The vision of Mindful Kindful YOUniversity is mindfulness education programs flourishing across each of our communities, with every community member having access to learning and practicing the essential life skills proven to potentiate well-being, happiness, and success throughout all stages of life.
After working with youth for over 40 years, including special education, Dee DiGioia founded Mindful Kindful YOUniversity (MK YOU) to offer mindfulness-based social-emotional learning enrichment programs intentionally designed to address the challenges youth, and adults, face in school, and in life, which interfere with learning/working, relationships, and mental well-being.
These challenges include:
- managing difficult emotions (such as stress, anxiety, overwhelm, depression, anger),
- distraction, impulse control, difficulty focusing,
- and social-relational challenges.
MK YOU equips and teaches children, and adults, on how to cultivate the inner resources, or “superpowers,” for coping with these challenges. Our social-emotional learning programs provide a rich experience through learning and engaging in practices of mindfulness and movement grounded in science and backed by research to support mental and physical health and well-being while developing the essential life skills of emotional intelligence, or “Sm’Heart skills” — for responding more skillfully to life in the 21st Century!
Learn, practice, and grow skillfully with us!
Note – my own career is undergoing some shifts and transformation. The children’s programs are currently on hold.
Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and manage your emotions, and to understand and respond effectively to the emotions of others. These are internal and interpersonal skills that can be acquired and improved with practice. According to CASEL, the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, social and emotional learning is the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to:
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- understand and manage emotions,
- set and achieve positive goals,
- feel and show empathy for others,
- establish and maintain positive relationships,
- and make responsible decisions.
Emotions themselves aren’t bad or problematic.
Emotions only become problematic when you don’t know how to work with them and get stuck in the unhelpful ways of thinking and behaving. In our Explorers program we:
- Explore how to navigate, work with, and decrease the experience and impact of difficult or negative emotions (such as stress, anxiety, overwhelm, depression, anger). You can learn that experiences don’t have to overwhelm you and how to remain calm and centered through life’s ups and downs. This capacity to handle the stresses of day-to-day life increases resilience!
- At the same time, explore how to increase experiences of positive emotions (resulting in a greater relationship with self and others). “Sm’heart” skills (mind + heart) involves the understanding, awareness, and management of emotions, aligned with your positive core values and intentions when making decisions, problem solving, or creating, to achieve the very best version of YOU! With practice, mindfulness can help you learn to pause, without reacting in an automatic or habitual way, in order to create the space to allow the thinking mind to align with the heart. A moment of mindful awareness presents an opportunity for choosing how to move forward with presence, with compassion, clarity, curiosity, and with heart, by aligning with your core values. The outcome is aligned with who you want to BE in this world! In so doing, you make a positive impact on the world around you.
- In so doing, emotional intelligence grows as we increase resilience, happiness, and well-being which will help children flourish!
Having worked in the public school setting over the years, I believe mindfulness-based social emotional programs are the missing piece (and peace) in our schools and in our communities today. READ MORE: Mindfulness Skills for the 21st Century.
“Sm’Heart Skills”
are your inner resources for resilience and well-being.
