This episode was prerecorded as part of a live continuing education webinar. On-demand CEUs are still available for this presentation through all CEUs. Register at allceus.com slash counselor toolbox. Hi everybody and welcome to today's presentation, happiness isn't brain surgery, mindfulness and relaxation for the entire family. Over the next 30-45 minutes, we're going to review the function of mindfulness and a variety of mindfulness techniques will explore the concept of relaxation and identify different methods of relaxation. Too often people refer to relaxation as something active that they're doing and what we really want to do is during relaxation is allow the body to de-stress. To review mindfulness means being aware of your current state emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually. Mindlessness allows people to ignore minor stress until it adds up to a meltdown. So when we're talking about adults, well everybody, a lot of times we don't pay attention. In our culture we tend to be relatively mindless. We get up, we eat our breakfast, we go to work or to school, we come home, we eat our dinner, we do whatever we've got to do and we go to bed and we don't really stop to think throughout the day how we're doing. I remember when my son was little, he would be just an angel at school, just an absolute angel, the teachers loved to have him and he would come home and at 3.30 he would just lose it and go completely bonkers and bouncing off the wall and being irritable. So those are the things that we really want to pay attention to. So what was it throughout the day that happened or what was it that was happening at home that made him bounce off the walls? And through doing some research and talking to some elementary school teachers, it became clear to me that throughout the day children are doing so much to try to hold it together when kids are kind of all over the place anyway. He was using so much energy to do that. When he got home he was exhausted, he just couldn't keep it together anymore. So it was a time where he needed to just kind of let loose, let his hair down, whatever you want to say. And for kids as opposed to us as adults who generally we come home and we're like, oh I just want to sit on the couch and be quiet. Children tend to be the opposite and they come home and they just want to tell you all about it and they want to play and they want to go.  I wish I could harness it. So as parents, as teachers, as whatever your capacity is, if you're working with youth being aware that their energy levels and their methods of de-stressing and kind of letting down may be somewhat different than ours. Encouraging children from the very beginning to be able to articulate how they're feeling emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually as you get there. That's not something an elementary school kids probably going to wrap his head around. Again, with my son, I remember distinctly one day I had to stop by the office to do something and I was working in a residential community mental health center and we walked in and we went down to one of my units and I picked up some paperwork and I don't remember what happened. It was really non-essential. But we're walking back up the hallway and all of a sudden, Sean and his little toddler voice, he was probably three. He goes, Mommy, I so angry. And I said, oh, okay. Well, thanks for telling me. Let's talk about that for a minute. Kids, if they're able to articulate their emotions, can get a lot more guidance from us on being able to deal with those emotions. And I said in the lead up, this is for the entire family. So I'm going to focus a lot on kids more so than usual in today's presentation because we're gearing up to working with families and people who are getting ready to go to holiday parties and all that kind of stuff which can be stressful. The other thing to remember with children and animals if you have them is that they are very perceptive and children will feed off of your own emotional state. So if you're getting ready to go to your in-laws house or your parents' house or wherever and it's going to be a stressful situation, children are going to pick up on that. And because children are very egocentric, you know, younger children especially, they're going to try to make it better or they're going to just try to distract you. That's their job. You need to be there.  So they want to distract you from whatever's making you upset. And again, they're egocentric. So a lot of times they may think it's their fault or they're doing something to stress you out. Being aware of that, sometimes we can't just make all of our stress poof go away. I would love it if we could but we can't. Talking with your kids and going, you know what honey? It's just, it's going to be a long ride over to grandma's house and I'm just kind of stressed out. And you know, I didn't get much sleep last night or whatever the case may be. You don't need to go into details about your relationship with whomever it is. But letting the child know it's not about them. You're stressed. You're going to be okay. It's all good. This goes a long way. It also helps children. It models for children what they need to do as they start growing up, as they start becoming more independent, being able to label their emotions and do something about it, which takes us to the do something. Whether it's us who are stressed or whether it's the child who is stressed, children don't come with coping skills like built in. You know, they need to be taught coping skills. First step is articulating. I'm angry. I'm sad. I'm stressed out. I'm scared. We can help them with that. And as parents and teachers and doctors and whatever your position is, that's what we do. Our knee jerk reaction is, okay, let's talk about that or let's see what we can do about that. Sometimes parents are so overwhelmed or overburdened with all that's going on in their world. When a child says, I'm angry or I'm scared or I'm stressed, the parent's response is there's no need to be. Don't worry about it. And they ignore what's going on with the child instead of talking about it a little bit and helping them identify ways to deal with whatever that negative emotional state is. So encouraging children to develop a good emotional vocabulary. Encouraging children to check in with themselves emotionally.  It's probably just not going to happen. If they do, it's great. But if they don't, that's fine. But I always use the meals as an anchor. Check in with yourself and tell me how you're doing. Whenever I would pick Sean up when he was in public school, I would pick him up from school and on the way home, we'd talk about how his day was, how he felt, and I'd get an idea about what was going on with him. And I could help him put labels to what's going on. So encouraging them to do this gets them off to a good start as they grow up. And we know that when they hit those teenage years and hormones kick in and their moods are all over the place. There are two teenagers right now. If they don't have that vocabulary, if they don't have the ability to articulate what's going on, they may not know why still. But if they don't have the ability to articulate what's going on, they're going to have a more difficult time dealing with it. And you'll get vague comments like, I'm just tired or I don't feel well. When there could be a lot more going on, depression, anxiety, grief, those sorts of things. Helping children work through this prevents them from acting out. And we're going to talk a lot about self-esteem and acting out and being able to deal with dysfunctional emotional states in the presentation on bullying at the beginning of November. Moving on to mentally, being aware of your own mental state. Are you able to think clearly? Are you foggy-headed?  The same thing is true for kids. When my kids were growing up, well, still, but especially when they were younger, they would go through phases and it was like they'd be learning English and they'd be doing great in their language arts and their math skills would just be kind of holding steady or, you know, forgetting some. And then one day it's like a light switch went off and they would flip and all of a sudden they were on with the math and they couldn't remember anything about how to conjugate a verb. And I'm like, what happened? Or when they're starting to get sick, my children, and I know a lot of my friends report the same thing, children get more disorganized. Their brain is not dedicating the resources to cognition and memory and all that stuff. It's dedicating resources to fighting the bugs. So if your child or you are feeling foggy-headed, having difficulty concentrating, it's worth looking at is there a growth spurt going on?  