Scott Webb (Host): Today, we're going to continue our series on mindfulness with Behavioral Health Counselor, Allison Giesking. But today, Allison's going to lead us in a meditation exercise that we can do with our younger kids with the goals of calming our minds and bodies and being mindful as a family.

 This is the Inspire Health podcast from Upland Hills Health. I'm Scott Webb. Allison, it's nice to be on with you again. Last time we talked about mindfulness and how that may look and feel different to different folks and how we can make time to be mindful, whether we're in the car or whatever it is we're doing. And today we're going to kind of flip roles a little bit. I'm going to turn it over to you and you're going to drive, so to speak.

And we're going to talk a little bit more about mindfulness and do some meditation and so on. So I'll hand you the keys, if you will, and let you drive.

Allison Geisking, APSW: Okay, Scott, thank you so much for having me today. I look forward to hearing your review on how you feel like this activity is beneficial or maybe not so beneficial after we're done with this mindfulness for our viewers to kind of listen to and see what they think. So today we're going to start off with a little bit of education on mindfulness, kind of a slight recap on what it is, and also talk about the specific mindfulness we will be doing today.

So just kind of a recap from our intro we did. Mindfulness essentially is being in the moment and being present in that moment. And essentially, being non-judgmental in that moment. So, identifying how we're feeling, how we're doing, and maybe recognizing that it's okay to have those emotions in those moments when we're going through different types of situations throughout our life. Right? So really important for us to recognize that we can non-judgmentally have these feelings, emotions, and control a little bit more our behaviors and how we react to those situations.

So today what we're going to be talking about specifically is a parent and child mindfulness based activity. So why is this important? You know, one of the core beliefs I have as a provider is when I see my patients or clients, I always encourage them to take this stuff home with them and to use it for themselves, of course, but also to use it with their kids.

You know, if we are able to emotionally regulate that and demonstrate that to our children and do that with them, that's going to show them how they can navigate life and also for them to recognize it's okay for us to feel sad or have like those harder emotions that we have throughout life and how to process through those in any given time as they age and get older.

And I think that's the best gift you can really give your child, is how do we navigate this thing called life, right? When things get hard, because it's guaranteed that those things will get hard. So, I would encourage, with this particular mindfulness, being able to sit down with your kids when you're feeling stressed or overwhelmed, and saying, hey, mom is feeling really overwhelmed right now, and mom needs a break.

Do you want to come with mom to see what mom does when mom feels overwhelmed? Same with dads, right? Let's do this together. Let's, you know, sit down on the floor, lay down on the couch for five minutes and try this activity out. So, I would love to get started, Scott, on this mindfulness guided imagery with you that you can take home with your littles.

And, I'd love to hear your review after we're done with this. So, first, I kind of want to start off with, you know, you can either lie flat on the floor, but obviously right now we're on a podcast, so you can't really do that. But make sure your feet are flat on the floor, at least, and you're comfortable, okay?

So, we're just going to kind of start off in it, and just so everyone knows as well, this guided mindfulness is about five minutes long and after this is done, like I said, Scott is going to do a review. So you can either log out or you can listen to his review after this. So Scott, we are going to start off with either your feet flat on the floor, or if you're listening to this, lying flat on your back, somewhere on the couch or the floor, wherever you're most comfortable.

We're going to take some deep breaths, and when we take these deep breaths, I want you to take those breaths through your nose and then exhale them through your mouth. So we're going to start with breath number one, so breathing in through your nose, one, two, three, four, holding it, and exhaling through your mouth, one, two, three, four, breathing in through your nose, one, two, three, four, exhaling through your mouth, one, two, three, four. And one more time. We're going to try this again. So we're going to inhale through our nose. One, two, three, four. Hold it for a second. Exhale through your mouth. One, two, three, four. And during this time, parents, I'll often take these big breaths at the same time with your child, of course. Modeling a slow breath in through your nose and out through your mouth.

And you can close your eyes or find a place to look at with a soft gaze, not super focused, just very soft and gentle with yourself if you keep your eyes open. I want you to imagine in your head that you're floating on a cloud and imagine how nice, warm, and fluffy the cloud feels on your body. Imagine that could, that it's taking you up in the sky, higher, and higher until you find a rainbow.

