Why we are concerned. Every product you see today, started because of someones Pain, here's ours:

Modern Living

Modern Day Ills

​Modern living has changed how we live; in short, children live much more insular lives. A large amount of social connection is done through the medium of an electronic device. Children no longer use imagination and play in the same way. Technology use is changing us; we are animals after all. Despite the fact that we know this, many of us gripe about it and most of us would do anything to change it, we cannot change the fact that technology is part and parcel of our everyday lives and has many benefits. With the introduction of mindfulness into the everyday life of children, they can then become aware of how their interaction with such devices makes them feel in a new way, which will also impact how children interact with others on those platforms.

Overly Acceptable 

Pacifier of Choice

​ More sinister still, technology use is becoming an accepted part of how children are growing up. We see this more and more frequently with the smart phone or tablet becoming the new pacifier of choice for many toddlers. Peer pressure, media and modern society prevent technology from being excluded from our lives. So now that we know that this is an unavoidable evil, we firstly should all know what it does to us and why we find it so unbearably difficult to stop reaching for the smart device.

What we can get addicted to

Technology Addiction

Studies have been widely conducted on the effect that technology use is having on brains, showing alterations to our structure, biochemistry, behaviour, personalities and characteristics. We have greater problems then ever with anxiety, attention and our mood. Many studies have been conducted on Internet Addiction Disorder, with symptoms as disturbing as the reality that the Internet is the twenty first century equivalent of nicotine, but far more accessible. Symptoms include shivers, tremors, nausea and anxiety in some cases. While this is the most extreme example, we all must agree that it's a worrying trend, as study now show children spend as much as 5 hours a day glued to a screen.

What happens when we scroll

Reality?

​The unfortunate truth is that technology use, especially social media, does so much to promote narcissism and self criticism across all generations. As we scroll through our newsfeeds, we experience a range of emotions and a spectrum of self comparison that we would not have been exposed to otherwise. The truth is that the lives which we see on our favourite social platforms do not depict the reality; we all know this on an intellectual level, but we don't on an emotional level.

Our not so social platforms

Social Platforms

Studies have shown that, since the rise of social media, the last thing people use these platforms for is to communicate socially. In fact, empathy and empathetic communication has been shown to decrease due to it. There are several factors in this correlation; screen time adds a layer of detachment from the people you are communicating with. You have to remember that only 7% of communication is verbal and the other 55% and 38% is made up of body language and finally tone of voice, two things that can not be effectively conveyed in text. Further still, when you are communicating with someone online and you cannot see the effect your words are having or the reaction on their face, it removes the empathetic reaction that you, as a human, would naturally have. 

Our not so social lives

Decrease in Empathy

​ Social media has also seen the decrease in empathy, as it encourages this new trend of self exhibitionism as we all try to "put our best foot forward".  Studies have shown that narcissists are more likely to use social media as an outlet for their self-serving ways in the form of the "selfie" and the standard attention seeking post where the culprit informs their social media world that they have a problem, but they must be private messaged to find out what it is.  It is uncertain whether the least empathetic amongst us are drawn to social media, or social media encourages us to flex our narcissistic muscle. Whatever the case may be, with the promotion of awareness and a good sense of self at a young age, cycles such as this can be avoided. The same can be said for the modern day bully: the internet troll. These quite obviously are not very mindful people as they take advantage of the disconnection that these internet platforms provide.

Remembering Connection

Physical Isolation

While technology can do so much to isolate you in physical presence by either glueing you to the spot, or keeping your neck strained downwards as you stare at your smart device, it also isolates you on an emotional level, by depicting pictures of lives that seem so far from your own reality. Mindfulness is fantastic from this standpoint, as we are socially cohesive animals which have been made for social connection. Max, through his exercises, reminds us that we are all connected, reminding us of our common humanity, starting with the breath.