Is there some sort of hormone imbalance, you know, change of life thing going on? Is your nutrition okay? Look at all those vulnerabilities to try to figure out what might be causing that current state. As we approach the holidays, a lot of times people's nutrition gets a little bit more wonky. We get busy. We've got holiday parties to go to. We've got football games to go to. We've got practices on top of everything else. So in some instances, people start eating more fast food and paying less attention to what they're eating. So it is important to check in on the nutrition and make sure your kids are eating. I don't know what school lunches are like now. I've heard horrible rumors, but I'm hoping they've gotten better. It's important for kids to eat throughout the day in order to sustain that mental focus as well as us. If you've come in one morning and maybe you were good and you ate breakfast, but then you got caught up in meetings and seeing clients and everything else, and before you know it, it's four o'clock and you haven't eaten anything since like six. You'll notice that there's probably a difference in your energy level and how you feel and how you're able to function. The more rundown we get, whether it's avoiding dealing with negative emotions and just being unhappy, being tired, being malnourished, the more problems that we have, the harder it is to relax. We're using a lot of energy to kind of fight against resistance. Physically, if you're physically exhausted, it's going to be harder.  But if you listen to your body like you're supposed to, you'll get an idea about what you can and cannot accomplish. Some days you just need to relax. And if you find yourself feeling physically exhausted over a long period of time, more than a couple of days, then you want to start looking at what's causing that. Remembering again that nutrition, sleep deficits, and neurochemical imbalances from depression, anxiety, and side effects of drugs can all cause physical exhaustion and problems. Spiritually, how are you doing with your honesty, hope, faith, courage, discipline, and integrity? How are you doing with living a life that is grounded in your values, doing things each day that are getting you closer to where you want to be? I sound like a broken record with that phrase, don't I? And it's partially intentional. We need to encourage our kids to be aware of where they are, to be aware of the fact that on Tuesday they may feel very different than they do on Wednesday. So they may be able to accomplish very different things those days. And that's okay. We all have energy ebbs and flows, things that wax and wane. If you don't sleep so well one day, you know, you don't want to start probably trying to do something that's really complex unless you have to. So planning ahead, being aware of things that are coming up, and being kind to yourself, you can head off problems before they become real issues. If you know that, yeah, you know, I feel like I'm getting a scratchy throat, maybe I ought to go to bed early tonight. You know, that makes sense, but if you're not being mindful, you may try to just push through. Too many of us push through when we are emotionally drained. We push through. What does that do? It leaves us at an emotional deficit. And we want to talk about ways to improve how we feel emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually. So what discriminative stimuli, and if you remember from behavior modification, that means things in the environment that tell you to do something. It makes you discriminate. When you're at home, and this is true for me as well as my children, I behave a certain way. You know, I dress a certain way, I behave a certain way, I'm just kind of relaxed at my house. When I go to my mother's house, we don't act the same way. We are a lot more formal. We are a lot more proper in the way that we act, the way that we dress, you know, all those sorts of things. The discriminative stimuli is the fact that it's her house. You know, I'm in a different situation. I'm in a different environment. Other things that you can do to remind you to do a mindfulness scan, put a sticky note somewhere. Like I said, do it during meals. Maybe set an alarm on your smartphone to remind you to check in with yourself. And scans don't take that long. It's like, okay, how do I feel emotionally right now? Check. How do I feel mentally? Check. Physically, let's do a body scan. All right. Check. That takes all of, you know, 30 seconds. But make sure that you're staying in tune with how you're doing. Anything you can do to remind yourself, not only to do a mindfulness scan and check in with yourself, but to make yourself happy because we have one life. You can choose to live it and be miserable. Or you can choose to put on rose-colored glasses and, you know, be obnoxiously optimistic. I had a employee at the last place I worked. I mean, he was just a lovely man, a former military, career military. So everything in his office was just so. It was clean. It was tidy. It was organized. Everything had a place. And every once in a while, and he would come out and he would have, and I hate to say this right now with all the clown stuff, but it was funny then.  And he would walk down into the day room. And the point was, you know, he would do that just randomly to remind people to stop and laugh for a minute. Don't take everything quite so seriously. And it was a good reminder for the rest of us when he would do those sorts of things because it was such a dramatic departure from what he normally did. Now, I don't really see myself putting on a clown hat, but I'm usually pretty goofy to begin with. So it's not a far stretch for them. My favorite is knock-knock jokes. I would go up to different clients who may be having a bad day, and obviously if it was appropriate, and tell them some silly knock-knock joke that I got on my phone. And they were all G-rated. And it was the fact that we can laugh at the same things that three-year-olds can laugh at. And, you know, that's okay. Mindfulness activities. Doing a body scan. I mentioned that a couple of times already. A body scan, you just go from head to toe or toe to head, whatever makes you happy. And just check in and go, okay, how do I feel in my head? You know, physically, is there any pain going on? But, you know, sometimes in your head you've just got a lot of noise. Checking in with that, that's all information that you need to have. And moving down, checking for any pain, any signs of nervousness, anxiety, stress, tension. That'll give you an idea as to how you're feeling. It takes, you know, a minute or so if you're going to do it well, but you can do it anywhere.  You can do it in the car on the way to work, especially if you're stuck in a traffic jam and you're not driving. But, you know, obviously you want to pay attention to driving. Mindful breathing. Now, this is one of the easiest ones and I am not good at sitting still. I know, big surprise there. But mindful breathing is something that I'll do about once or twice a day. And it all started, you know, for me, I started and I didn't even realize I was doing something mindful. My goal was to see how low I could get my heart rate to go. But mindful breathing is just that you focus on the inhale and you focus on the exhale. And that's all you're focusing on. You're focusing how it feels when your abdomen rises and lowers, when the air comes in and it goes out. And you're focusing on just that, not necessarily how you feel. You're trying to relax as much as possible. But being aware of how you are in the moment. Mindful observation is focusing on a specific object. If you have a religious symbol, if you have a picture of your dog, if you have something in the room that you can focus on that is positive or at least grounding. You don't want to focus on something that's going to make you unhappy, obviously. And focus on that for a period of time. Noticing it, noticing how you feel while you're focusing on it. Noticing what thoughts it brings up.  You'll notice less as time goes on, the cars that are driving by, the people that are walking by in the hallway, the phones that are ringing. And that's all part of training your mind to be able to focus on you. Environmental awareness is exactly what it sounds like. I love these things because they're exactly what they sound like. Sitting in a room or out on the patio wherever you are and just noticing your environment. Not all of us are visually inclined. I am, but not everybody is. It's important to understand that we want to help people focus all of their senses. What do they smell? What do they hear? What do they feel? You know, maybe the cool temperatures, it may be moist outside. It may be the sun beating down on their skin. What are they noticing right then? That shuts out the noise from, I've got to do this, this happened this morning. We're not focusing on what happened two minutes ago or what's going to happen in two minutes. We're focusing on what's in your environment right now. One of the activities I used to do when I taught at the university, I would take my class out and I would have them sit on the courtyard for five minutes.  