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THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF JUVENILE AND FAMILY COURT JUDGES PRESENTS:

Monday Morning Moments

Season 4

Overview

The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ) presents a virtual series to support the wellness of those working in the judiciary and courts. We will be showcasing real stories from bench officers, candid discussions of the challenges faced from the bench, and practical solutions to address those challenges and achieve success as a bench officer in juvenile and family court. 

This series is available to NCJFCJ members free of charge. Registration will grant access to all sessions.

Schedule:

All sessions are at 8:00 a.m. PST

Monday, February 7: The struggle is real - mental health and the bench

Monday, March 7: Cultivating mindfulness and resilience

Monday, April 4: Juicing with Jen Donovan

Monday, May 9: A Journey to optimal health

Monday, June 6: Owning your personal power

Monday, July 11:  Cultivating Emotional Intelligence At Work

Monday, August 1: Yoga and Mindfulness for Inner and Outer Peace

Monday, September 12: Creativity as an antidote to stress and trauma

Monday, October 17: Applying compassion and self-compassion to our daily life

Monday, November 7: Whole Brain Living - Owning your power for a less stressful and more peaceful life
Monday, December 5: Tis the Season: Mindfully Honoring Holiday-Evoked Grief

Dates and topics for future months coming soon!

Season 4 Moments

Monday, February 7: The Struggle is Real - Mental Health and the Bench

Join Judge Victor Reyes (Ret.), Judge-in-Residence, NCJFCJ, and California Superior Court Judge Tim Fall, in a candid conversation about Judge Fall's personal battle with anxiety and depression, while on the bench and during a contested election.

Monday, March 7: Cultivating Mindfulness and Resilience

Peter Williams will be discussing the benefits of mindfulness practices for increasing resilience in relation to vicarious trauma and PTSD. He has worked as a psychotherapist since 2007, using approaches such as Somatic Experiencing and Internal Family Systems. He has practiced meditation for 27 years and has taught mindfulness meditation since 2003.

Monday, April 4: Juicing with Jen Donovan

Join Jen Donovan, RYT, RCYT, RPYT in her kitchen as she demonstrates her healthy morning routine and shares her favorite green juice recipe. We will talk about the benefits of juicing and the ingredients. Please see the grocery list with all of the ingredients. Feel free to make the juice along with Jen!

Monday, May 9: A Journey to Optimal Health

How can what we choose to eat help significantly improve conditions of high blood pressure, inflammation, diabetes, and even prevent or reverse heart disease? In this session, Ileen D. Gerstenberger, Senior Education and Training Manager Educator for the State of Idaho will be speaking about one person’s journey to discover optimal health and the science behind adopting a whole food plant-based lifestyle (WFPB). Participants will learn how this lifestyle differs from popular diets and trending fads while delivering inspiring improvements in overall health and wellness that your doctor can support. Most importantly, participants will learn how each of us has complete control over obtaining better health and wellness for life.

Monday, June 6: Owning your Personal Power

The way we respond to people and events makes all the difference between owning our personal power…and giving it away. In this session, Dr. Tara Wilkie and Sophie Langri will show participants how to become more self-aware, connect to themselves and regulate intrusive emotions – including high emotions like anger or low emotions like detachment and cynicism. It draws on the latest neuroscience and psychology to help learners fully own their thoughts, feelings and actions.

Monday, July 11:  Cultivating Emotional Intelligence At Work: Why It's Important and Why It Must be Now

Emotional Intelligence is described as one of most powerful predictors for success in our professional and personal lives. Our ability to successfully identify and manage our own emotions, while simultaneously navigating the emotional landscape of others are essential skills to our personal happiness, as well as the overall well-being of our places of work. Our inability to connect to, or properly process our emotions in sustainable ways, is linked to a whole host physical and mental consequences. The truth is we're stressed, experiencing burnout and overwhelm, sometimes feeling isolated and alone, and often are looking for a reprieve from our pain. In this workshop, Christopher Daniels, trained Emotional Intelligence Coach, will explore the major pillars of emotional intelligence, explain why this work is so essential at this moment in our society, share tested strategies he uses with clients everyday,  and reveal the three self-reflective questions that changed his life. 

Monday, August 1: Yoga and Mindfulness for Inner and Outer Peace

Participants will learn yoga and mindfulness practices to reduce stress, and how to incorporate these practices into their lives. As well as learning how they help to heal trauma and communities. 

Monday, September 12: Creativity as an antidote to stress and trauma

Karen Yescavage, Ph.D., professor of psychology, coordinates a new Creative Wellness interdisciplinary program at Colorado State University-Pueblo. She conducts applied research on creative expression to promote psychological well-being. She teaches undergraduate courses on privilege and oppression, personality, emotional intelligence, and positive psychology. She is actively involved in the community, promoting community schools and criminal legal system reform to reduce harm in both communities of color and law enforcement.