Social themes

Social Animals

As human beings we are social animals.  This is a theme you will see crop up quite a few times: humans as animals -because we are. We are pack animals essentially and our modern culture, which promotes self loathing, has a real outward effect on our ability to connect with others. As Max teaches, with self compassion we must start to be nice to ourselves, so that we can then start to really connect with other people. Bullying comes down to a few key issues: self loathing, a need for belonging and opportunity. Max's books, especially as they progress into the later series deal a lot with bullying and time and time again Max shows children how the bully will usually put another child down in order to gain social acceptance into the group. It's an unfortunate reality that children are growing up with so much internal hostility that they must take out their own feelings of inadequacy on others. This is a reality of the over stimulated pop culture world that children are exposed to.
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Belonging to a Group

Being Cool

​Max tries to promote the idea that you can belong to a group, but from a place of human connection and love. He does this by showing children that it's important to be yourself, to be different and to be mindful. By simply embracing mindful compassion and losing the "cool", children will embody their uniqueness they will always belong.

Modern Children and Imagination

Imagination

​Modern children and adults have real problems with imagination, believing that play is something infantile, unproductive or a by-product of vulnerability. However, the truth about imagination is that it is incredibly beneficial for our brain structures as a whole. Gone are the days when children would play outdoors with their friends, as we see a real shift to children playing alone on video games, or, worryingly, the internet where unfortunately greater dangers lurk for children than if they were to play outdoors.

More Brain Rot

Screen Time

​  While we could list the varying degrees of brain rot we experience as a result of the technological era, there is one particular change that Max aims to reverse. The amount of screen time we get has a direct effect on the chemical components in our brains today. While we’ll discuss the content later, at the moment we will focus simply on the screen. Screen time has been linked to delayed cognitive development and has been shown to be linked to attention problems in children, social functioning problems and problems with sleep. This is partly due to the unnatural light from the devices we use and their effect on the chemical production in our brains. 

Melatonin Levels

Our Eyes are Designed

​ Our eyes are specially designed to pick up on the subtleties of the light we see, for example the light in the morning is more blue, and different from the amber coloured light of dusk. The blueish light we see in the morning tells our brains to get up and get active and, yes, you guessed it, it's the same as the light in our screens. Studies have shown a fifty percent decrease in the melatonin levels (the chemical that regulates sleep) of those that get some screen time in before bed. Most smart devices have updated their settings so the light colours change in the evening, which has gone some way to improving the situation. However, most adolescents sleep with a phone beside their bed and text prior to sleeping. Those that do, studies have shown, perform worse in school and are far sleepier than those that don't.

Sleep don't come easy

Overstimulation and Sleep

​ Sleep problems always have an underlying reason, from stress and anxiety to overstimulation: Max can be used as part of a great bed time routine, as Meditation is shown to promote levels of melatonin, therefore encourages healthy sleep patterns. Now, Max can be used at any time of the day, but here is a small suggestion on how to best use him to promote healthy sleep. Simply using his books as a bedtime story before snuggling up and doing an exercise before sleep, will have any child relaxed enough to have the most restful slumber.

Fight or flight and Technology

The Most Anxious

​Our fight-or-flight response is also taking a real knocking and the increase in technology use is not just coincidental to the fact that children today are the most depressed and anxious that they have ever been. In fact, childhood depression and anxiety rates have risen so much in the last decade, that they are almost at epidemic proportions.

Our brain changes

Amygdala and Hippocampus

​Seeing as we, as human beings, are all animals, it is only natural, given the unnatural way we live now, that we would have a certain amount of modern day side effects. Recent studies on the effects of technology use have shown enlarged amygdala and decreased hippocampal size in children and adolescents. This is symptomatic of conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, as these are the areas of the brain associated with threat-detection and chronic pain. The Amygdala is responsible for alerting us to danger, is quick and highly sensitive and fires off all the time, if under stress. The Hippocampus is responsible for making sense of those threats, under strain it shrinks and cannot be accessed when its needed, also cannot code memories effectively. 

Out of date threat detection

Hunter Gatherers 

Our threat detection systems are highly sensitive, as we, as hunter gatherers, have evolved, foraging for food and escaping dangers of large predators. Our threat detection systems alert us to natural disasters, fire and other humans who might potentially fight us for territory and mates. However, as time has gone on, our wonderfully evolved brain, has wrapped its head around art, music and mathematics, but still has the same, now outdated, threat detection system. We input large amounts of stimuli from the world around us; however, our filtration systems are not as efficient as they could potentially be.