When we came back in, I would give them another five minutes to write down everything that they saw, heard, felt, thought about. And then we would talk about it because they were all sitting in the same plaza. They were all sitting within 20 feet of each other. And we would compare what everybody else noticed and what they didn't notice to highlight the fact of how environmentally unaware we often are. And sometimes how we can miss some really cool things. It's a fun activity to do with kids, both of these. If you go on a walk in a park, pulling a leaf off the tree or pulling a tree down if you don't want to rob it of its leaf and have the child notice it. What does it look like? What does it feel like? What does it smell like? In order to encourage the child to appreciate the depth of the experience. And then asking them to give you an idea about maybe something about how they feel or what's going on with them at that point in time. Mindful awareness. Thinking before you act. When something happens, we don't have to act right away. Mindful awareness means being in the moment, aware of what's going on, aware of your feeling, but also aware that those two things are not necessarily, do they necessarily have to be connected? You can observe something without having to act on it. And you can actually feel something without having to observe it. Giving yourself time to just observe it as it is and then make a decision about what to do. With teenagers and with a lot of adults, impulse control is a huge issue. Encouraging them to practice mindful awareness. When something happens, stop, think, then act. So we don't want them to jump into something right away. Mindful appreciation. Notice five things in your day that usually go unappreciated. You got to work without getting into an accident. Great. You know, that's awesome. We take that for granted a lot of the time. You know, whatever it is that you don't usually appreciate. You know, I noticed this year. I don't know why I hadn't noticed it before or looked it up for that matter. That my four o'clock flower in late summer. I kept waiting for them to flower and waiting for them to flower. And they hadn't flowered until about a month ago. So, but being appreciative of it now that they are here. And what I see when I come home and the butterflies and all that stuff, I will notice animals. Those are the things that I usually do notice. Other things that you can appreciate are also things that your family members do. Mindful appreciation of the fact that somebody cleared their dish after dinner. Four plus four, four senses plus four stimuli. So what are four things that you see, four things that you hear, four things you can touch and four things you can smell. This is kind of cool because it's also an activity you can do on car rides or if you're waiting at the doctor's office or something where a child may be getting antsy. It's also an activity you can do if you're at grandma's house and junior starts to lose it or you start to lose it for some reason.  That gets you out of the moment. So you're sort of riding the wave. It's a distress tolerance activity in addition to a mindfulness activity. Tactile mindfulness. If you're having difficulty separating or stopping, pinch yourself, which I don't recommend because it can bruise tissue and yada yada, hold an ice cube. Be aware of how it feels when you're holding it.  You know, at first it's like, okay, that's really cold. And then it starts to hurt. And then the hurt goes to kind of a numbing sort of sensation. It helps you tune in to how you deal with pain and what emotions arise. If you're holding the ice cube and you're starting to get really frustrated that you can't let go of the ice cube or that you're feeling this pain or that your body is objecting to something that you're doing, then you know that where some issues may be arising. If you sort of lean into the pain and breathe through it and focus on the fact that this will be over in two or three minutes and it will be to the numbing stage. You know, that's a whole different way of dealing with pain. So we can take that corollary of physical pain and translate it to emotional pain. When people feel angry or depressed or anxious, do they lean into it and go, okay, this will get better. I need to take an action.  I and you exercises. This is a new one that I learned. Pay attention to how often you use the word I in a sentence throughout two hours. It's way too much focus, at least for me, to do for an entire day. But when you're talking to people and in our society, we are extremely egocentric. A lot of times we will tell people, I feel, I am, I will, but we don't ask what do you need? How do you feel? What are you doing? We're too busy telling them things instead of inquiring. Pay attention to how often you use the word you as well in a blaming, directing or accusatory faction. You need to or you did this. Or whether you use it in an inquiring, compassionate fashion. What is it that you need me to do? Most of us find that throughout the day, we find that we tend to be a little bit more egocentric and bossy than we do inquiring and compassionate and all that stuff. And it might be interesting to compare, you know, your own self when you're in a session, how your verbiage, how your, how your language differs in session with a client versus at home with your family. Cause and effect. When something happens and this goes with impulse control, play out the story for everything that you do for a given period of time. I got out of bed because the effect of this is whatever. Mindfulness helps you focus on your motivations. The cause and effect activity helps you focus on why did you do something? I got out of bed because there was some sort of a reward. We know that we do things that have a reward. What was that? The effect of me getting out of bed is X, which means I'm going to do another behavior. It goes into chaining. You know, a lot of what we do on autopilot is just sort of a preformed chain of behaviors. Think about if you've driven home from work one day after a really hectic day and you're kind of lost in your own thoughts, you still get from work to home and make all the right turns, hopefully, because you're on autopilot and your body knows that, okay, when I see this stoplight, I need to turn right. Becoming more cognizant of that cause and effect in our own behaviors, not just in our driving patterns, helps us understand why you did something. Devil's advocate can be useful, and it can be useful with children and teenagers sometimes, but obviously it's one that you have to use with some element of care in order to not make the problem worse. But basically you act as if you believe the opposite of what you believe about something.  I will never use algebra. It's a pointless endeavor. That's how they feel about it. And you know, okay, so I will say play devil's advocate and tell me all the reasons I need to know algebra, all the ways that I might use algebra. Initially, you know, when I did it with my kids and algebra was one that we talked about a lot. I would give examples of how I had used algebra throughout the day. I mean, I hadn't really thought about it in terms of being algebra, but you know, I think I've got six people for dinner tonight. Each person is going to need six ounces of protein. So how many ounces of protein do I need for the meal tonight? So I need to make sure I have X amount of meat or whatever it is when I go to the grocery store. That's algebra. Who knew? And we use different examples of that in order to drive home the point that some of the simple algebra is really necessary. For my son, who's going to go into, at least he thinks right now he's going into computer programming. We look at why some of the more advanced algebra is important and you know, that kind of gets above my head. So I refer him to his father who happens to be in computer programming and they talk more about why those sorts of things are necessary. Devil's advocate can also be an interesting mindfulness activity again under the right circumstances to do at the dinner table. We've been studying politics right now and you know, the kids are watching the debates and they're watching everything that's going on with the presidential election. So I will encourage them to take a topic and play Devil's advocate with each other, which can be quite amusing as long as a fight doesn't break out. But which is why I say you want to make sure that you're using it in a situation where you know it's not going to cause harm and it's going to stimulate cognitive juices. Once you're aware of how you're feeling and once you're aware of how you are in the moment then you know whether you need to relax and recover or you've got energy to go. The interesting thing about energy to go is no matter whether you're doing it for something really exciting like going on a two-week cruise or you're doing it for something not so exciting like having to do annual evaluations for all of your employees, it takes energy. When you use energy you've got to