About
Our story: a brief history
Mind Body Align makes it easy for the practice of mindfulness to be a regular part of the daily routine and culture of schools, educators, and students.
Several years ago, our founder and CEO, Annamarie Fernyak, volunteered to teach mindfulness to local middle school children. After a day in the classroom, she observed children unable to calm themselves to pay attention for her lesson. Some were unable to focus on any lesson. She felt intense desperation coming from both teachers and students. The teachers’ efforts were heroic, but the large class sizes, the various student learning styles, and the differing student personalities all came together to create a classroom environment that increased anxiety.
Annamarie was worried. How could these children navigate life if they could not build resilience and the ability to focus? She felt these kids had the cards stacked against them. At that moment, Annamarie decided to shift her company focus, write a new mission, and to transform the lives of these children using mindfulness.
Annamarie added an experienced elementary school teacher to her team, one who understands children and teachers. Then, she added another, and another. These teachers designed and facilitated a program of impact in the schools. Mind Body Align At School teaches exercises and practices that calm the nervous system to enhance focus and to create a calm readiness to learn. Proven results include increased test scores, reduced absenteeism, and reduced disciplinary intervention. If you are an educator, let’s talk more about bringing this calm to your school.
Mindful social and emotional learning (SEL) teaches students and educators attention control, self-awareness, and emotion regulation. For many people, including children, mindfulness is the missing piece to SEL and is now a part of most required school curriculums. By targeting three key skills, attentional control, self-awareness, and emotion regulation, Mind Body Align’s At School Program builds student self-regulation to a greater extent than SEL and PBIS programs alone. Self-regulation allows students to think clearly enough to choose a strategy they learned in their SEL curriculum. SEL teaches those skills, but students don’t know how to pause in order to access them. We help them learn, and practice, allowing it to be a habit and a part of their regular behaviors.
Mind Body Align At Work serves professionals. People all over the world engage with us to learn techniques and practices. We have a wealth of resources on our blog, in workshops, and programs like our free, virtual mindfulness practice called Connect In, which is held twice weekly for fifteen minutes. Our past mindfulness practices are always available on our YouTube page.
It all comes back to mindfulness. Fitness, relationships, job advancement, job satisfaction, anxiety, focus, reducing or eliminating PTSD, dealing with trauma – all are improved with sustained mindfulness practice. Ask us about the many studies which show students learn more and test scores improved after mindfulness education. Similarly, adults are more productive and satisfied in their work and home life when they regularly practice mindfulness.