In this episode I talk with Kanika Vasudeva , who is a parenting coach, energy healer and Akashic Records reader from the Art of Life Center. She supports parents to explore the record of their soul's journey across lifetimes and to heal. She blends spiritual tools with grounded support to help parents feel more whole themselves, and raise empowered children.

Please note that Kanika is not an Aware Parenting Instructor. Aware parenting does not incorporate or endorse any particular spiritual beliefs, so today's conversation extends beyond aware parenting. In this episode we talk about pregnancy loss and grief so I invite you to check in with yourself to see if you want to listen if this has been part of your story too.

Kanika shares her awakening into conscious parenting and emotional healing that began after the stillbirth of her daughter at 31 weeks pregnant. She shares her experience with Akashic records and how she sees that exploring past lives and ancestral trauma can support parents through parenting, loss and healing. We talk about parenting as a spiritual practice and how we can support our children to stay connected to their unique soul and inherent wisdom by doing our own healing work. We talk about self-compassion, self care and embracing imperfection. Kanika shares some simple but powerful practices we can use to support ourselves in moments of stress and overwhelm.

To learn more about Kanika's work please visit her website www.artoflifecentre.com and follow her on Instragram at kanikaenergycoach.

If you want help with embracing imperfection or any other aspect of Aware Parenting, I invite you to get in touch with me [email protected]

Welcome back to the Aware Parenting Stories podcast. In today's episode I’m thrilled to be joined once again by Dr. Aletha Solter, the founder of Aware Parenting, to talk about her inspiring and thought-provoking new book, Raising Joyful Lifelong Learners. Her latest book explores how we can best nurture children's intrinsic love of learning through connection, emotional safety, trust and play.

Dr Solter explores some of the main misunderstandings in our education systems about learning that are ineffective, stressful and harmful for children and shares how children learn, what motivates children to learn and how we can evaluate children's learning in ways that are not stressful for children. She shares some of the ways that school can be stressful and traumatic for children, and how stress and trauma affect children's behaviour and learning. We talk about the role of play in both learning and healing from stress and trauma and she shares ways to support children to heal. She shares why punishments and rewards have a detrimental impact on learning and what to do instead of praise and criticism. We discuss some of the ways that our own trauma is often triggered in parenting and how to support ourselves to heal so we are better able to support our children. She clarifies the aware parenting perspective on the term neurodiversity and explains some of the possible causes of behaviours that often lead to a diagnosis of ADHD. We talk about her 12 Principles of Learning and how we can trust our children in learning and support them to love learning throughout their life.

I highly recommend this book for parents, educators and anyone who cares about children and their future. I truly hope it helps inspire a shift in how we approach education and learning, so that parents, schools, education policy makers and those who choose to homeschool can all better meet the emotional and developmental needs of children, and truly support their natural joy, curiousity and love of learning.

To learn more about Aletha Solter and Aware Parenting, please visit www.awareparenting.com

If you would like support with this or any other aspect of Aware Parenting, I invite you to get in touch [email protected]

Welcome back to another episode and the next instalment in my series on embracing our imperfection in Aware Parenting. I really enjoyed this second conversation with Linde lambrechts, was on episode 49. She is an Aware Parenting instrutor, psychologist and psychotherapist with 2 boys and lives in Belgium .

In this episode Linde shares more of her journey with Aware Parenting, learning to create a life of connection and meeting needs in her family. We discuss some of the causes of our tendency to strive for perfection in our culture. Linde shares her own journey of learning to embrace imperfection in herself and in her children. She shares some painful moments in her parenting and how she support herself back to connection and compassion. We discuss the difference between Aware Parenting in theory and how we are able to practise it.

To learn more about Linde, please visit her website www.lindelambrechts.be and follow her on Instagram at lovinglimits.

To get support with this or any other aspect of aware parenting, I invite you to get in touch [email protected]

Welcome back to another episode in the series about embracing imperfection in Aware Parenting. In this episode I talk with Helena Mooney who is an Aware Parenting Instructor and a Hand in Hand Instructor with 2 children.

She share her journey with learning to embrace her imperfection in parenting and learning to accept her children's imperfection too. We talk about self-criticism and learning a more compassionate inner dialogue. Helena shares the power of receiving her own listening and honouring her own feelings to be able to come back to acceptance, compassion and trust. We talk about the difference between Aware Parenting in theory and how we put it into practice.

To learn more about Helena and her work, please visit www.helenamooney.com and follow her on social media at helenamooney_parentingwithplay. Her podcast is Parenting with Play.

