What does the Healing Tree Project do?

Introduce and teach mindfulness techniques for use and practice to decrease stress, emotional pain, job burnout and to increase well-being and happiness through:

  • Mindful Breathing as formal and informal practices, to increase body awareness and self awareness, leading to emotional regulation and attention regulation.

  • Mindful Movement as a method of cultivating a mind-body connection while gently improving strength and flexibility in attitudes of body and mind, including but not limited to attitude of acceptance, non-judging, flexibility nonresistance, receptivity and non-striving, among others.

  • Informal and Formal Meditation Practices as paths to experiencing deeper qualities of calm, clarity and confidence in the present moment and as ways to discover rest and restoration, and

  • Practices to Increase + Encourage Self-Awareness as paths to enrich and nourish our relationship to ourselves and others.

  • Encourage the development of self-awareness, the core component of emotional intelligence.

  • Cultivate the skills necessary to improve flexibility and wise responsiveness in the present moment as situations arise

  • To develop self-care skills, to promote balance, happiness and productivity, to deepen the resiliency and self-care resources of a healthier work force

  • Teach skills around stress management and reduction and emotional regulation and calm.

  • Teach practices that cultivate empathy, compassion and self-compassion.

  • Provide a welcoming space within which to begin learning and practicing mindfulness

What is mindfulness meditation?

Meditation is classically used as the primary vehicle to train in mindfulness. Meditation provides a way to both directly encounter our current attentional habits and to learn ways to more productively gather and hold our attention. For thousands of years, mindfulness meditation has been practiced to deepen and develop our natural capacities for sustained attention, mental clarity and insight, in order to act with wise and appropriate responsiveness in the immediacy of the present moment. Mindfulness training meditations are centered around increasing awareness of the body, thoughts, emotions and physical sensations.

What Are the Proven Benefits of Mindfulness?

Mindfulness improves and cultivates emotional intelligence and self-awareness. It improves our capacity to more effectively cope with challenging and distressing emotional situations. It also:

  • Improves our ability to focus, pay attention and tune out distractions whether we are 7 or 97!

  • Improves memory and executive attention skills and promotes rational decision-making.

  • Cultivates Compassion, Altruism and Self-Compassion

  • Supports well-being and happiness in relationships

  • Changes structures in the brain associated with learning, empathy, self-awareness, body awareness and emotional regulation.

  • Boosts our immune systems

  • Lessens depression and anxiety

  • Encourages healthy eating and helps people lose weight

  • Reduces symptoms associated with PTSD

  • Increases positive emotions, decreases negative ones & reduces stress

  • Supports healthcare providers to cope with job stress & burnout and to connect with patients, improving job satisfaction and well-being

  • Improves our parenting skills and “parenting-job satisfaction”