Your pain has a colour, a shape, a size, a volume, loads of feelings, things that make it bad, things that make it better, places it likes to be, a memory, it has a whole damn personality…

Possibly the fastest and most usable shift in your nervous system happens when you yawn. You move from the stressed ‘fight, flight, freeze’ to relaxed ‘rest and digest’ in a moment. Sitting with that moment for a minute can start to rebalance your nervous system and calm your quick brain.

Just how much time we are spending on, and indirectly surrounded by, screens is scary. They are everywhere. The Royal Children’s Hospitals Health poll reveals excessive screen time is the #1 health concern for parents in 2021. So, if the problem is right up there at the top, surely we’ve got to get to the bottom of it, and do something about it!

Because, at the soul of it, perhaps we don’t want to know it. It can feel horrible and impossible to talk about devastating things that have happened to people, it is overwhelmingly hard to trust enough to ‘find the words’. There is an unquantifiable range in the trauma experience. The immenseness of trauma may immediately feel as though it is already ‘too much’. And it is exactly this potentiality that is key.

Likely the first thing we think of with the word ‘connection’ is people. Connections to our families, friends, mates, groups, communities, and culture. The superhuman glue that holds our world together. But important connections start between tiny things in our world and in ourselves.

Migraines are intensely personal. From chatting with many individuals who experience all kinds of different migraines, a common thread is often the only way to get through them is on your own. The presence of others and their sounds, smells, their touching, their ideas, even their well-meaning attempts to soothe you can often make the migraine worse.

The health of the family is vital to the health of the individual. The way a family lives powerfully shapes the brain development and lifelong brain health of every single member.

Deep down we are all in love with nature, we just might need to get out and woo the wild world a little more to really feel the affection. The term ‘biophilia’ captures our innate love of life and the natural world. There is a tree out there that has been waiting 100 years for your perfect embrace, get out there and feel the love.

It is an altruistic theme, set to inspire a big global shift, this year for Autism awareness. The call to us all to ‘Embrace Difference’ evokes the deep human feelings of wanting to be and do better for a better world. It is a call we should listen to and act on.

First, we are alarmed, we are told there is something serious to worry about, we enter the intense stress state of ‘fight, flight, freeze’, then the action we are told to do is freeze – that’s your only option, and that doesn’t work well for most of us. It’s been going on for so long, and in some parts of the world so severe, that there would be identifiable changes in brain structure and function as a result.

OK, Team…we’ve got, give or take, 6 weeks or 42 days of school holidays to survive, thrive and make some happy holiday Family memories!

2020 has been a massive year! So we are going to go big and serve up 42 inspirations for you to whack on the fridge and check off those that sound like great ideas for your Family. In our next article, we are going to explain why these activities are brilliant for your brains too. We have done our best not to repeat any suggestions from last year, so if you are looking for even more you can always download the 2019 list and pop a big bright magnet on it as well.

Everything that is involved in preparing for and having a new human enter your world should be able to be on the table, no judgement. This is a time of mammoth change, especially if this is your first child. It is a transition period in your life that is worthy of even more dedicated time and energy as getting married; building a home; or learning to drive…having a baby involves elements of ALL big life events in ONE.