Max Aims to

Improve Overall Wellbeing

​Improve over all well being, improve sleep, promote improved mood and calmness, decrease levels of stress and anxiety, improve emotional vocabulary and awareness, better decision making, improve concentration, improve learning, better patience, empathy, gratitude, increase enjoyment, improve confidence, better language skills, reduce irrational rumination, improve interpersonal skills, better friendships and relationships, higher levels of altruism and compassion. 

Heres A little bit on how he aims to do so

Amygdala Size

Meditation is known to reduce amygdala size, promote hippocampal size and take action on the misolimbical pathway, producing Dopamine, because our brain sees it as a reward. This, in turn, makes it easier to keep up a healthy meditation routine, as you will actually get a chemical urge to do it. The more this is done, the more the body will start linking pleasure-seeking to healthy habits such as meditation. Being mindful also works by enabling you to stop before reacting and before performing impulsive behaviour.

Repetition Repetition  

Repetitive Thoughts

 Meditation also stops random thoughts and thought processes; for example, it reduces those pesky, anxious thoughts that tell us we look terrible and that everyone hates us because of that thing we did ten years ago. Thoughts like this are perfectly natural, but they are perfectly avoidable as well.

Technology

Attachments

Now this is not some hate campaign against technology use, as we all agree that it is a necessary evil of the world we occupy today. Technology is unavoidable; we should merely learn to safeguard ourselves against the potential side effects of our screen time. One of the many benefits of Max is that he offers no screen time for children. This product also aims to break the attachment to harmful habits and reduce the harmful effects that technology has on children.

Executive Functioning 

Cognitive Benefits

    As mentioned, the benefits of this product are multiple and here are a few more: not only does the product aim to increase emotional awareness and coping skills in children at a very important time in their lives, but mindfulness also has many follow-on benefits. The product aims to engage parts of the brain in children, congruent with executive functioning, top-down processing and self regulatory skills, thus providing children, at a young age, with the ability to learn how to achieve higher cognitive functioning and overall improved wellbeing in a way that will be sustainable into adult life, while also engaging children with awareness of their own feelings and mental state and giving them the tools to manage stress in the best possible way. This is possible as Mindfulness gets you to focus on the present, instead of worrying about the future things to come or the things that you have done in the past, which can often be our default.

Only 8 weeks

Research Indicates

Mindfulness also improves areas of empathy and social function.  With regard to social cognition, research conducted on adults indicated that participants who actively engaged in mindfulness, after only eight weeks showed increased activation in right dorsolateral pre-frontal cortex (the part of the brain that controls executive functions such as working memory and decision making and also social cognition). Regular meditation has been shown to even stop brain cells from dying and boost a person's brain size in key regions, so research surmises that, while it will make you happier and calmer, it will also make you more intelligent.

Top Down - Bottoms Up

The Benefits of Attention Training

The benefits of mindfulness in children, through age appropriate easily engaged mindfulness training activities, are shown to target both the top-down and bottom-up influences on self regulation. Training one’s attention on moment to moment experiences is a top-down reflection; we will talk about this more, shortly. Also, practising non-judgement produces calmness and wellbeing, as does focusing on the present as opposed to ruminating over recollected sources of anxiety.  This is because the cognitive level and emotional level of the mindfulness training, with control attention and evaluation, disrupts the automatic emotional responses, resulting in greater calmness and emotional stability, which, in turn, makes it easier to consider multiple aspects and perspectives of a given situation as well as multiple possible responses.

Anything is possible

Improves Everything

     All of this considered means that mindfulness will improve everything from confidence to school performance. Relationships with friends become easier, as we can actually see where other people are coming from and realise that their world view differs from our own, even in the most minute details: is my red really the same as your red! (no, it is not!).  When we can override the awkward niggling self doubt that so many of us have, we can then discover that anything really is possible. 

Self Compassion

More Research 

Much research has been conducted on people that actively participate in self compassion. It has been shown that people that actively participate in self compassion are more likely to be happy, have greater levels of resilience, be more optimistic, less stressed and anxious and have overall better mental health.
​

Oxytocin and things

Calming Feelings

    Self compassion has been shown to take action on the part of the brain associated with care giving and oxytocin release, increasing calming and more trusting feelings.
    Self criticism is linked with increased levels of cortisol which, as explained earlier, is linked to activation of our amygdala and our fight-or-flight response, as we view criticism as threatening.

