The Hidden Energy of The Classroom
We can’t think our way out of a bad mood, an angry outburst or a flood of tears. Using logic alone to turn things around is often very difficult even for adults and especially for young children. Using energy is a powerful and often much quicker way to shift back into a state of coherence.
Introduction
I would like to start by saying that I am not a classroom teacher. While I have spent time in the classroom as an aide and have worked with children of various ages in other capacities in the school setting, I am Resonance Repatterning practitioner. I have too much respect for those that work with our children every day in the classroom to pretend to understand everything that goes on. This resource is not about teaching. It’s about understanding the unseen energy that’s happening individually and collectively. It’s about opening awareness to how the energy of each student, each teacher, and their environment interact to create a holistic experience.
In this article we look at what causes students and teachers to lose coherence in themselves or in a group and simple exercises to shift back into coherence . These wonderful tools help children calm down, focus, express themselves, feel less anxious and foster a sense of belonging in the classroom.
Enjoy!
What is Energy?
Defining energy is both complex and quite simple. We’ve all “felt” energy when we interact with someone that might be very upset or angry, or on the other extreme very happy and excited. We may feel spontaneously “better” after interacting with someone or a group. After dealing with a difficult or negative person you may feel emotionally depleted or physically exhausted..
In addition to other people affecting our energy, spaces also have a tremendous impact. How do you feel when you walk into a room that’s organized, free of clutter and harmonious in color, design and function? How do you feel when you walk into a space that is completely cluttered and disordered? After a walk surrounded by nature?
Most of the time when we first learn about energy it is most easily understood in the physical sense. I am “tired” or I “have lots of energy”. And as adults, it’s usually something we’d like more of.
We understand that certain things affect our energy, such as food, exercise, rest, our morning (and maybe even all day) cup of coffee. But energy is much more than what our physical body.
At its very foundation, energy is frequency. Everything is vibrating at its own resonant frequency. And these frequencies are interacting with each other all the time. It is this interaction and then point of choice about the next steps we take that determines our experience.
The transfer of energy between people and our surroundings is continuous and when you learn to communicate in a language that your energy system understands you can literally reboot your system. You can affect the energy of the group. You can affect the energy of one student. Your lessons are more impactful, students understand what they are learning much better, they have more joy and the class’s positive energy is amplified.
These energy shifts can be subtle or they can be quite dramatic.
Understanding Emotional Dysregulation
Emotional dysregulation happens at any age where someone experiences intense emotions they struggle to manage effectively. It's often linked to childhood trauma, which can alter brain function, making the emotional response system overly sensitive. This hypersensitivity can lead to a heightened and prolonged fight/flight/freeze response. In teachers, such dysregulation can significantly affect their interaction with students and their overall classroom management.
Symptoms and How This Shows Up
The symptoms of emotional dysregulation are multifaceted, involving both physical and emotional aspects:
Physical Symptoms: These can include an adrenaline rush, numbness in parts of the body, and a general sense of being physically off-balance.
Emotional Symptoms: It’s not uncommon for teachers to experience a range of intense emotions such as panic, anger, or detachment. They might also feel an overwhelming urge to flee a situation or to placate everyone around them to avoid conflict.
Student Triggers and Signs
Understanding triggers is crucial in managing emotional dysregulation. Triggers vary widely among but often include situations that evoke feelings of vulnerability, criticism, or rejection. Recognizing these triggers is the first step towards managing them.
Physical Cues: Teachers can observe physical signs like clenched fists, tense posture, or restlessness which might indicate a chakra imbalance leading to frustration or anger.
Behavioral Changes: Sudden changes in behavior, such as withdrawal or aggression, can be indicative of emotional distress.
Classroom Impact
In the classroom, being in a dysregulated state may lead to struggles with consistent and effective classroom management. The ability to make rational decisions and problem-solve can be significantly impaired, ~ This can create a ripple effect, impacting students' emotional states and learning abilities.
