LUNA listened to you and now LUNA is offering you the support that you have requested.

This month during our Café con LUNA we launched a new series: Comprehensive Mental Health for Early Childhood Educators.

The global crisis produced by COVID-19 has had a domino effect in all dimensions of our lives and the result of this has been a profound impact on our mental health. The pandemic has caused an exponential increase in anxiety, insomnia, and depression.

For early childhood educators, who have been in the trenches of this crisis, this can have a detrimental effect not only on their own health but also on the children in their care. The educator-child relationship is close, intimate, and directly related to a pedagogical dynamic.

Before the pandemic, there had been a great interest in the importance of socio-emotional learning in early childhood. Post-pandemic this interest has grown even more due to the fundamental role played by the mental health of the educator in children, and the recognition that this time of great stress for educators also affects children during the most critical period of their brain development.

LUNA has decided to embrace this topic of great current importance from a comprehensive and holistic point of view; taking into account that mental health has physical, psychological, and spiritual components that have been studied and scientifically demonstrated.

The Integrated Mental Health series for early childhood educators designed by LUNA has four parts that will be offered in sessions of 90 minutes each, on consecutive Saturdays, and presented by highly qualified speakers. The four themes are intertwined and integrated with each other. However, each module offers a different dimension of the educator's mental health and the impact that it can have on children based on a fundamental principle: self-care. The Integrated Mental Health series for early childhood educators designed by LUNA has four parts that will be offered in sessions of 90 minutes each, on consecutive Saturdays, and presented by highly qualified speakers. The four themes are intertwined and integrated with each other. However, each module offers a different dimension of the educator's mental health and the impact that it can have on children based on a fundamental principle: self-care.

LUNA proposes that the first obligation of the educator is to herself and that she must give priority to her mental health before being able to take care of others. As required during the safety protocol on an airplane trip, the adult passenger must put on the oxygen mask first before putting it on a child. In this way, this series offers the educator concrete tools and strategies to be able to implement habits and self-care. These routines will progress sequentially and deepen, from the external, such as pedagogical skills, to the most intimate: our uterus and our cycle.

Session 1 entitled Socio-Emotional Learning (SEL) and the early childhood educator will be offered by Pilar Torres, a counseling psychologist specializing in Family Therapy and Business Leadership in Education, using the CASEL framework as a guide. CASEL In this framework, the "heart" of SEL is the Self-Control and Self-Awareness of the individual. These two dimensions include the ability to understand and control emotions and to be able to recognize and identify subconscious biases. This class will discuss the connection between perspective and focus in pedagogical theories such as the Growth Mindset, the Yale study of Implicit Bias in Early Childhood, the Pygmalion Effect; and Cultural Competence as a critical competency that the educator must acquire in the context of the demographic transformation and the super-diversity of children aged 0-5 in the United States.

Session 2 entitled Neuronutrition: Your Brain is What you Eatwill be presented by Maríaximena Garavito, Biologist, Mindful Eating Coach, and Power -Yoga instructor. In this session, information will be offered to understand what kinds of foods are making us sick, affecting our ability to concentrate and our energy levels. We will demystify the information with which the food industry permanently misleads us into consuming their products. Paradigms will be broken about truly healthy eating in such a way that it helps to regain mental agility, lucidity, and the energy that all women need to have in order to achieve a balanced work-life; all the more so, in an activity as energetically demanding as the care and education of young children. From the perspective of the female cycle, we will examine the foods that should be consumed during different stages of the menstrual cycle to meet the needs that our body demands hormonally.

Session 3 entitled Listening to Our Internal Voice and Styles of Internal Communicationwill be offered by Angelica Ojeda a Transpersonal Psychologist and Psychotherapist with a Jungian approach, currently a candidate for Archetypal Pattern Interpreter at the Assisi Institute. Our current world is full of noise, of different voices that bombard our minds all the time. This becomes a constant in our day-to-day and sometimes in our entire lives, where we have very few occasions to stop along the way and meet ourselves. Often, it is only in the face of a crisis or complicated situation, that we give ourselves the opportunity to begin to listen to our own voice. In this session, we will learn about and connect with our forms of internal communication; also, to be more aware, and wiser, and to follow the best guide we have: our heart.

Session 4 entitled Female Cyclicity: an Essential Aspect of the Early Childhood Educator’s Mental Health, will be presented by Andrea Osorio Villada, political scientist, Magistrate in Education, Advanced Moon Mother of the Worldwide Womb Blessing System® and facilitator of Red Tents. In her training, Andrea has focused on understanding female cyclicity and the importance of menstruation in women's lives. In this session, the phases, archetypes, and gifts of the menstrual cycle are presented in relationship to the cycles of the moon and the earth. Likewise, from a menstrual education perspective, some physical, mental, emotional, and energetic aspects of feminine spirituality will be discussed according to the phases of the cycle. These issues become essential for the educators' mental health since it provides them with key knowledge for their self-care and, the opportunity to reflect on optimal times for certain pedagogical practices in their daily routines with young children.

We hope you will join us for this incredible adventure that will change your life.

Mental Health series for early childhood educators ⭐