 12, 2021

Self Care – How to fill your cup

Sometimes, it’s easy to keep going and give so much of ourselves to others. When we care about people and try to be there for people, it’s easy to forget that we need to be there for ourselves too.

It is just as important to fill our own cups and taking time to priorities self care and time out. It’s important to practice regular self-care and to refill our own cups, especially if we are feeling tired, exhausted, drained or stressed. Below are our top tips for filling your own cup.

Here are our top tips on how to fill our cups

1. Self-Care
Take time to do things that make you feel happy and cared for and things you can do on your own that you enjoy like painting, music, writing, cooking, pampering yourself.

2. Nutrition and Regular
Exercise Keep yourself physically and mentally healthy with exercise and nutrition. We really do feel good when we move our bodies and eat healthy.

3. Get Some Sleep
Get a healthy amount of sleep by making sure you are creating healthy night time habits that help you sleep.

4. It’s Okay to Say ‘No’
Learn how to say ‘no. ’If you are feeling exhausted, it’s important for you to take time to rest and not feel guilty for it.

4. Try Slowing Down
Most of us live very busy lives. When we are busy, we often forget to take time to slow down. Slowing down is a great way to recharge our energy. Breathing exercises and mindfulness are great activities to help us slow down.

5. Switch Your Devices Off
Turn your electronic devices off for an hour or two to give yourself some time for YOU! It’s important to focus on yourself when you are recharging. It can be difficult to focus on yourself when you are online or talking with friends on your phone.

Family Activity:
Taking time for self care and prioritising time out is important for all of us. As a family, you can start implementing a self care schedule where every family member is accountable for their own self care time. You can check in with each other and help each other to do this. Have regular discussions as a family about the importance of filling your own cup, and as a parent, take time to role model this for your child/children. Remember, self care is not selfish! When we take care of ourselves, we have more energy to give to others.

October 5, 2021

Helping our children see the difference between alone and being lonely

There are many times when we’ll find ourselves on our own during our lives. It’s important for us to learn how to feel comfortable on our own without relying on others to make us feel better.

Below are some tips to help us feel less lonely when we are by ourselves.

1. Do Things That Make You Happy
Alone time is a great way to explore what you really love. Take time to do the things you enjoy. Examples include, reading, art, music or writing.

2. Create a To Do List
Alone time is great time to do things you don’t usually get time for. A good idea is to create a ‘To Do’ list so you can check the list when you’re alone and get straight to it.

3. Learn a New Skill
Take some time to try learning a new skill. There are some great online classes and videos to help you learn just about anything!

4. Get Your Body Moving!
Get your endorphins going! Try exercising or dancing in your room to boost your happy hormones.

5. Study or Do a Project
Use your alone time to catch up on homework, study or do a fun DIY project.

6. Turn on Some Music
Music has a special way of lifting us up and making us feel good. Try listening to music that makes you feel good.

7. Positive Self-talk and Affirmations
Surround yourself with positive affirmations. You can place them around your room and say them out aloud.

Family Activity:
As we get older, we start spending more time on our own. Although this is an important part of growing up, often we are not taught how to use alone time as a positive experience. Many children (and adults) feel sad or lonely when they are on their own. Today’s activity is designed to help children think more optimistically about being alone. As a family, set aside some time during your week for everyone to have 20-30 minutes of time alone. Talk about what you will each do during your alone time (refer to your Top Tips for ideas) to help you feel happy. After your alone time, discuss how you felt while you were alone and how we can use our alone time to recharge and feel good

September 28, 2021

Helping our children appreciate their bodies

There are so many things around us that show us what the media perceives what the perfect image of a parson should be and realistically it is not what the people around us look like

We are all shapes and sizes, have different hair, different coloured skin and ways we like to dress.

Most of us have days when we look in the mirror and don’t feel 100% about the way we look. It’s important to have some special little rituals in place to help pick ourselves back up when we are having one of those days. The following top tips are designed to help you feel good about you, from the inside out!

Below are our top tips to help with body appreciation

1. Self-care and Self-love
Do things that make you feel good and put time into yourself to help you feel happy. Self care can help us to build a positive relationship with ourselves and our body. It’s important to find the things you enjoy. Remember, everyone’s self-care is different!

2. Healthy Lifestyle
Regular exercise and eating healthy foods are great ways to make our bodies feel good. When our bodies feel good, it can be easier to feel more positive about them!

3. Challenge Yourself
Challenge your body. Try something you’ve never done before. Build a strong connection with your body for what it can do. Make sure you give yourself positive recognition for your progress!

4. Change Your Focus
Focus on what your body does for you and how it feels, instead of focusing on what it looks like. Writing a regular list of the incredible things your body does is a great way to keep focused on this.