You feel safe and warm on that cloud. Then the rainbow slowly floats around you. As each color travels over your body, your muscles feel nice and warm and relaxed. And now I want you to first imagine that red color in the rainbow traveling over your head. Your neck. Your shoulders and down your arms. That pretty red color travels into your heart, your belly, your legs, all the way down to your toes, making your whole body feel nice and warm, soft and relaxed. Taking a breath in through your nose, one, two, three, four, out through your mouth, one, two, three, four. Letting all of your muscles relax. And next, I want you to imagine the color orange on this rainbow traveling over your head, your neck, your shoulders, and down your arm. sThe bright, warm, orange color travels into your heart.

And your belly, and your legs, all the way down to your toes, making your whole body feel relaxed. Take a deep breath in one, two, three, four. Big breath out, one, two, three, four. Feel a nice, warm, orange relax all of your muscles. And then imagine the color yellow in that rainbow traveling over your head, your neck, your shoulders, down your arms, and imagine that sunshiny yellow traveling to your heart, your belly, your legs, all the way down to your toes, making your whole body feel relaxed.

Take a deep breath in, one, two, three, four, and a breath out, one, two, three, four. Feel the nice, warm yellow relaxing all of your muscles. And then, I want you to imagine the green from the rainbow traveling over your head, your neck, your shoulders, and down your arms. Imagine that nice, bright green traveling into your heart again, your belly. Your legs all the way down to your toes, making your whole body feel relaxed. Take a big breath in through your nose, one, two, three, four. And out through your mouth, one, two, three, four. Feel the nice warm green relaxing all of your muscles.

And then I want you to imagine the blue from this rainbow traveling over your head, your neck, your shoulders and down your arms.

Imagine that warm, oceany blue traveling to your heart, your belly, your legs, all the way down to your toes, making your whole body feel relaxed. Take a big breath in, one, two, three, four, and a big breath out, one, two, three, four. Feel the nice, warm blue relaxing all of your muscles in those areas. And then, I want you to imagine that color purple traveling over your head, your neck, your shoulders, and down your arms.

Imagine the pretty purple color traveling into your heart, your belly, your legs all the way down to your toes, making your whole body feel relaxed. Taking a deep breath in, one, two, three, four. And a big breath out, one, two, three, four. Feel the nice warm purple relaxing all of your muscles. And as that last color travels through your body, and the cloud gently floats you all the way down, back to your bed, back to your chair, back to the floor; remember that you can float back to this rainbow anytime that you need to. And as you're ending this meditation and moving on to something else, you can slowly wiggle your toes, wiggle your fingers, and take a breath in through your nose and out through your mouth.

And slowly, when you're ready, you can sit all the way back up. Great job. So that concludes our mindfulness activity of today. And we're going to segue into asking Scott how he felt doing that activity and if this is something that he might find useful to do with his kids. So Scott, I'm going to ask you, what are your initial impressions of that activity?

Host: So yeah, as you said, uh, I wasn't able to lay down to do this, but I'm seated in my podcaster chair with my feet firmly on the ground. And, unfortunately my kids are older. They're 16 and 21. So the likelihood of me getting them to do this with me, uh, you know, may be slim, but I can really see the value for moms and dads with younger kids.

And for me personally, uh, my daughter had a basketball game last night. We lost, it was a little bit stressful, even though it shouldn't be because it's, you know, just high school basketball.

Allison Geisking, APSW: Mmhmm.

Host: But I definitely woke up feeling sort of anxious a little bit about what had happened and now our conference record and so on. So for me, this was really perfect, you know, to be able to just take a moment to be sort of mindful and meditate and just kind of relax and get those thoughts out of my head, you know, and focus on the cloud and the rainbow and all of that. I think what I like about it the most is, sure, it might be ideal to lie on the floor or lie on the couch, but we can really do it anywhere, right?

As long as we can get our feet on the ground and maybe be able to close our eyes, you know, so I can't do this one while I'm driving probably, but I can kind of do it almost anywhere and I can see the immediate value just for me and I'm sure for listeners as well. There used to be, it was a commercial, you may be too young, but there was this commercial for Calgon, which was I think like, uh, bath soaps or something.

And the line in the commercial was Calgon, take me away. Right. While we were doing this meditation, it made me think of that. You know, I don't mean to do an ad for Calgon. I don't even know if they're still in business, but for me, it was an opportunity, which I don't often make time for, an opportunity to sort of let that thing take me away and close my eyes and do the deep breathing and, you know, you started with red, red's my favorite color.

