NEW DATE!

Webinar with Chris McKenna & Sam Himelstein

Description: The vast majority of books and curriculum materials produced on teaching mindfulness to young people focus on younger, pre-adolscent populations. This workshop will give participants an overview of the core skills and qualities needed to make mindfulness and emotional awareness practices accessible to youth in a probation, foster care or at-risk school setting.  Significant attention will also be paid to the roll of the facilitator in the delivery of successful mindfulness interventions to this population.  Our goal is to move beyond cooker-cutter curriculum and scripting and discuss real world approaches to making mindfulness practice relevant to at-risk youth using language and metaphors they can understand and connect with.  Research support and theoretical underpinnings will be presented briefly, and time will be allotted towards the end for question and answers. This session is especially relevant to professionals working with adolescents dealing with severe delinquency and conduct disorder.

Learning Objectives:
- Understand the core skills, attitudes and competencies required to deliver successful mindfulness interventions to contemporary, urban youth.
- Understand the role of the facilitator in working successfully with high-risk youth in school, foster care, juvenile detention and community settings.
- Become familiar with current efforts to implement mindfulness and emotional literacy interventions with various youth populations.

More info

Chris McKenna is the Executive Director of the Mind Body Awareness Project, an Oakland-based nonprofit that has pioneered the development of mindfulness-based interventions for at-risk youth. He manages the delivery of mindfulness-based rehabilitation programs in six different juvenile detention facilities and two aftercare sites in four different counties in California. In collaboration with Oakland Children’s Hospital, he is currently implementing a program which utilizes MBA’s curriculum as a formal medical prescription for anxiety and insomnia for incarcerated youth. He is also working with Stanford Medical School to measure the effects of retreat-style mindfulness practice for youth in long-term detention.  Chris has spent over a decade working with diverse communities suffering from high incidents of trauma and violence, including with two Amnesty International-sponsored projects that provided legal, medical, and psychosocial services to victims of torture and war crimes from over 20 countries.  Chris has a fifteen-year history with mindfulness meditation and has taught mindfulness practices to refugees with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorder and other severe mental health conditions. 

Sam Himelstein, Ph.D., is the Executive Director of Engaging The Moment, LLC. He provides individual, group, and family psychotherapy to high-risk and incarcerated adolescents at a non-profit organization in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. He is currently the Research Director at the Mind Body Awareness (MBA) Project, where he completed his doctoral dissertation titled, "A Mixed Methods Study of a Mindfulness-Based Intervention with Incarcerated Youth." He is also adjunct faculty at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology where he teaches classes on research methodology, incorporating mindfulness into psychotherapy. Sam facilitates workshops, trainings, and consultations related to mindfulness, working with at-risk youth.