HealthMatters
Healing from Adverse Childhood Experiences
The Transformative Power of Meditation
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) were originally discovered in the late 90s. It was then identified that ACES can deeply affect people; mentally, emotionally, and physically. ACEs encompass a spectrum of traumatic events or circumstances that occur during childhood, such as abuse, neglect, or household dysfunction. These experiences can have lasting repercussions on an individual’s life, contributing to serious health issues and challenges later on.
In addition to the current therapies and psychological practices, attention is turning towards the inclusion of meditation to help young people process their experiences and overcome the effects of trauma.
Meditation and ACEs
Meditation serves as a holistic approach to healing from ACEs by addressing the psychological, emotional, and physiological aspects of trauma. Through mindfulness, emotional regulation, brain rewiring, and resilience-building practices, meditation offers a path towards healing and recovery.
Mindfulness is a form of meditation that is linked to spiritual practices but available as secular practice today. Within last 20 years, we now have access to empirical research providing the evidence that confirms why we should practice meditation for physical, emotional and mental health
Through the *work of Professor Jon Kabat Zinn – mindfulness is now a form of meditation, regularly used in society and made available to the medical sector and other professionals.
Mindful Benefits for the Young, Stressed Brain
A stressed brain can’t learn new information; the more young people can relax their body/nervous system, the more they can recover from ACES and learn in school/study.
There’s now evidence that confirms how the mind and emotions are linked and that trauma can be held in the body and by learning to release trauma with mindful, senstive awareness, the mental and emotional connections can also process and release trauma. However we have to take care when introducing mindful techniques to young people with trauma – ensuring that we have trauma-sensitive mindfulness practices.
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