Foundations of Mindful Living  

This course has been designed to assist you in developing the skills necessary to reduce stress and step back from your non-stop, problem solving and “getting things done” routine. Our research based techniques can improve your sense of physical and mental well-being, increase mental clarity and help you cultivate peace and happiness in your life. 

• Decrease stress and anxiety
• Increase clarity
• Cultivate empathy and compassion for yourself and others
• Enhance relationship satisfaction
• Improves sleep
• Diminish emotional reactivity
• Deconstruct challenging patterns and habits
• Improve focus and concentration
• Understand the science related to mindfulness practices

Develop nurturing habits rather than feeling progressively drained from wrestling with recurring thoughts and strong emotions. Incorporate purposeful pauses in meaningful ways to cope with stress and reactive patterns. When practiced regularly, these simple skills can encourage us to see the world with greater clarity and compassion. 

Incorporating mindfulness based practices into our lives has been shown to positively influence our health and happiness. It is more than a good idea or a technique. Richard Davidson from the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at UW-Madison, has demonstrated through brain imaging, that mindfulness promotes stress reduction, promotes increased happiness, increases compassion for oneself and others, and reduces anxiety, depression and pain. 

This training employs concepts from Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction and Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy, both of which are used in businesses, hospitals and schools across the United States. It also incorporates strategies based on Mark Williams and Danny Penman’s book "Mindfulness: An Eight Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World”. 

Growing Minds Curriculum Training    

This class is designed for those who have taken one of our other Growing Minds mindful awareness classes and wish to further their work with students in school, home or therapeutic settings. Instruction is provided for the Growing Minds' curriculum, delivery and implementation.

The Growing Minds curricula is rooted in the areas of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making, the 5 elements of CASEL standards.  All lessons are age appropriate, practical for classrooms, and easily applied in everyday school situations by both teachers and student mentors.

The curricula are broken into 3 developmental groupings: kindergarten through second grades, third through eighth grades, and high school and older. Each lesson is approximately 15-20 minutes long and incorporates guided experiential activities and reflective dialogue amongst the teacher and the students.  Trained adults will be able to readily integrate each lesson’s concept into their classroom schedule to guide and manage students before transitions, after interruptions, before testing and other desired times. 

An in-depth understanding of the related brain science that supports the curriculum will also be presented. Upon completion, the essential characteristics of a "mindful" classroom or home will be developed. Participants will have the opportunity to receive and work with the curriculum and our trained and certified instructors.

Graduate Credit Available!

Our Instructors:

Susan Lubar Solvang  is the President and Founder of Growing Minds. Susan recognized that developing a keen sense of awareness was the most valuable skill she had encountered. With a desire to share these experiences with school age children, including the opportunity to experience their learning in a safe and trusting environment, Susan founded Growing Minds. She has trained with the most established programs, including Mindfulness in Schools Project .b and .b Foundations, Mindful Schools, Learning to Breathe, UCSD Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Teacher training and Mindful Self-Compassion with Kristen Neff to develop the programs that would be useful to Milwaukee area schools.

Susan received her undergraduate degree from the University of Vermont in Communication and Studio Art and her graduate degree at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University (1987), preparing her with the background needed to found a non-profit organization. In addition, working at three big name companies, Xerox Corporation, Prudential Life Insurance and Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance, Susan developed the day-to-day business skills and expertise to develop training programs for her staff and consistent programs for schools.

Anna Silberg received her Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction with an emphasis in urban education from the University of Wisconsin. Her research focused on hte labeling of "risk factors" for urban students, and how curriculum, instruction, teachers, schools and envioronmental factors affect a student's performance. For nine years, she taught as an Assistant Professor at National-Louis University, where her research and expertise extended to teacher action research, authentic assessment and instruction, curriculum development, educational foundations and urban issues, and teacher mentorship. Anna's professional experience in education began in 1993 as a high school social studies teacher, before and after school program director, and summer camp director in the Boulder Valley. While getting her Master's degree, she participated in building a school-within-a-school for "at risk" students.

Anna is trained in the Mindful Schools curriculum, Learn to Breathe, and Mindfulness in Schools Project .b. She has also been trained in MBSR-Teen, MBSR-Adult and Mindful Self-Compassion with Kristen Neff through the University of San Diego Medical School's Center for Mindfulness. She has a strong interest in trauma-informed care.