5. Positive Role Models
Look for people who make you feel good about yourself. It could be friends, family or even in the media. A great tip is to find people who live a healthy lifestyle and take care of their body. This includes self-love!

6. Talk to Someone
If you’re not feeling good about your body or you have questions or concerns, make sure you reach out by talking to a trusted adult.

Family Activity:
It’s important for everyone in your family to be mindful of the way they treat and speak about their bodies. If someone in your family speaks negatively about their bodies, it becomes easier for others to do the same. Pay attention to the language used about your bodies and flip negative words into positive ones. Instead of saying ‘I hate how big my nose is’ flip this to ‘My big nose helps me to smell and makes me unique.’ If you notice your family speaking negatively about their bodies, flip their words into positive ones too! This will create a positive household where everyone appreciates and respects their bodies.

September 21, 2021

Helping our children believe in themselves

As a child it is hard to believe that you can do something when you haven’t done it before, it is scary or you don’t know what is going to happen

Believing in ourselves does not always come easy, so it’s important for us to prioritise self belief! That might sound strange, but it’s important to do things that help us to feel more confident, self-assured and strong within ourselves. We have to learn how to be our own biggest fan and cheer ourselves on! Below is a list of top tips to help you boost your self belief.

Below are our top tips on helping children believe in themselves

1. Positive Self-Talk
Pay attention to the things you are saying to yourself, replace negative words with more positive and empowering words. For example, replace “I can’t do that” with “If I keep trying, I will get better”

2. Visualisation
Close your eyes and visualise yourself doing the things you want to do with your life. See it in your mind and feel it in your body. Use your imagination to see yourself achieving your goals.

3. Support Networks
Surround yourself with people who love and support you. Share your goals and dreams only with the people you know will cheer you on!

4. Get Out of Your Comfort Zone
Try new things and meet new people. The more you get out of your comfort zone, the more your confidence grows. Confidence can help you to have greater self-belief.

5. Challenges Vs. Strengths
Try as hard as you can to find a positive side in every situation. Even the challenging times you face. 6. Have a Role Model Have a positive role model who inspires you. It’s important to have face to face role models (someone you actually know), as well as online or celebrity role models.

7. Be Proud of Yourself
Reflect on times you have been proud of yourself for doing great things. Hold onto these memories, especially when you’re experiencing self-doubt.

Family Activity:
Start building a strong culture of self belief within your household. During your family time together, start asking each other what the great things about you are. Encourage your child/children to become comfortable with speaking highly of themselves. If they are unsure, ask questions. Help them to see the wonderful things about them and remind them of their achievements. Share with them how you believe in yourself. If you find this difficult that’s ok, it’s a great chance for you to start boosting your self belief too. Start thinking about all the great things about you and your achievements and share them with your children proudly. Remember, you are their greatest role model.

September 14, 2021

Teaching our children to be their own best friend

Being your own best friend is one of the greatest experiences you can have. When we love and care for ourselves, we are happier, healthier and have better relationships with others. We are also less worried about what others think and tend to be happier with time to ourselves.

Becoming your own best friend won’t always happen instantly. Here are some tips to help you become you own best friend.

Please find our top tips below

1. Positive Self-Talk
Pay attention to the way you are talking to yourself. Try replacing any negative comments with more positive comments. Try taking time each day to look at yourself in the mirror and say something kind. The way you talk to yourself is SO important!

2. Self-Care and Self-Love
Spend time taking care of yourself. Create time for the things that make you feel good and for things that help you to feel relaxed and restore your energy. Self-care activities are different for everyone. Take time to think about what feels good for you.

3. Stand Up For YOU
Be your own biggest fan and think about all the great things you have achieved – You ARE a miracle! Take time to reflect on your achievements and all the great things about you. This could include being a great friend, trying hard at school or getting out of your comfort zone.

4. Boundaries
Set boundaries for how you want others to treat you…And stand by them! Remember, boundaries are there to protect us and help us feel good. When we set clear boundaries, we are taking good care of ourselves.

5. Find Happiness
Do things that make you feel happy! Creating happiness in your life is a great way to treat yourself like a BFF. Think about the things that bring you joy and do those things regularly. Things that bring you happiness could be time with friends, after school activities, family time or time alone. What things bring you happiness?

Family activity:
Set a challenge for everyone in your family to do something this week for themselves; something that makes them feel happy and helps them to connect with themselves. Ask everyone to take at least 30 minutes of time for themselves with no one else, take this time to do what makes you happy. At the end of the week discuss what each of you did and how you enjoyed/or didn’t enjoy the time to yourself. Try to make this a regular family activity.

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