The Importance of Self-Regulation
For teachers, learning to self-regulate is key to managing dysregulation. It involves techniques to snap out of the triggered response and return to a calm, rational state of mind. Self-regulation not only benefits the teacher but also creates a more stable and conducive learning environment for students.
Emotional First Aid Techniques will be coming soon!
A Word About Groups
Whether you’re 2 or 62, it’s important to feel a sense of belonging and connection to those around you. Many of us freely admit feeling nervous or a sense of anxiety when joining a new group, even if we are excited.
The classroom is one “tribe” or group of many. Students and teachers also have their own family tribes, spiritual tribes, hobby tribes, sport tribes, national and ethnic tribes and the greater school community just to name a few.
When our energies are in sync with one another, there is harmony and you can easily feel the energy is amplified. A sense of connection, higher learning, creativity, and expansion occurs. Disharmony occurs when the group is out of sync and can feel like the energy is chaotic, stagnant, heavy and scrambled.
Group dysregulation can occur in the classroom for many reasons: the first day of class, a disruptive student, a disoriented teacher, transitions between classes and activities or the various energies of each individual student silently crashing like waves crashing into each other.
In a simple, but fascinating experiment using applied kinesiology, we can test the energy of a group of students as a baseline. We can then retest as a teacher reads from a book to the group. It doesn’t matter if the instructor is reading the most exciting or inspirational story they’ve ever heard. If the teacher’s energy is scrambled or dysregulated, the entire group of students also loses energy. Comprehension and learning become difficult and the group starts to entrain with the dysregulated energy of the teacher.
Before diving into group exercises, it’s important to be aware that students, particularly younger students, may not have had a choice to join “your tribe”. They haven’t actively decided that this is the group where they feel most comfortable. And when each student walks through your door, you may have no idea what has happened in the 90 minutes or 30 seconds prior to their arrival. You’re probably so in tune with each student that you can get a sense with just a glimpse of how each student is feeling.
Each day every student, and you bring a different energy into the classroom that affects the collective experience.
The following exercises are specifically designed to create a sense of community and togetherness and realign the energy of the group.
Starting the Day
Every morning you probably follow a routine just as your students do to prepare for the day. The possibilities of variants that can occur are really quite endless energetically and by the time students reach your classroom, every morning is really a new and unique energetic soup.
When my daughter was younger, she was very focused on particular items to help her feel secure. It could be the sweater she wore every day or the same pair of shoes. But if any of her special items were misplaced as she was getting ready she would fly into a rage that affected the energy of everyone in the house and the start to her day at school. Not understanding energy work at that time, the downward spiral often continued into the car, on the way to school and even in the grumpy slam of the car door. That disorganized energy and fight or flight state is a chaotic swirl of energy entering your classroom (times 28 students)
Disorientation in individuals and the group can really occur at any time. There are situations where this might be more likely to occur:
During transitions. Between classes or activities. After activities that are particularly fun into learning that might be less enjoyable. After snacks or lunch.
Rotating classes - If you are teaching older students, you have classes rotating in and out throughout the day that are undoubtedly carrying the energy from the previous class, good or bad, right into your classroom.
Routine disruptions
Toward the end of the day
Discussions that may prompt emotional responses in individuals
Setting boundaries
Disagreements/Conflict
Starting the day in an energetically organized way, or being oriented is very helpful individually and to the group. When students are oriented they are more relaxed, focused and balanced, In a disoriented state things can feel really hard and exhausting. Insecurities can creep in and constrict learning and understanding.
Quick and Easy Ways to Start the Day with Heart Brain Coherence
Please note the following were developed for Pre-K, Kindergarten and Up to About 3rd Grade.
Play calming instrumental music. Music is actually one of the quickest ways to shift back into a coherent regulated state. I recommend instrumental music without words for this shift. The music does not need to be loud or disruptive. It’s something there, but not distracting.
Help students shift into a relaxed body. When students are walking in from a chaotic morning and you’re ready to start the day, they may be stuck in a fight or flight response and are not able to really pay attention to what is going on around them.
Doing a short series of physical exercises to shift into a relaxed state and to stimulate right and left-brain coherence is one of the easiest ways to do this. Doing this WITH your students will allow you to start your day in a regulated coherent state as well!
