By JULIE CARLE
BG Independent News
Mindfulness training is part of everyday life at the Juvenile Residential Center of Northwest Ohio to help the youth develop appropriate emotion-regulation skills. A new partnership between the center and the Wood County Parks District is expanding that training to help the youths connect mindfulness and nature.
Emma Taylor, a park naturalist, shared her trauma-informed mindfulness training with 38 residents during an inside session at the center and with 10 youths in a nature setting along the Portage River at Pemberville’s William Henry Harrison Park.
“This was a way for us to have someone outside of our treatment staff teach them and show them how to develop those skills,” said JRCNWO Director Montana Crawford. After seeing an article in the BG Independent News about Taylor’s mindfulness work with the park district, he thought bringing in someone from outside to work with the residents would be good.
“Being from the outside, I came in and told them, ‘I’m someone who does mindfulness and this is what it looks like for me.’ We talked about the benefits and then we did an activity,” Taylor said.
At the center, they did “Find My Rock,” where they closed their eyes and created a mental picture of the rock in their hands before Taylor took each of their rocks. They then had to find their rock.
“There is nature awareness (to the activity), but there is also mindfulness involved with it,” she said. “They did great” at finding their rocks.
For the youths who participated at the park, the experience was even more profound.
Taylor said they were excited to be outside and explore. She started with a meditation to encourage them to be calm, followed by a walk in the park and ended with another meditation.
“A lot of the time basic mindfulness practice focuses on the body. It is one of the easier things to note. We all have a body and can bring our awareness back to it. It’s a good space to create,” Taylor said.
She had them listen to the sounds and smells around and anything going on in their minds. “I told them if anything was bothering them, it was a good time to put it down, and then at the end, they chose to pick it back up if they wanted or leave it at the park,” she said.
Part of the class is building skills for internal awareness, awareness of nature and creating a space where people can watch what’s happening within.
“We are animals and a part of nature. If we watch the nature around us,we see how nature has all these places where rest occurs. In our fast-paced society, we don’t always have that rest space, so we have to carve it out ourselves,” she told them.
At the park, the river was shallow enough that the participants could sit on a rock in the river and let the water flow around them. They were able to find their own space, Taylor said. The fish darted away when they first sat down, but once they were there for a while and had found their calm space, the fish came back. “There is just delight at seeing nature come back in around you,” she said.
She said several of the youth expressed how calm they felt after the exercises.
After the park walk, Crawford said several of the youth told him that sitting in the river and examining the sounds and their surroundings was their favorite part. The walk was something they could do in the community as an experience to become more in tune with themselves.
“Additionally, having different exercises that were engaging and helpful in calming their thoughts was good,” Crawford said. They also appreciated the general education Taylor shared about the plants, insects and other information about the nature around them.
The last meditation, which focused on spreading ‘love and kindness’ to themselves, encouraged them to focus on their positive thoughts and to utilize those phrases when talking to others who may be struggling.
Many of the boys recognized that using mindfulness on a daily basis will help them become more accepting of negative feelings of anxiety, stress or worry. “Overall they noted the tools they learned will help them become more independent in their ability to manage difficult emotions,” Crawford said.
One youth said the training would help him “get out of the grey area of life” and truly understand how he feels. Another resident said, “It will help me find some peace inside.”
“We have already seen a reduction in negative behaviors since the facility implemented daily mindfulness, which assists them in making progress. We hope going forward, they take these skills home with them to help them to be well adjusted in their home communities,” Crawford said. “This is the first time that we have been able to partner with the parks district, but we hope to continue doing similar work with Emma going forward.