give your body a chance to recharge and that's relaxation. We need to allow our body to stop being stressed. One of our major sources of energy waste, if you will, is muscle tension. It's like having the air conditioning on but the windows open at the same time. It doesn't do a lot of good, you're just going to keep running that air conditioning. When you have muscle tension your body is constantly using energy to keep those muscles knotted up. The muscle tension oftentimes comes from our own mental stresses and possibly our own poor posture. Identifying any sources of stress that need to be eliminated or that can be easily eliminated are great. Let's see how we can close the window so the air conditioner can be more efficient so the body can rest and recharge and be more efficient. Emotionally we want to increase pleasant cues in the environment. What's pleasant for me and what's pleasant for each of my children are very different. When we're working with families I'm not saying I want everything to be uniform everywhere. If the child can have a corner or a place, maybe they share a bedroom so they can't have a whole room, that's fine. They need to have a place they call their own. When I was working in residential we would have eight women in the same room and they were in bunk beds and their space was their bunk and the wall space that was above their bunk and a dresser and that was it. They didn't have a lot of space but what they did, what space they did have, they were allowed to try to make their own within reason. Sounds. Not everybody finds the same sounds pleasant whether it's put on music, instrumental music, birds, silence. Some people just love the sound of silence. Waterfall, any of those background noises, the white noise machines that you can get, you can also get DVDs. A lot of people use them when they're doing meditation. That just has some sort of a nature based background or flutes or something. Sites. What can you put in your environment that's relaxing as far as pictures, colors, organizations, safety. When I go into my office and I have pictures that are inspirational, I have pictures that are encouraging and I have my diplomas and all that other junk hanging on the wall. That's great. That's sort of energizing for me because that's when I'm in my professional mode. But when I'm home, I have pictures of cats and chickens and my kids and things that they've drawn. That's what I have up in my home environment. Separate feeling. When you go, just like we were talking about being at my house or being at my mother's house, my demeanor and my stress level is very different when I'm at work versus at home. Not to say one's better or worse than the other, it's just different. What's the feel? Make it comfortable so you're not unpleasantly hot, unpleasantly cold and texture. This is I'm a big person for texture. I'm a sweater junkie but scratchy sweaters or anything that's stiff or if it's too tight and we've all had times where we've put on a pair of pants and we've been like, yeah, this is a little bit too tight, but I'm going to wear it anyway. That's not the best thing for relaxation.  Paying attention to those things, there's just little things, but little things add up. In the environment, what do you smell? You know, sometimes it can be something as simple as just opening the windows and getting the smell of the crisp fresh air. Other times you can use things like aroma therapy or even the little tart warmers that you can plug into the wall. Most agencies may not allow you to use those because that would be a whole another MSDS sheet to go in the thing and a whole other issue as far as safety is concerned, but if you can find a way to incorporate a pleasant smell whatever is pleasant to you. It may be roses, it may be ginger, it may be coffee. Oh, I love the smell of coffee. Good coffee. Anything that can help you relax and get into that state of mind when we talk about guided imagery next time, we're going to talk about getting into the state of mind for you that's your happy place. Cognitively in order to relax cognitively don't think just be and that's hard for a lot of us to not think and we're going to talk about different ways to try to help us not get caught up with all the noise that's going on in our mind and appreciate what's going on right now. You can use guided imagery to help you relax mentally. Again, we're going to talk about that next week but talking about guided imagery briefly you're being guided through a scene or a scenario and guided imagery can be used in a lot of different ways. It's been used and tested with AIDS patients to help increase their T4 helper cells. It's been used with cancer patients to help their recovery. It's also been used with people who are stressed out to help them get to a more relaxed state of being. So guided imagery can walk you through a lot of different scenarios and can be used for a lot of different purposes. The cool thing with guided imagery and like we talked about with anxiety before and our mind misinterpreting cues with guided imagery we don't necessarily have to see something. We don't necessarily have to see the waterfall with our eyes to be able to see it in our mind's eye to be able to imagine that we're there and get roughly the same experience. Reading something enjoyable that's non-stressful. I try not to read clinical stuff when I'm at home because I'll get myself all fired up arguing about whether they use proper statistical analyses or how rigorous the study was done and I'm a statistics junkie too so it's one of those things that it's better for me not to get into so I will read books about crocheting I will read books on gardening my hobbies and I try to keep the two separate. Read something that you enjoy. Some people love fiction I can't get into it but if you love it that's awesome my son loves it. Learn a new hobby it's not relaxation and it's truest sense because anytime you learn a new skill it takes a fair amount of focus and mental energy but it can distract you from other stressors when I learn a new crochet stitch or if I'm crocheting to a pattern I have to focus on what I'm doing and I can't be focusing on all the different distractions I can't let my mind wander to the stresses of the day stay in the present moment to make sure I don't miss a stitch crochet may not be your thing you can use different crossword puzzles anything that makes you happy physical relief pain and muscular imbalances and regulate blood flow stretching if you're left and you're right are not evenly relaxed you're going to feel pain so you need to have muscular balance between front and back and left and right and top and bottom massage can help loosen some of those muscles so it's easier to stretch it can help with some of the muscle tension it can help with some of the muscle spasms unfortunately massage doesn't last forever and sometimes you have to go to a masseuse and that's not necessarily practical there are a lot of good videos online about ways that you can use tennis balls and foam rollers to massage the basic parts on your own some people swear by hot tubs as a way to help their muscles relax progressive muscular relaxation is a technique I used to teach my students they would sit or lie comfortably and then we would start at, I always started at the top and we would start at the top and tense and relax our foreheads noticing the difference between tense and relaxed we do that a couple of times then we move on to the next muscle and so forth and in every few muscles we would do a scan from top to bottom and make sure no tension had returned you can find all kinds of scripts for progressive muscular relaxation online but as people become more adept at noticing the difference between tense and relaxed then they'll be able to earlier identify when they're getting some muscle tension and then breath work can also help the more you oxygenate your blood the better you feel in general there's hyper oxygenation which isn't good but anything that you do breathing and focusing on your breath getting good deep breaths is generally going to help relax the body when you slow your breathing your heart rate slows it's just the way it happens your body goes, oh you're not breathing as fast so I don't need to beat the heart as fast which can help people with anxiety and anger issues social relaxation you want to look for social environments that promote calm tranquility tranquility and happiness and that's different for everybody when I go to the gym you know I get in my own little world there may be 30 people there or more I don't count but I don't care about what's going on around me I'm in my own little world where I'm calm and I'm happy and everything's grand laughter naturally releases endorphins and it's an excellent relaxation technique so find funny things and it can be funny memes, it can be stupid cat videos whatever it is that makes you laugh try to work it in 5 to 10 minutes each day a good belly laugh does a lot to improve