Porcupine
Porcupine reactivity is a form of reactivity that sends energies outward. Porcupine is very good to do anytime you feel reactive upset, not in control. It can also be used for students after PE or recess where so much energy is going outward to monitor the environment.
Place both hands at the crown of the head, as if grasping the edges of a sock that is inside out. (Note: if you are literal minded, cut off the toe of the sock so it is just a tube with both ends open.)
Breathe IN and pull both hands up to full extension above the head.
Breathe OUT and pull each hand out and downward in an arc (curved like a heart around the body) and tack the ends of the “sock” to the ground.
Grab the other ends of the tube, and with your IN breath, pull the “sock” up, bowing out with your hands
With an OUT breath, tack the ends to the crown of your head
Exaggerated Cross Crawl
Harmonize energy think clearly, feel more balanced. Good if kids are tired for no reason or unmotivated
Lift right arm and left leg at the same time. Switch to opposite arm and leg. If you are able try exaggerating the movement and use a swing of the arm across midline of body to opposite side of body. Repeat for a minute.
Twisted Pretzel
Can help with stuttering dyslexia, learning challenges, focus, concentration
Stand tall. Bring both arms in front of you and cross wrists. Turn palms facing each other cross one arm on top of the other. Clasp hands and turn inside out. Take a few deep breaths. You can also cross your ankles. After a few breaths take your arms and stretch straight overhead and then bring them down slowly by the sides of the body. Pretend they are big beautiful wings.
Tame the Transitions
By creating coherence in the energy field each time you have transitions, you can lessen the impact of so much coming at young children. Here’s a quick and easy sequence that’s excellent for grounding and calming. While seemingly simple, it’s actually connecting several energy channels that will help bring the overall energy into alignment. Have the class do this together.
I am connected to the Heavens - Reach way up to the sky above with your fingertips together in a diamond shape.
And this is my temple (use another word if that doesn’t feel right). Bring hands on top of your head.
I am wise and smart. Touch hands to middle forehead
I love myself and others. Touch your heart.
I am calm and safe. Touch your belly button
I am connected to the earth. Smooth hands down the outside of legs and touch the ground
And the earth is connected to me. Bring hands straight up the midline of the body and land on the heart.
Calming a Student Who’s Having an Emotional Outburst.
Acknowledge the feeling while nodding your head yes slowly. Nodding your head yes is a nonverbal cue that lets your student now you’ve heard them. Nodding your head yes has a calming and grounding effect on both you AND the student you are talking to. It is important to nod slowly, especially if the student is angry or upset.
Do one of the following modalities. While each looks very simple and you may not SEE anything happening, energy IS shifting. Pick one to two at most and give it a bit of time to settle. In most cases more is NOT more and you run the risk of overloading the energy system. Think about how you may feel when someone tells you to do 10 things all at once. There’s no difference with energy work. Go slow, give it time to integrate and shift.
PALMING. Palming is easy to do and can be used for deep emotional and mental relaxation. This can be especially beneficial if a child is overstimulated, mentally tired.
How to: Place palms over both eyes and breathe deeply. Relax there without any light coming through.
CIRCLES. Circles are a physical way to align the energy system.
How to: Standing up, make circles on the right side of your body slowly with your right hand, then switch directions. Make circles on the left side of your body using your left hand, then switch directions. Make circles overhead like you're tracing a plate in the sky. Switch directions. Make circles behind your back in both directions. Make smaller circles in front of your heart. If you see students yawning this is a good sign!
SNS BODY SHAKEOUT. The sympathetic nervous system shake out releases tension from the mind body and emotions. It is particularly helpful after a stress, or upset. Animals do this naturally. If an animal senses it is in danger and manages to escape successfully, it will roll shake or tremble to release the stress from your system and help return to a relaxed body state.
How to: Start by shaking wrists vigorously. Now shake both your wrists and elbows. Add the shoulders into the shaking. Shake out your chest and hips. Bounce and move the knees. Shake out your whole body. To complete lean forward by bending from the hips and shaking out your jaw shoulders and arms. Let your mouth hang open. Slowly straighten from the hips and take a breath.
