What is the anti-stress vaccine for children?

By: Dr. Cecilia Schwartz-Baruj

Stress is one of the pandemics that we are suffering from in this 21st century society. Yomu is the anti-stress vaccine because stress occurs when a person faced with a challenge is not able to properly solve it, causing a pile-up of challenges.

Stress is brought on by the lack of adequate coping strategies to challenging life situations. Yomu is the anti-stress vaccine because it provides people with tools early on. Children are taught to recognize their emotions, to manage them, and to express them in an appropriate way in their family and school environment.

When the child acquires a behavior and makes it a habit from an early age, it is a tool that is available to them and serves them throughout their life. Faced with an emotion that hurts them, they have to breathe, relax or release the tension. This resource is stored in their procedural memory and their unconscious mechanisms, so that when a situation in adulthood arises, the response is already learned, the neural pathway is developed, and the appropriate behavior for a challenging situation can take place.

The Yomu tools are learned by children and the parents also use the techniques and strategies. It is very important that the family practices them and reinforces what the child is learning. It is essential that the parents share these practices, because the family bonds over a way of life and a management of daily experiences that is transformative for everyone.

Amongst all the techniques and resources of the Yomu System, I can say that the most useful are exercising mindfulness through breathing, and becoming aware of what we are feeling in each part of the body. This allows us to be much more present and active in relationship to ourselves and the environment.

The practice of Yomu Mindfulness is brain exercise that stimulates and develops new neural connections. It enables areas that wouldn't learn efficiently without a high capacity for attention. 

Being able to control and sustain attention and focus levels at our will is a fundamental tool. Breathing is the key because it allows us to focus on something specific, which is the attention of the breath in the body.

Our body is the most concrete and pragmatic thing that we have and thus allows us to control and observe our thoughts. By bringing our awareness into the body, we take space from our reactions, thoughts, and feelings, and are able to control how we act in relationship to the uncertainty of an intangible world such as that of thoughts.

If we add anxiety relief through movement, dancing, jumping, expanding, and stretching to this powerful set of tools that Yomu provides, this allows us to make flexible not only our body but cognitively the whole being.

By making muscles more flexible, our way of being in the world also becomes more flexible. Yomu music and songs do that!

Do you want more ideas? Download 30 Tips to Cultivate a Mindful Home here.

Cecilia Schwartz-Baruj is a Graduate and Professor in Psychology. Master in Neuropsychology. Yomu Specialist in Neuroscience.