mood and help people relax extroverts may be more comfortable around a group of people because they don't mind the interruptions and they actually draw energy off more people so extroverts may look for relaxation in a social setting whereas introverts may want to go to coffee with one or two other people where they won't be interrupted and bothered a bunch people who tend to be more judges or structured don't like surprises and they need to plan for whatever the social event is not that they don't like social events but don't throw it on them at the last minute and call up your friend Jane and be like hey it's 4 o'clock on Friday and I don't have anything to do would you like to go out at 6 o'clock if Jane is strong on the structure scale she's probably going to say no I already plan to do laundry and wash my hair and that's actually probably true Perceivers on the other hand don't like that much structure, they like to go well after work on Friday I'm probably going to go do something I don't know what so when you're talking about relaxation you need to be aware of who you're doing it with and your children will have temperaments just like we do make sure that you're attending to their temperaments as you're planning these things if you're going to a family event if you have holiday parties that you've got to go to whatever it is add extra stress to your child's existence because they don't like being in big crowds or they don't like being in the car for 4 hours just be aware of that and plan on it it will make stress go down a lot and encourage them to figure out ways they can deal with it too what can you do in the car for 5 and a half hours environmental relaxation what makes the environment relaxing for you do you find relaxing I love purple but I also love light yellow and white those are probably my big ones but that's me some people like blues and greens my stepmother loves greens what do you want to see when you walk into a room my daughter's doing interior decorating right now and she's learning about all the different styles of interior decorating and I am definitely not what you would call a person with a taste for modern design I'm more of a country or old fashioned early American sort of design but that's not for everybody some people prefer the crisp lines what light level do you like some people like it to be darker some people like it to be a lot brighter like daylight and you want to look at the temperature of the lights some people like the soft whites that are flattering and some people like the daylight lights that have a much bluer hue and they're much brighter but they also tend to be much harsher what temperature do you prefer and this is a constant battle in our house because my kids would prefer it to be like 76, 77 in the summer or in the winter and like 72 in the summer which doesn't make any sense to me I'm like why don't you just want it 74 all year long I on the other hand would prefer it to be 68 all year round because then I can always layer up if I get cold so find out what makes it more comfortable for you location do you want to sit where you're facing a window maybe in a room without windows what makes your environment what makes your location important again what do you want to hear an organization some people are okay with you know just moving stuff off the sofa so they can sit down other people need to have a place for everything and everything in its place and it's not that you're necessarily OCD or you know just sometimes it feels more relaxing to not be surrounded by clutter but that depends on the person I know people who my best friend her apartment looks like a whirlwind hit it but she doesn't care she's like whatever I got better things to do right now than to clean and that's fine for her it's fine for me when I'm there too so mindfulness involves increasing awareness of our emotional mental and physical selves children don't know how to do that from get go so we need to teach them starting out when they're young giving them an emotional vocabulary and then when they use their feeling words helping them figure out what's causing the feeling and how to deal with the feeling kids are also very attuned to how we are feeling as their caregivers so if we become stressed they will probably start to become um they will act out more is typically the phrase that I hear because they're trying to distract the person they're trying to make the stressfulness go away make you laugh make you forget about it whatever encouraging children to be aware of that but also articulating to them that you know I'm stressed right now but it has nothing to do with you so their little egocentric minds don't get focused on what did I do and how can I fix it then we move on to mental self awareness and um a question comes in when a child hits for example because they're frustrated um or angry then we want to stop and go okay you know tell me what's going on and the child will probably tell you well Sammy did such and such and such so we would need to paraphrase and that made you angry or that hurt your feelings and help them identify that feeling vocabulary that they missed because they went from activating event to consequence and didn't identify the emotions or beliefs in between um and the other thing we can do that my son's preschool teacher used to do she was just awesome with children um in certain situations she would ask the children how do you think that made um Jimmy feel when you hit him and the kid would usually go oh she would say okay well if Jimmy hit you how would you feel oh I'd be angry or I wouldn't like it okay so when you hit him how do you think he felt well he probably didn't like it exactly so she would walk them through the devil's advocate point of view if you want to say that um to help them take the others perspective develop empathy and all that wonderful stuff that we just assume kids are born with and they're not um we need to help them learn as they go through life and um so then moving on to the mental state this is as children get cognitively older and then us we're technically cognitively older uh looking at how we're feeling are we foggy headed are we able to concentrate are we just on task you know some days you come in and you sit down at work and you've got a laser focus and you can get a million and one things done and some days you come in and it's you're lucky if you get one thing done but being aware of where you are and working within your your limits is part of mindfulness because you'll reduce your frustration a lot if you don't try to you know push through when there's just you've got nothing left to give and being aware of your physical self if you're sleepy if you're hungry if you're tired already said sleepy if you're in pain those are all going to decrease your um tolerance to stress as well as your ability to focus understanding that and just going with it instead of getting upset about it um is going to be huge in helping kids learn how to manage their own stress and helping our clients and you know maybe ourselves learn how to deal with our own um stress as it comes up we can realize that you know today I'm only about 80 percent and it is what it is what can I do to help my body relax and rejuvenate mindfulness helps us to develop an understanding of external stem stimuli that influences ourselves so as we become more mindful we become aware of those stimuli in the environment that may have triggered a smile or may have triggered us to go oh no don't want to do that again relaxation is a technique used to restore equilibrium after a period of stress as clients increase self-awareness they'll be able to identify signs of distress earlier implement relaxation strategies to prevent the upheaval they'll be able to kind of turn it down and learn their own stress triggers and effective interventions if you enjoy this podcast please like and subscribe either in your podcast player or on youtube you can attend and participate in our live webinars with Dr. Snipes by subscribing at allceuse.com slash counselor toolbox this episode has been brought to you in part by allceuse.com providing 24-7 multimedia continuing education and pre-certification training to counselors, therapists and nurses since 2006 use coupon code counselor toolbox to get a 20 percent discount off your order this month


I'm going to push you down, for instance. Is it not true that you made your name on the back of Marie Besson issue? Winston Peters wants to be New Zealand's first Maori Prime Minister. He's not unanimously popular, even amongst his own people. I've got to have your whole crowd around you. Look, he can't get his advice into one bus. He has to have an articulated bus to take us on to ride with him. Today, after falling out with the Prime Minister, defecting, then forming New Zealand first three years ago, Peters runs a well-oiled political mission. He needs a fleet of buses to carry his entourage. Years far and away, the country's most charismatic politician.