CALMING CROSS OVERS. This position helps release emotional stress and integrates both right and left sides of the brain. This is good to do when students feel upset, stressed, worried, or even before a test. This can be very beneficial for behavioral issues.
How to: Cross one ankle over the other. Place hour hands in front of you with the backs of your hands touching. Still with the hands back to back place one wrist on top of the other so your palms now face each other. Palms facing, interlock your fingers. Bring the two clasped hands down and in a half circled towards your chest so your interlocked hands rest on your chest and your elbows are relaxed against your ribs. Close your eyes and breathe slowly. Feel the tension releasing .Uncross your ankles and place fingertips together. Allow your fingertips and hands to move in any way they want to.
GROUNDING. Grounding is particularly important for any age. During the winter months we lose a lot of our natural grounding because we aren’t running barefoot on the ground and are not outside nearly as much.
How To: If a student has the opportunity to take their shoes and socks off and stand on the grass or play in the grass, this has a very calming effect on the system. Gardening activities and getting hands in the dirt also has the same effect. Sometimes this is not possible. Grounding can be done in this case by finding and focusing on one object in the classroom and noticing everything about that object. For older students, you can use the 5 things I see in the classroom, 4 things I hear, 3 things I touch, 2 things I smell and 1 thing I feel.
SPINNING. Spinning releases the fight or flight response so the thinking brain can be activated. It’s best to start with one or two spins and gradually increase. Start spinning very slowly - although children often spin very quickly!
How To: Stand straight with arms outstretched at shoulder height. Both palms should be open with your left palm facing downward and right hand upward Spin in a full circle slowly counterclockwise.
STOMP STOMP BLOW. Stomp stomp blow is a great active grounding exercise that helps bring them back into the present moment.
How To: Stomp the left food then the right and exhale deeply. Continue the pattern of stomp stomp blow and blow away all the angry or sad feelings. On each exhale see if your student can send the angry or sad feelings out and transform them into hearts.
PULLING FINGERS. Each of the five fingers are associated with energy centers. By holding massaging and pulling fingers gently we can activate and balance the energy flow. Excellent to do when students feel frustrated nervous or unsettled.
How To: Hold each finger firmly at the base joint and pull. Repeat for each finger
GOBBLEDYGOOK. Gobbledygook is a funny modality that has a balancing effect on left and right hemispheres of the brain. Words activate the left side of the brain, whereas the gobbledygook - non word sounds and rhythms activate the right hemisphere that is associated with relationship creativity imagination and feelings.
How To: Simply start talking to your student in non words that sounds like a far away undiscovered language. Vary the rhythm and loudness. Just let whatever sounds come out unfold. Your student responds in their very own gobbledygook language.
SCISSORS. Children do this one quite naturally and it's a helpful simple exercise to calm them.
How To; Have them lie on their stomach with chin cupped in hands, knees apart and bent upward. Drop your feet outward and then bring them toward one another crossing marking a scissor going back and forth. This helps the energies cross from one side of the body to the other while aligning hips, spine, nervous system and brain.
FIGURE 8’s. Figure 8’s are particularly calming to the nervous system.
How To. Find all the ways your student can make a figure 8. Whether it’s drawing it on paper, tracing on a piece of paper, drawing in the air both big and small all around the body.
TAKING DOWN THE DRAGON. This is excellent for releasing excess energy and need to ground.
How To: Stand placing your open hands on your thighs with fingers spread. Breathe deepy and slowly making a haaaaaa like a dragon roaring. Imagine the anger/fear/sadness/worry etc dissolving with each haaaaaaa.
Inhale as you circle your arms widely over your head until the fingertips and thumbs meet. Again exhale with the haaaa sound and bring your thumbs to the top of your head. Remain here while you exhale.
Continue the inhale and exhale with the haaaaaa sound for the following contact points. Middle of forehead, heart, belly button and end with your hands at the original starting position of your thighs.