If you would like support with this or any other aspect of Aware Parenting, please contact me at [email protected]

Welcome back to another episode in the series about embracing imperfection in Aware Parenting. In this powerful episode, Danni Willow and I share some reflections from our recent extraordinary Aware Parenting Retreat about the truths of motherhood and how embracing imperfection as mothers can be both liberating and deeply healing.

We talk about the mother wound and sisterhood wound, two often unspoken pains that show up in our longing for connection, in our guilt, and in the quiet ache for holding and unconditional love. Whether it’s the absence of nurturing we craved from our own mothers or the comparison, competition, hurt and disconnection that can arise between women, these wounds carry a weight that many mothers silently bear and that make embracing our imperfection harder.

We share the transformative power of what unfolded on our retreat and how being vulnerable together with other women, and being deeply held supports transformation and healing.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re not enough, or if you’ve longed for a kind of mothering or sisterhood that you didn’t receive, this episode will speak to your heart. It’s an invitation to step into compassion, find connection and holding and offer yourself radical acceptance.

We talk about the power of receiving deep support to bring more closeness, connection and capacity within our families and the need for mothers to be held in order to mother.

To learn more about Danni's work, please visit her website and follow her on social media at Danni Willow https://www.thewayofthewoman.com.au

To learn more about my upcoming Aware Parenting Workshop, please visit https://awareparenting.com.au/my-courses/parenting-workshops/

To join the waitlist for our next Aware Parenting Retreat, I invite you to get in touch and if you would like support with this or any other aspect of Aware Parenting, please contact me at [email protected]

Welcome back to another episode in the series about embracing imperfection in Aware Parenting. In today's episode I am offering a guided meditation to support listeners to learn to embrace their imperfection in parenting and to bring themselves more acceptance, more ease, more self-compassion.

If you would like support with this or any other aspect of Aware Parenting, please contact me at [email protected]

Today's episode is a short acknowledgement, celebration and honouring of all Aware Parenting mothers in the run up to Mother's Day. It is a message of love to all mothers doing the often invisible work of offering Aware Parenting in their families. For everything that you are doing for your child/ren, for yourself, for your families and for the world, you deserve appreciation and support. I am sending you all lots of love and wishing you a happy Mother's Day.

Welcome back to another episode in the series about embracing imperfection in Aware Parenting. In today's episode I am talking with Gwen Dunlop from Ontario Canada. Gwen is mother of an adult daughter, a violinist, a yoga teacher, an animal advocate, a qualified and experienced ESL teacher, a certified Facilitator of Self-Healing, a certified Aware Parenting Instructor for a long time. She lives off grid and is passionate about sustainability.

In this episode Gwen shares how she found Aware Parenting and how motherhood was a portal to start the painful process of releasing and healing her own childhood trauma. She shares how powerful Aware Parenting has been, both in her family and in her wider work and connections in her community to bring more emotional safety. She shares the challenges of coming to Aware Parenting later and how she has supported herself to deeply understand that any mistakes can be healed. We talk about the power of attunement, connection and contingency play. Gwen shares some of the ways that she supports herself and we discuss the power of Aletha Solter's amazing work to change the world.

If you would like to connect with Gwen, her website is www.gwendunlop.ca

If you would like support with this or any other aspect of Aware Parenting, please contact me at [email protected]

Welcome back to another episode in the series about embracing imperfection in aware parenting. In this episode I talk about how normal it is for us all to have painful moments of rupture in our families and how to come back to connection again. I talk about how important it is for us to tend to the source of our behaviour at times of rupture, to support ourselves and make it less likely in future. I share ways we can support ourselves with our thoughts, our needs and our feelings so we can offer authentic apology. I offer a description of what rewind and repair might look like and I share why doing this with our children is so powerful for them, for us and for our relationship.

If you would like support with this or any other aspect of Aware Parenting, please contact me at [email protected]

Welcome back to another episode in the series about embracing imperfection in Aware Parenting. In this episode I am delighted to welcome back Maru Rojas, who was previously on Episode 10. Maru is an Aware Parenting Instructor originally from Mexico now based in London. She is particularly passionate about supporting families with potty learning and elimination communication. supporting families with children from 0 to 6.

Maru shares her journey with embracing imperfection. She shares some of her own experiences in childhood that have contributed to her perfectionism and the power of offering her children unconditional acceptance. We talk about the power of repair and Maru shares her understanding that repair matters more than rupture and what that looks like in her family. She shares how she has supported herself at difficult times and we normalise that we all need support at times in parenting. We talk about the affect on the world of practising aware parenting.

To learn more about Maru, please visit www.parenttogether.co.uk and follow her on Instagram at _maru.rojas_

If you would like support with this or any other aspect of Aware Parenting, please contact me at [email protected]