Blog
Mental Health Awareness Month
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, a time dedicated to raising awareness about the importance of mental well-being and reducing the stigma surrounding mental health conditions.
From Me to We: Safety and the Vagus Nerve
Social connection is an essential part of what it means to be human; to survive and to thrive. Our safety was rooted in tribes and extended families as we cared for and kept each other safe. That need for connection is hardwired into our bodies and...
The Physical Pain of Social Isolation: Social Pain Overlap Theory
Affiliation and the dACC When developing CalmConnect we contacted more than a hundred people: young, old, black, white, Asian, Hispanic... We asked them to come in and showed them a few movements. Some of them had great difficulty; almost no one...
Resilience
Research supports the idea that resilience is deeply interwoven with social connectedness. In order to learn new things and navigate our way socially through the world with ease, our nervous system must be calm and alert, and that only happens when...
I Know How You Feel: Mirror Neurons and Emotional Contagion
A small private school in New York uses CalmConnect several times each day in every one of their classrooms. Most of the students (ages 5-21) are quadriplegic or paraplegic; many are nonverbal. As we viewed pictures of the children, we were struck...
Epigenetics: It Goes On and On
Unfortunately, there are some wounds that time does NOT heal. Current findings show the emotional damage of trauma and other environmental factors/experiences not only affect the individual but can be inherited by their children and further...
Do You Hear What I Hear?
The Power of Music The movements in CalmConnect are synchronized to music, creating a compelling rhythmic practice that activates the PSNS into a calm but attentive state. CalmConnect’s music sets it apart, as each piece is uniquely identified with...
Calming the Nervous System from the Bottom Up
Beginning in the 1990’s, researchers began to look at the impact that fear and anxiety have on performance in the sports arena and on the battlefield. They asked these questions: Is the fear that you feel during a big game or while fighting in...
Brain Candy: The Dopamine Reward System
All of us have favorite songs. They might calm us, or fill us with energy, but there’s something about them.... When we reach our favorite part, it just feels so good! It’s the reason our favorite musicians just have to play ‘that song’ in concert...
Body Language Says More Than Words
CalmConnect’s philosophy and use of movement set it apart. There are many exceptional and varied movement practices, but as diverse as they are, they all share two things: They must be learned (by someone who will become the instructor) and they...