We're going to spend a good amount of time talking about the race that's taking place in the first congressional district of Massachusetts between Justice Democrat Alex Morse and incumbent Democrat Richard Neal, who is a very powerful Democrat, he chairs the House Ways and Means Committee. And the thing about this race is a lot of people are starting to pay attention to it because it's starting to get a little bit closer. Alex Morse, according to public polls, is inching up. You have a lot of people in that district, a high percentage now saying that they're undecided. You have Alex Morse closing the gap between him and Neal.  Now the reason why I'm talking about this is because out of the blue as this race tightens as the election comes up, several really serious allegations emerged out of nowhere. Allegations from college Democrats of Massachusetts. Now originally, when I first heard about this, if you follow me on Twitter, I stated that I wasn't planning on talking about this because I just I didn't understand the story. Like something about it seemed off and there was like key details in my opinion that were missing. Nonetheless, let's talk through the several allegations of the Me Too nature that have been alleged against Alex Morse. So the first one is that he regularly matched with students on dating apps, including Tinder and Grindr, who were as young as 18 years old. These students included members of the College Democrats of Massachusetts, UMass Amherst Democrats and other groups in the state. As for the second allegation, they accused him of picking up on college students at events, saying that he'd add students on Instagram and then DM them, and that apparently made them feel uncomfortable, even if he wasn't necessarily explicitly stating his interest to pursue them romantically. They didn't like it. Now, finally, he reportedly had sexual contact with college students, including at UMass Amherst, where he teaches and the Greater Five College Consortium. Now that last allegation has led to a lot of confusion because he is a lecturer at this college. So what a lot of people initially assumed was that he as a professor was sleeping with his students, but that's not actually the case. He happened to hook up with students that go to the same college but weren't directly under him. So there's a lot here that doesn't really make sense to me, which is why I kind of like pivoted away from the story, because the first allegation, like kind of looking at this, they're mad that he regularly matched with students on dating apps. But this is an individual who is 31 years old. He's going to match with people who are college students. We don't know if these are undergrads or grad students. And then it says, who were as young as 18 years old, okay, but 18 years old is of consenting age. And these 18 year olds are making their own profiles on their own accord on these dating apps and they're getting matched. So it seems a little bit bizarre. Now as for the second allegation, they said that he was picking up on college students at these events. Now they don't supply us with any evidence that he was in fact hitting on college students at these events. But the fact that he is DMing them afterwards, I mean, that may be a little bit creepy. Sure, I guess I could see how they view that in a weird way, but they don't actually even accuse him of hitting on them through DMs or creeping on them. They just say they didn't like that he contacted them. Okay, now as for this last allegation here, he had sex with students that happened to attend the college. So to be clear, he matched with students and hooked up with them or dated them. I don't know what the circumstances were. And the students didn't even know that he was a guest lecturer at the college. So I'm trying to figure out, like I'm reading through this, trying to wrap my head around it. Where's the controversy? These are two consenting adults. He doesn't appear to be using his position as a guest lecturer to use that power dynamic to his advantage. So what am I missing here? And I stated that very clearly, like, am I missing something? What's going on here?  That's pretty awkward. That's weird. I probably wouldn't be cool with that. Nonetheless, it's not really a scandal. These are two consenting adults of legal age that could do what they want to. But the plot thickens a little bit because come to find out I wasn't actually missing anything because there was no scandal. This is all a political hit piece because as Daniel Boguslaw and Ryan Grimm of the Intercept uncovered, the college Democrat at center of attack on Alex Morse hoped to launch career through Richard Neal. And they add rank and file UMass college Democrats were stunned to see the letter their chapter's leadership wrote on their behalf. OK, so let's just pause for a moment. You have a college student on behalf of his entire chapter trying to smear Alex Morse also he can help his own career because he likes Richard Neal. So you have that motivation there, but it goes deeper even than that. There's a really clear conflict of interest. And as you're going to see, there's even evidence. Now, I don't know much about the individual who catalyzed this entire non-story quote unquote scandal.  They're always preying on others and you have to be wary of them. Like you'd think that by now we would have moved on. You know, we see the same thing being used against transgender women with the bathroom panic. But this is exactly what's happening.  I mean, the ethical considerations here need to be discussed at length. But we can't possibly get to all of that. But I do want to share the details with you because it's very clear that the intentions of the individual who basically made this scandal a thing or tried to, at least he's doing this because he wants an internship with Richard Neal. And he knows Richard Neal personally, Alex Morse's opponent. So the intercept breaks it down with the allegation short of details or any student claiming to be a victim. The focus has shifted to the origin of the letter, the man serving as chief strategist for the UMass Amherst College Democrats, Timothy Ennis recently completed a class with Neal, who teaches the journalism course. Ennis, according to two members of the College Democrats chapter, was open about his hopes of working for Neal in the future. Meanwhile, an aide with the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences in which the journalism program sits, alerted the school's administration of evidence that the recently surfaced allegations against Holy Oak Mayor Alex Morse are politically motivated according to communications reviewed by the intercept. Spokespersons for the administration did not respond to requests for comment. Claire Sheedy, a rising sophomore and a Morse supporter, was active in the College Democrats chapter and knew Ennis through their joint work on behalf of the Pete Buttigieg campaign for president, with Ennis handing off the reins of the organization to Sheedy. In November, 2019, when Ennis was president of the College Democrats chapter, the pair were in New Hampshire together, campaigning for Buttigieg and Ennis, she said, opened up about his respect for Neal in a car ride through New Hampshire. He spoke very highly of Mr. Neal, Sheedy said. What he said to me was he wanted Neal to be his in to politics and work his way up from there. Sheedy said she asked Ennis what he thought of Morse and Ennis said Morse socialized with students in a way he found creepy. Not the students in question, mind you. And that Morse had recently matched with a student on the Tinder dating app. Sheedy said she didn't think of it again until last week when she and other members of the College Democrats were told by leadership that they had written a letter on the members behalf to the local college paper, which had published an article based on it. Helena Middleton, a rising sophomore and former member of the University of Massachusetts College Democrats, said she joined the group to meet other college students on the university campus where a sprawling undergraduate population of 22,000 can make it difficult to feel like a part of a community. A longtime supporter of Morse, she tried to recruit others to join her. I tried to share volunteer opportunities for Morse's campaign, but the chapter leadership would ignore it while at the same time send out opportunities for candidates like Ed Marquis and Joe Kennedy. So it was clear to me that there was something going on there, said Middleton. Eventually she said she learned that a member of the group's leadership was a student in Neal's journalism course at the time. He made it very clear that he supported the election campaign and that he wanted to work for Neal, Middleton said. And it was president of the UMass College Democrats from April 2019 until April 2020, at which point he transitioned to chief strategist. That same month, Morse said college Democrats requested a donation from his campaign. He declined saying that his war chest wasn't large enough. A number of other Massachusetts politicians, including Neal, did make such donations. The president of the state chapter of the college Democrats later took to Twitter to applaud Neal for donating $1,000 to the Amherst chapter in May. Neal posted a photo of his class, which Ennis, who has since locked his Twitter account, liked. So there's a lot there, but I'm going to move on because the plot thickens even further because Daniel Moranz of the Huff Post reached out to the college Dems. And after this story broke, they still literally had the audacity to deny the fact that this was politically motivated. And to make matters worse, as Rangrim points out, Alex Morse apparently only attended one event after declaring his candidacy after they basically insinuated that he was there all the time hitting on students. So the students, I don't know how many there are, who are