Whole School Wellness Begins with Teacher Wellbeing: Hooray for the Power of Play

This is the second of a 5-part sequential series by Dr. Greg Brigman, Ph.D. The series provides therapists who work in schools with a tested framework to develop a practical and engaging teacher wellbeing program. In Part 2, Dr. Brigman examines the importance to health of playing. Repeating reminders from the first lecture about the seven factors that we must engage to protect our telomeres, Dr. Brigman goes on to explain the idiosyncratic nature of response to stress. Neoteny is defined and experts from multiple fields are quoted to illustrate the importance of approaching life in “the spirit of the child”. Dr. Brigman leads you through the “Calm place stress management technique” and shows how to facilitate processing it afterwards. The power of positive reframing, the “Certificate of Playfulness”, and a tongue-in-cheek warning about coming down with the “Inner Peace Syndrome” – along with exercises to identify what brings you joy and then increase it – round out this light-hearted yet totally earnest presentation. The points about self-efficacy are repeated from the first lecture.