High Octane Viewing

Viewing Habits

We watch large quantities of high content, high action television which we enjoy because it produces a chemical response in us, so we feel excitement, fear and a range of other emotions. However, while our conscious mind understands that these threats aren’t direct or real, our subconscious minds do not. Over time, the strain and constant overstimulation of our brains results in high levels of anxiety, not only in children, but in adults too!

The Pleasure Hormone

Dopamine

​High levels of anxiety, over a prolonged or chronic period, result in the previously mentioned structural changes to those brain regions. More frustratingly, simply stopping technology use is not that simple, as it has become such an unconscious response due to the intervention of Dopamine. Dopamine is the pleasure hormone most linked with addiction. Basically, when we do something pleasurable, our brain rewards us, on the misolimbical pathway, by producing dopamine, so we feel like we need to do it again and again, even if we don’t have a reason. Dopamine gets released with every ding of a text, every new high score on a game and every new episode of our favourite show. Disturbingly, while some of these things are genuinely pleasurable, Dopamine needs feeding and is also responsible for your incessant channel-hopping, your 3am newsfeed surfing, gaming all-nighter and latest binge watch.

Max employs Mindfulness

Max's Main Technique

​The main technique Max employs is mindfulness, as he believes it is the foundation on which everything else can be built: Mindfulness is widely defined as a mental state achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts and bodily sensations. Mindfulness encourages people to not get too caught up in their feelings or emotions, realising they all pass. Mindfulness encourages balance, so we don't push away emotion or, conversely, become completely consumed by it, even if it's pleasant. Rather, just acknowledge its presence with a calm and open awareness. 

"In fact, the effects of television, or mass communication in general, on our adapted minds are not well understood. Television offers new forms of relating not existent in nature, which utilises our innate strategies in some rather bizarre ways. When executives tell us that television reflects real life it is well to remember that by the age of ten many children have seen in excess of five thousand murders and acts of extreme violence on the box. I have to say (thankfully) I have never actually seen any one murdered in 'real life' yet. Television feeds off an innate need for newness and excitement, but as the Romans found in their games, once violence is the source of it, one is pushed to  be more inventive in maintaining interest. Television also feeds off needs for consistent relationships - hence the popularity of soap operas. Even in sports it is the relationships, getting to know about the players etc., this is crucial to developing a following. However, the media also makes these relationships more distant, beyond human touch, embrace, interaction, mutual dependancy or reciprocation. For some people, real interactions become frightening, and much of their needs for 'relating' are sought through contrived scripts of the soaps. While we watch, we fantasise, we can never really participate. So, we are confronted with real oddities in how we live today compared to how are brains were "expecting" to live. We can also think of many opportunities for criminal, callus and cruel behaviour that are a direct result of our environments. For example, in hunter gatherer societies, people were interested in sex as they were today, but they did not have sex traffickers and pornography; later came war raids and sex salves of course, but not in the small groups. Hunter gatherer people may have had an interest in smoking the odd weed, but they did not have drug barons and protection money. It would have been inconceivable for individuals to break into other individuals huts and steal from them.

The mismatches between EEA and our current social contexts can produce considerable stress. Not surprising then that there is evidence of increasing considerable stress. Not surprising that there is evidence of increasing vulnerability to stress related disorders, eg., depression (which is steadily increasing this century). Even in major disorders like schizophrenia, a person many do better in a small, close knit community than in our current depersonalised ones. As Jung has said 'everything casts a shadow'. I personally would not like to go back to the Ice Age. However, in order not to be burdened with the disturbances caused by an ill fit between innate psychology and social change, it may be necessary to be more aware of our basic evolved psychology; and not just our potential for deception and savagery, but also of our needs for belonging and community. The greatest challenge today is how to produce fair, peaceful and open societies given that our evolved psychology was designed for working with close knit, familiar ones. In designing social and economic living environs it might be interesting to stat with a thought about our evolved nature" 
- Paul Gilbert (Living Like Crazy, 2017)