claiming that he made them feel uncomfortable by coming to these events, like he only went to one event since he's been a candidate and he's been a candidate for a long time. But all of a sudden they come out now and say that he makes them feel uncomfortable as the race tightens as it seems as if Richard Neil might actually be vulnerable, but yet it's not politically motivated. Sure, but regardless, if they want to deny that this is politically motivated or not, the intercept came out with another story that basically confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt with receipts that this was a coordinated effort to smear Alex Morse, quote, College Democrat chats reveal year old plan to engineer and leak Alex Morse accusations quote, this will sink his campaign predicted a College Democrat leader hoping to work for Representative Richard Neil. Now the article goes on to explain on Wednesday, following a statement by Morse, the statewide College Democrats chapter clarified that he had in fact only attended a single event during the course of his campaign. It was after that event in October of 2019 that the leadership of the UMass Amherst chapter began to talk about leaking a story damaging to Morse, according to those online communications. Timothy Ennis, the chief strategist for the UMass Amherst College Democrats admitted in the chats that he was a Neil stand and said he felt conflicted about involving the chapter of the College Democrats in a future attack on Morse, quote, but I need a job concluded Ennis, quote, Neil will give me an internship. At the time Ennis was president of the chapter, a post he held from April 2019 to April 2020 when he was term limited out. Leaders of the College Democrats group went beyond merely plans to leak. They also explicitly discussed how they could find Morse's dating profiles and then lead him into saying something incriminating that would then damage his campaign. That effort appears to have failed to generate the material they hoped for. But the group's leaders did believe they held damning evidence they contemplated leaking Instagram messages between Morse and Andrew Abramson, who in April became president of the organization. Ultimately, the College Democrats did not release any chats or any other specific claims against Morse, opting instead to level broader charges that he behaved inappropriately. On October 5th, Morse attended a College Democrats event at a local community college. Neil also appeared and was introduced by Ennis who was at the time enrolled in a journalism class Neil taught at UMass Amherst. Neil later told Ennis he was impressed by the events Ennis claimed in the chats. Morse sat on a panel with Abramson. After the event Morse reached out to Abramson on Instagram to say it was a pleasure meeting. The two had previously matched on Tinder and a set in the chats but had never met up to match on Tinder means both parties must swipe in the same direction in order to begin a conversation. Now, these are the DMs that Alex Morse sent out to Abramson. As you can see, they are completely innocent. They're just making small talk basically in bullshitting. But the person who shared this screenshot literally admitted that he's totally leading on Alex Morse. But this is the same person who apparently said that Alex Morse made them uncomfortable. Because I know that when someone makes me feel uncomfortable, I try to lead them on. They're nuts. So after Abramson shared that conversation between him and Morse, Ennis then shared a meme joking about leaking the story to Politico. And Ennis also made an active attempt to find Morse on dating apps himself and match with him. So he too can try to lead him on I'm assuming and get him to do something incriminating. So we now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this entire story this entire scandal the allegations against Alex Morse are completely bogus. It was created by a self interested political operative who was trying to help the person who he believed would help him get a job in politics, win his election. So it's disgusting. It's unethical. And if I were Alex Morse, I would be speaking to an attorney right now about possibly starting a lawsuit for standard like this is disgusting. Now we don't necessarily know at the time that I record this whether or not Richard Neil is in cahoots with Ennis or college Democrats. But I think that you know a journalist should look into that because this seems pretty fishy because it benefits him. So we certainly should speak out and condemn these allegations against his opponent, which is basically a smear job. And on top of that, what really is sad is another aspect of the story that we have to discuss the fact that so many people jumped on the bandwagon to smear and dismiss Alex Morse, even when the initial allegations that we saw in the first place didn't even make sense. Like these are allegations that two grown men are having sex with each other. They're of consenting age. They're adults and they're having sex and we're supposed to be angry.  Like, why would we blame Alex for that and not ask more questions, not ask why a media outlet would publish this without more evidence, without something more substantial. I think how Collins he put it best lefties fell for a smear of a progressive gay candidate taking on one of the most corporate of corporate Dems.  It's pathetically easy to play the left like a fiddle and he is exactly right. The fact that this is all we got like those allegations came up like I can't not help but think this is the result of homophobia. Now, I don't like to use the gay card very often. I only use it and you know, bring it out when I think it's absolutely necessary. But this is unquestionably the result of implicit bias against the gay man because anyone who believed these allegations to be serious or problematic without asking for more evidence that them. I mean, I have to question your judgment. If you could be manipulated that easily by this scandal, then what else would you be willing to fall for? I want to know. And I think that Alex Morris in an interview with Crystal Ball on The Hill Rising made a really phenomenal point about this.  So you've got to watch them and be fearful of them. And what's most problematic is this age old response to these allegations, the language being used to describe these allegations and people like me that have had to endure an over policing of our sex lives as a member of the queer community and the number of LGBT folks that have reached out over the last few days who are too are so familiar with this language and this this framing of gay men as predators is incredibly problematic and something that we have been going up against for generations. And so many people messaging me and say stay in this fight because young people and queer people need freedom to and we deserve to run for office. And will young people ever run?  If this is how powerful people are going to treat us when we actually want to make a difference in this country. And he's exactly right.  So the fact that some leftists almost fell for that trap shows that we have a lot of work to do. Like we have to do better because this is very clearly I think an instance of implicit bias. This is homophobia that is bubbling up again, even if people don't want to admit that it's homophobia among left wing people who I think would consider themselves allies.  But you have to understand that these biases, these stereotypes about gay men, they're not just going to go away as soon as we have the right to marry. They're going to remain in the backs of our minds for a really long time. And look, even if you are supportive of the gay people, a lot of people don't realize that that bias may still exist in their own head.   We see them as comic relief or we see them as the friend to someone else.  We have to think of gay people as asexual beings in order to make ourselves feel comfortable, right?  I mean, I think that Dave Chappelle made a really sound argument about this as problematic as it may be back in the early days when the Chappelle show was still on.     I mean, there's a makeup guru I'm blanking on his name. What is George Charles? Like just last year, I believe he's 19 years old.  And there were allegations by an older white woman that he was preying on straight men. Now he brought receipts and disproved all of that. But I mean, this is something that we're constantly having to prove.  So we're fighting to defeat this stereotype and this label and this sexual predator trobe.   Thank you for telling me. I support you. I just don't want to see anything. Like this is something that we're constantly dealing with.  So that's what the people were trying to play to in this story, Richard Ennis. And that's what makes this so nefarious. Like he knows this.  And the other individual, Abramson, was also on these gay dating apps. So they know about all of this.   You can get them to think negative things because when you activate that portion of their brain, they turn off reason. They stop thinking logically.  Leftists should know better. But if you were duped by this story, then I would encourage you to just try to do better and vet these claims and try to, you know, understand that due process is important, especially for historically marginalized communities. I mean due process is important for anyone, of course. But I mean like you have to understand that when we're vetting these types of claims, old stereotypes have to come into play. And this was very clearly an attempt to play on that old gay predator stereotype.  And you'd expect left allies who are, you know, in support of LGBTQ rights and queer people to not fall for this as easily, but the fact that they did, the fact that they were duped so easily by this ploy to help a corporate democrat, it's deeply worrying. And as a movement, we have to try to do better and educate people about these things.


