What is Standing Strong?

What is STANDING STRONG? And why is early invention so important? 

Well, I am here to answer all these questions for you. 

At Brave Heart Wellbeing we have offered STANDING STRONG as one of our services for nearly two years, and let’s just say the connections and growth we have seen from our participants is nothing short of amazingggg!!

Standing Strong is an early intervention Holistic wellbeing program for young people.  This program is based around the three core strengths- Movement, Mindset and Mindfulness.  The program is designed to build self-confidence, boost self-esteem and build resilience. Unfortunately, life challenges arrive from an early age and continue throughout our life.  This program allows us time to break down each of these challenges and find healthy and sustainable coping strategies to add into our lives whenever we need them.  Let me break it down a little more for you.

So where does class begin?

STRONG BODY

After a quick catch up and hello we jump straight into our STRONG BODY section - this is movement.  What better way to arrive into a room and space than by shifting stuck energy and getting endorphins flowing, allowing the corner edges of our mouths to curl and smiles and laughter meet.  Our Strong Body section looks different each week - from yoga, dance, walks, circuits, games… the list goes on.  Our aim here is to show the participants the benefits of moving your body and also how many different ways we CAN move our bodies… it’s great fun too! To close this section and bring the energy back down a little we take a moment to go around the group and all say a ‘Body Posi’ - something we love about our bodies.  This is a great way to start to appreciate our bodies and what they do for us, unfortunately this is something we’re rarely taught when we are younger so it is such a powerful part of the program. 

 Imagine how your life would have looked if every day you told your body something you loved about it?

STRONG MIND

Next is STRONG MIND, where we start to look at mindset. Throughout the year, every week we cover a different topic, a life challenge as such, we get a little curious through discussion of what this means, the benefits, how it can be affected and most importantly how we can find coping strategies to bring us back up.   Here is a little taster for you – let’s say we are talking about building confidence:

Q: What does confidence mean to you?

Q: How does confidence make you feel?

Q: What things build our confidence?

Q: What does it feel like if we are lacking confidence?

Q: What takes away our confidence?

Q: Do you think we can get our confidence back when we lose it? How? Why?

Now that you have sparked this conversation with yourself, take what you learnt and found and allow it to support you as you grow closer towards yourself. 

We offer many topics ranging from anxiety and sadness, friendship changes and bullying to self-love and self-care, and everything and anything in between that can influence our self-confidence.  We always wrap up this session providing the participants with several top tips that are accessible and easy to add into our toolbox whenever we have these life challenges arise.

STRONG HEART

Before we know it, we have arrived at our final section of the workshop, STRONG HEART. 

This is our mindful space to move inward, where we can watch and soothe our inner world for a moment.  Through STRONG HEART we allow more time for presence, more time for calm and more time to be in the truth of the here and now.  We often spend so much time replaying the past and creating predictions of the future in our mind.  This is the time to completely give back to ourselves, something we can so often forget to do, but one of the most important things we MUST do. 

Through our STRONG HEART section, we offer a range of different mindfulness techniques the participants can take and use in everyday life. Some of our activities in this section include- Meditation, visualization, candle gazing, releasing worries, letters to self, affirmation jars, breathing techniques, mindful stretching… the list goes on.

We understand that every movement activity, every tip for our toolbox and every mindfulness activity won’t be for everyone and that is why we offer so many different suggestions, so the participants can explore themselves and find what works for them on an individual level.

And that is what STANDING STRONG is all about.  We are a place of non-judgement, a place where we welcome everyone in with open hearts, where they are provided a safe space to explore who they are, to be who they really are, and be accepted and embraced fully as themselves.

So, this leads us to the WHY?  Why do we do this program and why are intervention programs so important? 

Unfortunately, navigating challenges is part of life, but it is also such a beautiful part of life as it is where growth happens.  Through challenges we learn so much about ourselves, however without understanding and having the knowledge of how to support ourselves in a loving, safe and healthy way, we can allow challenges to take over and swallow us up.

Learning these tools and having these conversations from a young age, before it has gone too far is so important!  In school we are taught to read, write, follow rules, do math’s, but

we are never taught how to understand our emotions, how to believe in ourselves, how to set our own boundaries, or how to express emotions in a healthy way.

We unfortunately live in a society where people are so quick to judge, where you are so quick to be told if you have done something wrong, where you are rarely praised for the little wins - showing up somewhere when you had no motivation, asking questions when you don’t understand, trying your hardest even if that means you fail.  So why is this program or any early intervention program so beneficial?  Simply for all these reasons, you can celebrate your wins no matter the size, you can learn skills from a young age to support yourself as life throws curveballs, you can learn and accept yourself at the start of your life, you can know that you are always simply ENOUGH just as you are and WORTHY of world.

Add up all these benefits and put it into a group session, what do you get?  You get the sense of realization that you aren’t alone in these challenges, and you have not only built an incredible support system within yourself but an amazing support system around you!

And now the real big reason WHY?! Because you deserve it! You deserve to see how amazing you are and deserve to give yourself the best support possible.  You are amazing!!

If this sounds like something that interests you, make sure you sign up for our newsletter to see when we run our programs and workshops!