February 2018

One of my favorite things about meditation is how uncomplicated the practice is. When my life gets hectic or my mind feels overrun with racing thoughts, the simplicity of meditation can be a huge relief. There’s a scientific basis for this feeling: Meditation reduces activity in parts of the brain associated with mind-wandering and unhappiness, according to a 2011 study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . When I teach meditation, I try to keep my instructions concise so as...

When Dustin Gordon's high school invited juniors and seniors to meet with recruiters from colleges and universities, a handful of students showed up. A few were serious about the prospect of continuing their educations, he said, "But I think some of them went just to get out of class." In his sparsely settled community in the agricultural countryside of southern Iowa, "there's just no motivation for people to go" to college, says Gordon, who's now a senior at the University of Iowa. "When...

How a person responds to a difficult life event such as a death or divorce helps shape the development of their wisdom over time, a new study from Oregon State University suggests. For many, the difficult life event also served to disrupt their sense of personal meaning, raising questions about their understanding of their world. These disruptions ultimately lead to the development of new wisdom, said Carolyn Aldwin , director of the Center for Healthy Aging Research in the College of Public...

Red Flag Warning In weather-speak, a red flag warning is issued when conditions are ripe for fire combustion. Many law enforcement officials in Florida have described school shooter Nikolas Cruz as displaying all the “red flags” of a troubled youth, yet no one seemed to speak up enough to prevent the tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. This reflection extends writings I have recently done that describes trauma and traumatized systems as an invisible fire, an...

Peace4Tarpon has worked with University of Florida for several years now - specifically with the School of Public Health and Dr. Mark Hart's class on Public Health Communication. The subject of his Public Health Communications Master's level class for the past two semesters was Peace4Tarpon. He gave his students a chance to create marketing materials that would actually be implemented - a far cry from creating campaigns that might never see the light of day. We actually used the materials...

The “Haff-A-Buck” method of encouraging involvement. Dennis Haffron, When I began working as an adjunct at community college I was informed that part of what I would have to do would be not only to teach my subject, sociology, but also teach my students how to learn in a college setting. I needed to teach them to use the resources that were available to them, to think in terms of the content of my subject, and to act in a classroom like college students. I also had to show them that their...

One thing that we can do to fight the madness is to build ACEs and trauma informed knowledge on our campuses and pass it on.

A year after graduating from North Hollywood High School in 2013, family disputes pushed Michael Jaramillo to living on the streets. Sometimes he’d find relief, like when his friend invited him to stay with his parents for two weeks. Odd jobs in construction, moving services and retail netted him just shy of $800 a month and enough to swing hot meals and the occasional night at a hotel. During several episodes of homelessness totaling nine months he slept in laundromats, hospital waiting...

My very first experience with ACEs came from watching Nadine Burke Harris’ Ted talk (Burke Harris, How trauma affects health across a lifetime, 2014). I’ve just read her book The Deepest Well (Burke Harris, 2018) and it is obvious to me how much she said in her Ted talk that I did not fully understand. Her book is an example of how a prepared mind gets prepared for learning something new. It is a narrative organized sequentially in time. It starts well before she encountered ACEs and shows...

If I were asked by a survey to describe my experience with sexual assault in college, I would pinpoint two incidents, both of which occurred at or after parties in my freshman year. In the first case, the guy went after me with sniper accuracy, magnanimously giving me a drink he’d poured upstairs. In the second case, I’m sure the guy had no idea that he was doing something wrong. I had joined a sorority, and all my social circles were as sloppy, intense, and tribal as the Greek system—the...