We live in an age of anxiety, but this anxiety is being reflected in children increasingly young.

When I was first practicing over 25 years ago, we would see children with symptoms of worry, anxiety or stress usually as teenagers, unless there had been a specific trauma.

Children express stress similarly to adults, but are often less able to know why they feel as they do. They present with headaches, tummy aches, sleeplessness, emotional and behavioral issues.

About 10 years ago I noticed a trend, children were visiting me with symptoms and signs of distress younger, often around 7-8 years old. In the last few years the trend has become more disturbing, with children visiting with clear symptoms of anxiety from 4-5 years old.

We can put this down to the usual suspects, social pressures made worse by social media, education designed to over focus children far too young, and sensory overload from the intake of complex psychological themes when they are not ready to process them, especially through media.

We live in a world where our senses are in a constant sense of overwhelm, we live in a constant stream of bombardment of the senses. The only way to cope with this bombardment is to shut-down, otherwise we will be quickly overwhelmed. This natural shut down or blocking of our senses will allow only the strongest images to penetrate, thus advertising has become stronger and stronger in its imagery, otherwise we will just ignore it.

One of the many consequences of this ‘shut down’ is a loss of connection to nature. We seem to have lost connection to and hence forgotten how to protect our natural environment. We are part of nature but we rarely feel it.

The Dynamics of Stillness aims to help us reconnect with ourselves and nature and find our natural rhythm once again.