ExhilaFit

Movement is medicine!!!!

Especially when it comes with music and laughter! 🎵 Our instructor brought the energy through three back-to-back Zumba classes with 4th and 5th graders this summer. The smiles said it all.

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Education is a safe space for me. Learning seems to block out all the distractions, the negativity, the feelings of not being enough or not being able to have better… the act of learning when it is fun and engaging becomes hope, vision, and turns negativity on its head.

For me at least, knowledge is power. Self-awareness and situational awareness is power. Having control of difficult feelings, liberation.

Something about learning and education helps me to feel like anything is possible despite my circumstances.

In making this workbook and curriculum for students, teachers, and young adults I gained miles of experience and knowledge. It is a pleasure to share it with others and hopefully the tools to support social emotional learning using mindfulness, movement, the arts, writing, and journaling give others peace through knowledge and confidence through learning more about their self, emotions, and world around them.

All glory be to God which is a beacon of my faith. And keeps me driven to keep going.

The day was beautiful! Couldn’t have had a better day to be outside, enjoying the sunshine with others.

National Night Out Against Crime is a great community event! I got to meet so many amazing businesses, faith-based organizations, potential partners and more!

I got the opportunity to discuss my programming and curriculum too!

Sharing this event! Looking forward to meeting the community tomorrow! These events are going on all over NYC.

Thank you Table of Queenz Table Of Kingz™️ for having ExhilaFit today for your Father’s Day Classic Celebration. Happy Fathers Day to all the Fathers but also mentors, grandfathers, Goddads, brothers, Uncles, teachers, spiritual leaders, and single moms and the many more that support us! I love you all. 🫶🙏🙏 God bless you.

Today we had a birdy join our table at the ‘My Brother’s Keeper’ youth event today at IS61. Our table provided a small M.A.P gratitude workshop for students and family members.

We are deeply appreciative of being able to hold space with such wonderful students and their family members.

I was really really excited to see the final paintings that focused on gratitude. 🙏

Gratitude is a wonderful way to resource ourselves with positive feelings of appreciation.

It is something that we can tap into daily but even when unpleasant things happen that we do not like happen, gratitude is something we can tap into-to soften the edges of life’s ups and downs.

This workshop is intuitive and meant to provide a bit of mindful relaxation and reflection.

Sometimes your body knows before your mind does. 🧠💛

For many of us, stress doesn’t start in our thoughts — it shows up in our body first.

A tight chest. A clenched jaw. A held breath. These might be signals worth paying attention to.

In our recent workshop, we explored something together:

What does stress feel like on one side of the body — and what might calm feel like on the other?

That exploration? It can shift something. 🙏🏾🙏🙏🏼

Because when we start to recognize what calm might feel like in our body, we can begin finding our way back to it.

Here are some practices that can support that return:

🫁 Breathwork — for many, the breath is one of the most accessible places to start.

🧘🏾‍♀️ MBSR Body Scan — a gentle practice of bringing awareness through the body, noticing what’s there without judgment.

💗 Loving-Kindness Meditation — because sometimes what helps isn’t pushing harder… it’s offering ourselves a little softness.

The return to calm looks different for everyone.
But it’s possible. And it’s worth practicing. 🌿

✨ Save this as a gentle reminder.

💬 Where do you sometimes notice stress showing up in your body first?

Turning down our stress dial workshop 🌟

Imagine your belly button as a dial you can actually turn down when stressed out. After a guided mindfulness meditation, they created beautiful stress management artwork! We brought it to life by creating our own stress dials, mapped with both triggers and coping skills.

Our belly button transformed to an emotional “dial” to consciously turn down when feeling overwhelmed.

🎯 Personal stress dial on paper plates 📍 Identified current triggers (tests, friend drama, family stress) ⬇️ Mapped their go-to calming strategies along arrows

Quick Stress Tips from Today:
* Your body gives you early warning signals - listen to them!
* Deep breathing for 2 minutes can reset your nervous system
* Having a visual reminder helps kids remember they’re in control
* Stress isn’t the enemy - it’s information from your body

Stress is just information from your body. You have more control than you think. And it’s okay to need tools - we all do.
Building these inner resources early changes everything. These kids are going to be okay. 💙

This class focused on different ways of thinking. Each cap represents a variety of angles and perspectives that can shape our ideas 💡. We looked at basketball as an example. There are rules, that is planning. There is a court. That is a fact. But when we add a bit of creativity, it becomes a basketball game. Our feelings a I it winning and loosing though it shapes our attitude at times, we can acknowledge feelings with reacting on them. And in basketball, reacting can sometimes cause us to make decisions that we are not happy with. We can go into a game believing we are capable of winning, but only when we practice which is part of planning can we develop the skills necessary to play according to the rules. And when you are taking a shot because someone fouled you, best believe, pausing, breathing and focusing mindfully can help you tune out all the noise.

All these hats work together. When we are intentional, our minds can think 💭 amazing things, come up with great solutions, and see beyond anything that we could ever imagine.

Taking responsibility for our thought types -once we are aware that different types of thinking patterns exist, can feel empowering.