Full of Opportunity

Some More Ideas

Mindfulness, self compassion and a couple of the other techniques Max incorporates, encourage children to have a healthy, fluid and non-fixed idea of who they are, so that they don't form unhealthy attachments to ideas or storylines they have about themselves. As none of that is real, really. This is something that every child should get used to the idea of, as growing up and developing as an adult is an exciting, vibrant time in anyone's life and can be full of opportunity, if one allows it. The easiest way to allow it, is to give up the idea of the fixed self. This idea of identification is so true with emotion as well, as emotion is not something to be defined by, or something to hold on to tightly, too.

Simply Being Mindful

Benefits to Pain, Now!

Another piece of wonderful information to be mindful of: by simply having the intention to be mindful has positive results. A study conducted by Yale on stress and pain responses showed positive differences immediately and marked differences after only practising half and hour of mindfulness.

Traditional Toys

Primary Needs

Growing up we all had our favourite toy, blanket or soother of some kind. Why this is interesting is that it comes from our primary need for comfort, care and a little bit of love. Controversial Psychologist Harry Harlow was best known for his work on dependency, where he isolated infant monkeys and only gave them two options for a primary caregiver, an uncomfortable mount with a bottle for feeding, as a mother and a terrycloth "mother". While we would probably think those young apes cozied up to the mother that was giving them nutrition and food - we would be wrong. They hands down chose the comfort of the terrycloth "mother", which highlighted the innate need for comfort and connection that one can only get from something with a tactile feel. 

Childhood Friends

The Importance of Bears

The scientific benefits of children having teddy bears is huge and far greater than one would ever imagine from a little bear. Here are a number of reasons that will get you replacing the treasured electronic device in your child's life, with a lovely cuddly bear!Children are tactile creatures and, in younger children, teddy bears are shown to have an important relationship between the infant and the primary caregiver. During times of separation, teddy bears are shown to be an excellent transitional object, reminding the child of the love and connection they have for their parent. Studies have revealed that children value their favourite objects as much as they value their parents; most parents, I’m sure, will find this is no surprise if they have ever witnessed a tantrum following a treasured possession’s loss.

Confidence

Confident Kids

Teddy bears are shown to build self confidence in children, as well as aiding social development, easing stress and working as a very good soother. Teddy bears are used in many trauma centres with victims, as they even have the same calming effect on adults. Studies have shown that holding a teddy bear reduces stress, blood pressure, improves sleep and can produce an oxytocin release, the same kind we get from human contact! In fact, bear therapy is rapidly becoming widely accepted as a powerful form of adult therapy. People like to feel comfort: that is just a fact.

Mother's Love

Breathing Bears

Teddy bears who mimicked breathing were also introduced to premature infants, as they replicated the rhythmic stimulation that would have been otherwise provided by a mother. Not only did these act as innovative stand-in soothers, but they also provided the much-needed interaction that a mother would, improving sleep and breathing regularity. 

Developing Minds

Decisions Decisions

Decision making, social inhibitions, emotional regulation and many of our other, more developed skills comes from our prefrontal cortex, which is only developing through childhood. That is why children can seem more emotionally eruptive then their adult counterparts. Developing the pre-frontal cortex correctly is an important task for any child, as it can be directly related to their future success in life as it's directly related to things like goal setting. Like any part of the brain, the Prefrontal Cortex develops the more it is used, this is done through parental interaction, things like reading and mindfulness

Academic Achievements

Grade A Kids

Studies conduced on elemerty students has shown children exhibit greater prosocial behaviours, improved academic performance and better emotional regulation. decreased stress and improved attention. Studies conducted on teenagers have shown that even under times of academic stress, those who had a mindfulness practise had lower levels of depression and anxiety, then those that didn't.

Attention Skills

ADHD

Children with ADHD who practised mindfulness showed increased levels of attention and fewer negative aggressive traits.

Sticks and Stones

Bullying

Studies show that mindfulness is a fantastic coping skill for children dealing with bullying and helps ward off the negative symptoms that are so commonly associated with it. Mindfulness also helps children consider there perspectives of others, which in turn, helps children deal with the effects of their bullies. It also helps with those that are unfortunately, the bullies. As it is shown that bullying can happen for a number of reasons and generally speaking the bullies are dealing with things of their own and mindfulness can help.