So that immediately put a smile on my face, definitely really valuable and nice to just understand how simple this is. Right. And, give this to us to sort of take with us and take away to share with others, be they little kids or otherwise. So for me, really valuable. And I stayed awake. I told you I was a little bit sleepy this morning and I was going to force myself to stay awake. It's probably good that I wasn't on the floor. Uh, so for me, really valuable, really all good. I loved it.

Allison Geisking, APSW: Oh, wonderful. That's really wonderful to hear. I think you brought up a really good point that I probably should have said in the beginning that, you know, this is definitely an activity that you would do with your younger kids. You know, I would say 13, 14 is kind of cusping on the edge of whether or not they would be into it with the rainbow and the toes and whatnot.

But really you noticed the benefit right away and I don't know how old you are, Scott, and I'm not going to try to guess. But, no, you noticed the benefit just by regulating your breath and how helpful that was to bring you down in that moment. And it does kind of wake you up a little bit. When you're breathing deeply like that, doesn't it?

Host: Yeah. And you know, my Apple products are always reminding me to take a breath. You know, and I've learned over time that maybe they mean that literally, but I think they mean it more sort of figuratively or sort of take a breath with your mind, if you will. I don't want to get too, fancy here, but that idea, that notion of just maybe if you can, close your eyes, and sort of take five minutes to get away from the world, clear your mind, float on the cloud, feel the rainbow around you and in you and, some pretty heady stuff. And for some people, you know, maybe people who are really literal, you know, maybe this doesn't work, but for me, I'm able to sort of let go and be a little less literal and more you know, sort of ethereal and just, you know, kind of let myself float a little bit. And I hope that's what it does for listeners as well, is that it's just that reminder that sometimes we need five minutes for ourselves. And if we can share that with our kids or other family members, you know, even better.

Allison Geisking, APSW: Mm hmm. Absolutely. I think that, like I said earlier, it's one of the most beneficial things you can teach your kids is how to navigate life. And sometimes that's going back to our roots. And what I mean by that is, you know, when you look at a newborn child and you see how they're breathing. They're doing a lot of belly breathing, and we forget that as adults.

We do a lot of shorter breaths that are higher up in our chest. And so when we engage more of that root breathing, that belly breathing, it can really bring us back to that comforting root, where we originally were supposed to be doing this throughout our life, so.

Host: It's so funny you mentioned that because some of my favorite moments as a dad were just standing in my kids rooms when they were babies, when they were sleeping, and just listening to them breathe. You know, and as you say, how deeply they were breathing and how peaceful they were, and you know there was nothing running through their minds.

You know, they were just being awesome little babies. Some of my happiest moments were just standing there, watching them and listening to them breathe. And unfortunately as adults, we don't either have the time or make the time. And I think that's really what it comes down to is trying to make that time for ourselves and for others and in whatever form mindfulness is to someone to just make time for that and just to try to close our eyes and get away and float in the clouds, which is an awesome place to be. It made me, while we were doing this, it made me think of the movie Up. And, yeah, and just, just how much I love that movie and I love that concept of, sort of like the sky's the limit, for all of us, really.

And, you know, again, this is, you have to suspend a little disbelief, you know, and you have to allow yourself to kind of immerse yourself in this and let go of some things, but if you're able to do that, and I was today, so credit to you, of course, it was great.

Allison Geisking, APSW: Wonderful. Yeah, definitely trusting that process for sure.

Host: Well, Alison, this was really fun today and beneficial for me, and I'm sure it was for listeners as well. And we're going to continue this series on mindfulness. So give us a little preview. What are we going to do next time?

Allison Geisking, APSW: Yeah, absolutely. We are going to be looking at a body scan mindfulness, which is a little similar to what we did today. But, we're going to be looking more internally at our souls, at our bodies, and what our bodies are trying to tell us in any given moment.

Host: Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. They're always talking to us. They're always telling us something and it'd be great to have you here and do this together. And, you know, of course we hope listeners got all the way to the end, but if they at least got the rainbow meditation part of this, something that they can take away with them, of course, they can always, beauty of podcasts, they can come back and listen again and listen over and over if they like you know, do it with you and hear your voice and all of that.

So I look forward to continuing this series. We hope that this is beneficial and sort of warming and uplifting and everything we want it to be for everybody. It certainly is for me. Thank you so much. We'll talk again soon.

Allison Geisking, APSW: Thank you.

Host: And for more information, go to uplandhillshealth.org. And if you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social channels. This is the Inspire Health Podcast from Upland Hills Health. I'm Scott Webb. Stay well.