Creating Calmer Classrooms

Deliberately living with more “ease and flow” starts at home, right within your own heart. When you prioritise this state, your whole day (and life) changes for the better. You are more in control than you realise, especially when it comes to establishing your own resilient heart rate in coherence.

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Since the late 1980’s, The Institute of HeartMath has validated through scientific research, techniques, tools and technology for you to self-regulate and deliberately create your optimal heartbeat. When your heart rate variability is incoherent many health issues can develop.

How are you sleeping at present? Are you eating deliberately? Do you move and exercise your body as you’d like? Are you just too tired or too busy making excuses? When you’re not in sync, you may feel like you don’t have enough time to fit in the activities you love or to prepare
nourishing food. By taking a pause and resetting your heart rate variability, you will pay yourself back in time, energy and overall health mentally, emotionally and physically.

Take a moment and reflect on how you communicate with people you care about. Are you sharing your presence or just delivering a lecture? When we resort to ranting at others we are sliding down the slippery slope of “accumulative stress,” which leads to fatigue and even burnout
when left unmanaged. Taking care of your own stress before you support others is paramount. So how do we do this?

The clip included here (www.lynnettechadwick.com/about) has an effective technique that has been utilised in classrooms at the start of the day. Children can reset into this high performance state throughout their day at roll call, during exams, sports, for effective communication or social skills and when dealing with challenges.

When teachers utilise the technique they’re able to manage situations in the classroom more effectively and say that it can take as little as 15 seconds for them to reset.

Children usually learn the techniques very swiftly, as they have had less time habitually “reacting” to life than adults. They are able to self-regulate and take control of their nervous system, thereby shifting out of the fight and flight response deliberately.

What is the alternative? Children clearly need techniques to navigate the moment and beyond. Teaching techniques for self-regulation when socialising, during exams, when trying something new and dealing with the emotional roller coaster of life is essential.

Emotional Intelligence can permeate so many areas of their lives and their futures will be filled with more opportunity, flexibility, care and courage. “Happiness in a Heartbeat” is possible when a few precious moments are taken to teach the technique and how to integrate it for daily use.

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Lynette Chadwick


Lynnette Chadwick
Lynnette Chadwick is a speaker and educator passionate about our ability to transform stress and pressure on the go. During the early 1990s Lynnette worked in schools facilitating Personal Development and later she worked for the Australian Red Cross in Sydney as an educator for young woman who were pregnant or parenting. Lynnette now runs HeartMath Training in Schools here in NZ and runs facilitates sessions online internationally as well.
More information can be found at: www.lynnettechadwick.com