Monday, October 17: Applying compassion and self-compassion to our daily life

Amy Noelle is a certified Mindfulness, Self-Compassion and Performance Coach.  As a coach and speaker, Amy provides Mindful & Compassion based Mental Skills training to corporate leadership teams, healthcare communities, educators and families, with a focus on peak performance, resilience and happiness in all areas of life. Mindfulness and Self-Compassion is essential for emotional regulation, greater balance and self-acceptance, inner resilience and true wellbeing: mind, body, and spirit.

 

Monday, November 7: Whole Brain Living - Owning your power for a less stressful and more peaceful life

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor is a Harvard-trained and published neuroscientist. In 1996 she experienced a severe hemorrhage (AVM) in the left hemisphere of her brain causing her to lose the ability to walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life. Her memoir, My Stroke of Insight, documenting her experience with stroke and eight-year recovery, spent 63 weeks on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list. In 2008 Dr. Jill gave the first TED talk that ever went viral on the Internet, which now has well over 27.5 million views. Also in 2008, Dr. Jill was chosen as one of Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World” and was the premiere guest on Oprah Winfrey’s “Soul Series” webcast.

 

For over half a century, we have been trained to believe that our brains have two parts: the emotional right hemisphere and the rational left hemisphere. But this is not technically true. Each of our brain hemispheres has both an emotional and a thinking module of cells. Consequently, we have left thinking, left emotional, right emotional, and right thinking parts of our brain. Each of these four parts not only exhibit unique skill sets, but they each give rise to four distinct and predictable character profiles. Once we identify each of our own Four Characters, we can train them to not only respect one another but to work together as a healthy team. By doing so, we can choose to feel balanced and peaceful rather than feeling stressed and anxious - in any situation.

 

In this Whole Brain Living session, you will meet the Four Characters in your brain (as well as help you recognize them in those around you), and learn how to perform the BRAIN Huddle. This is a powerful technique that brings each of your Four Characters into conversation with one another, thereby giving you the ability to consciously choose which character you want to embody at any moment. We have much more power over what is going on inside of our brain than we have ever been taught, and the more familiar you become with your Four Characters, the more power you will gain to choose your thoughts, feelings, experiences, and behaviors so you can create your best life.

 

Monday, December 5: Tis the Season: Mindfully Honoring Holiday-Evoked Grief

Kim Flournoy DiJoseph, M.S.W. has engaged in 30+ years of work with victims across the professional continuum – from court advocate to clinical social work practitioner, director of domestic violence agencies to trauma-informed organizational consultant. She also has extensive experience developing and teaching courses in vicarious trauma, grief and loss, and intergenerational trauma. In the fall of 2019, she intentionally transitioned from 7 years as an associate professor in teaching at Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Social Work to pursue a more balanced and heart-centered life. Kim has an intuitive healing practice, Hot Mess Work, where she works primarily with advocates, therapists, and other “helpers” as they reconcile and integrate their own and ancestral wounds and wisdom into their personal lives and into their work. She also facilitates intuitively-guided, mindfulness meditation groups. 

As the result of the murder of her mother in 2012, Kim now carries the role of co-victim of homicide and trains and provides consultation from a unique dual-personal/professional perspective on traumatic grief, the criminal justice system, spirituality, and the healing process. She is the wellness consultant for the Virginia Victim Assistance Network with an emphasis on the integration of empathy, self-care, and wellness practices in the daily lives of crime victim advocates, lead facilitator for a pilot survivor empowerment project of the Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance, and is an adjunct faculty member for the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Social Work. Kim is a biracial healer, writer, wife, mother, and former personal chef who lives in Richmond, VA.

Holidays can be heavy. We spend holidays alone with ourselves and with complicated family members. We navigate holidays without loved ones we’ve lost to addiction, depression, estrangement, and death. The season of winter itself is a real and symbolic time of dormancy and going within. While this slowing down gives nature a chance to rest, it often gives grief the space to reawaken. In this gentle, compassionate, and experiential session we will hold space for both the celebration and mourning this season invites us into. We will foster connection by engaging in conscious conversation on mindful grieving, bring greater awareness to how emotions are often held in our bodies, and explore new tools for bringing mindfulness into our grief processes through a brief, guided meditation. Yes, the holidays can be heavy, but if acknowledged and mindfully moved through, they can also gift us with a catalyst for healing. 

 

More Moments to come!

About OurFamilyWizard

Working alongside clients on OurFamilyWizard, family law and mental health practitioners can assist families to move beyond conflict and co-parent with confidence. OurFamilyWizard's web and mobile applications offer parents living separately an array of tools to easily track parenting time, share important family information, manage expenses, and create an accurate, clear log of co-parenting communication.