Not holding on too tightly and just letting go

Observation of Emotions

​ Mindfulness also encourages the idea of observation of emotions without holding on too tightly to them. This can include the storylines, as Max teaches that we first suffer from the actual experience (if it's unpleasant); however, more often than not, due to constant mental rumination and story-telling, we cause ourselves to suffer more, repeatedly and for prolonged periods. The same can be true with positive feelings; as numerous times we feel uncomfortable being happy. We are constantly worrying about when it will end, knowing that this is a perfectly natural occurrence; however, in our mind, we create a negative onus on the passing of emotions. This can be due, in part, to the attachment of emotions or feelings to the storyline; believing one will end makes us think that both will end. More often then not, we mentally ruminate to prepare ourselves for the inevitable. The unfortunate reality about this habit, also known more commonly as realism, is that we miss a lot of the pleasant moments in our lives. Max incorporates gratitude into his books, so that children won't miss a good moment again, but, better still, will learn to lean into and be comfortable in the happiness as it arises.

Mindfulness Targets the Brain

Mindfulness Works

​Mindfulness works by targeting key areas of the brain through simple daily exercises. This was spoken about earlier in terms of our threat detection system and reward system. Basically, it makes you less anxious and makes you feel really good about meditating, so you want to do it again and again, thereby curbing other impulses and basically changing your life. While the approach may seem over simplistic, I will highlight how this product works by discussing a little bit more of the science behind it. What we are looking to improve with this product is a child’s affective style: how they react emotionally to the events that take place in their lives. 

How to process Emotion in a new way

Processing Emotions

​Everyone processes mood and emotion differently, because of the different ways that people live their lives and their current and previous life experiences and environment. With intervention such as meditation, emotion can be processed in a different way. What mindfulness has been shown to do, is to create a shift from the right prefrontal cortex, which is the brain region most highly associated with anxiety, stress and negative mood, to the left prefrontal cortex, the brain region highly associated with decision making, memory and good moods. While emotion is quite complex and has been linked to these relevant areas of the brain, it must be noted that it does not do so in isolation; rather, emotion is generated from interacting brain regions. Due to the brain’s plasticity, this shift is highly achievable with simple meditation and is sustainable with regular meditation.

Ways of Processing

Top Down - Bottoms Up

​Meditation has also been linked to higher levels of “top-down” processing as opposed to “bottom-up”. Top-down processing simply refers to higher levels of executive functioning. This is highly important; for instance, when we hear a loud noise and get a fright. Now, if we are bottom-up processing, we have a pretty active fight-or-flight response, so it’s likely we are either getting ready to wield a baseball bat at a potential intruder, or we are already halfway out the back window on the phone to the police, informing them of the attempted attack on our lives. However, with top-down processing you still hear the loud noise, but, instead of our primitive brain kicking in, getting us ready to attack or run, we firstly check to see if we recognise the noise and if there is an explanation for the bang, before choosing to release adrenalin and fleeing. While this is an incredibly simplistic explanation, you’ll see that meditation enables us to override our pesky primitive responses that we don’t need all the time.

Imagining Things

Imagination

​ Imagination and play is also a “top-down” response, as children construct images from imagination. Meditation is linked to improved play, creativity and imagination, as it is linked to improved activation in these brain regions.

Things you say about yourself.

Identification 

​Identification is also helped through these practices. How many times do we, as people, create the storyline: our brain works to find a reason why we feel a certain way. If something happens in our lives and an emotion arises as a result of it, we attach a reason or story; our brain is designed to actually need this. It doesn't matter what the storyline is, if it's realistic, true or necessary, we create it. This can be a fine coping strategy as sometimes we love to justify our actions. However, if the passing story becomes something we hold onto hard, it then becomes something that defines us. This is very prevalent in instances of injury, illness and recovery, as so often people become the diagnosis and wear this as a mask, use this as an excuse and use it to create their own personal storyline. In reality, a healthy strategy around these mental storylines is to: create them, if necessary, observe the feeling with non-judgement and let them go. Sounds more easily said than done, but, with practice, it gets easier, especially for children, as they, luckily, don't have years of storylines to fight through.

Things Max Employs 

What Max Does...

Click below, for  a little run down of all of the things that Max employs.  As stated, he has picked and chosen the very best and most accessible parts of popular psychology and integrated them in the most child friendly way! Here are small, simple explanations of what these techniques are:

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