Hey everybody this is Hari Swaminathan, we are doing a recap of our swing today was also a good day especially with the spider, you can see the spider was up $1,900 on this trade when I closed it and then we opened the new one on the June 21st expiry the 275 put that is just marginally up but the spy turned out to be a fantastic hedge and it ultimately proved its worth and it took a long time but we are up $1,900 on this trade because if you recall yesterday we had recovered the $2,000 it was down and today is a new $1,900 so this is up $1,900 Microsoft we were up 800 but today we lost 900 on this so we are minus 100 so overall we are still plus 240 and then there is some premium here now if we do anything there is still 2 days left and since Microsoft is close to $125 I might put the $123,120 put side vertical we will see I will send out an email tomorrow for that. Costco is down and I am going to be doubling down all those adjustments will come in the morning video but I am just doing a recap here Chipotle we have booked already $700 so we still have 700 to go city group did very well so we are now in the plus because we have booked $650 already and so you can see the overall position is down for $510 and this is going to expire also there is still a little bit of premium here that we can capture probably about $200 $300 so that will be a profitable trade Pidoo also did well went up to about $245 we are going to hold it Baba also went down so here also might be a situation of doubling down which I will cover in the video tomorrow morning as you can see the futures now is up about 5 points so maybe it would be a good time to double down on both Baba as well as Costco based on how the pre-market opens tomorrow. Adobe we closed I think we were down about a couple of hundred dollars on this trade but that is not bad given that we were coming climbing out of the hole so that is the recap for today I will be sending out the new trade as well as actual trade adjustments tomorrow morning video thank you.


The study found that the mid-channel bars, char, of the Domoda River Basin in India are not highly contaminated with heavy metals. This is because the sandy nature of the soil and frequent flooding limit the amount of pollutants that can accumulate. Additionally, the intensive agricultural practices on these river banks also help reduce the concentration of heavy metals. This article was authored by M. D. Mofizl-Hoke, Aznaral Islam, Abu Reza M. D. Tofical Islam, and others.


Hello, and welcome back to the stage. We're here for our next session. I'm David Van Belen, and our next session is around using Quarkus Funky to deploy Java serverless functions to multiple clouds. This will be presented to you by my colleagues Jorge Valderas and Ever Romero. They are both senior consultants here at Red Hat. As a reminder, you can ask questions in the chat. We'll set aside some time to answer them. And this session will, again, be recorded and made available on the Red Hat Developer YouTube channel, so you can watch it again after DevNation is over. So without further ado, I'll turn it over to Eber and Jorge. Take it away, guys. Yeah. Hello. Now, we are Ever Romero and Fluxer Valderas. Today, we work a little bit with useQuarkus Funky to deploy Java serverless to multiple clouds. We do a little pass-through about Quarkus. And after that, what is Funky? We explain some of the many capabilities of that. And we do a little demo for how to use Quarkus and Funky in a hybrid cloud. If you want to get followers in the different social network. And if you want to get the current project source, you can use the George GitHub in Funky multi-cloud repository. I know the agenda is what is Quarkus. What is Quarkus Funky? And we'll hand demo. OK. Today, I start before you to spend a light of innovative technology in the revolutionary world of hybrid cloud computing Quarkus. Quarkus is not just another framework. It's an image area in the realm in the cloud computing, especially in the context hybrid environment. So let's delve into the reasons why Quarkus is without a hybrid cloud freeze. And for most, Quarkus means a parallel specific field to hybrid cloud deployments. Traditional cloud application of its server from high memory, user, and slow startup items. Which can be problematic when relying with the hybrid cloud architecture that require quickly scalability and responsibilities. Quarkus, on the other hand, both an impressive combination of the small memory footprint and blazing fast startup items. This means that it's not only optimized resource utilization but also enables rapid escalation and elasticity my kid if it's perfect fit for hybrid cloud scenarios. Another reason why Quarkus is essential for hybrid cloud is native cloud capabilities. And it's typically for the hybrid cloud environment and mix of hyper-analyzed infrastructure. In that case, we have the different elements of different moments, how to build in the past the different scenarios or different frameworks. The Quarkus way use more effectively the room time and do really quickly and respond functionality workloads. Quarkus achieved this by using of innovative compute line approach, reducing memory consumption, and optimization room time performance. Compared to the traditional frameworks, Quarkus offer superior efficiency, stability, scalability, and enable the organization to maximize resource utilization and deliver responsible application. And in the native cloud capabilities, Quarkus is built from the ground up with the cloud-native principles in mind. Simply integrates with popular cloud-native technologies like Kubernetes, containerization, and serverless computing. Quarkus provide native support for these technologies, allowing developers to easily build, deploy, and manage application across hybrid cloud environments. But leveraging Quarkus organizations and sort their application are cloud-native by design, enable them to fully utilize the benefits of hybrid cloud architectures. Now, after this brief about Quarkus, what is Quarkus function? Thank you, Heather. So let me go ahead and share my screen. OK, you should be seeing my slides, if not either David or Heather just please interrupt me. So thank you for the Quarkus overview. I'll now go over and cover what exactly is Quarkus funky. So Quarkus is a portable Java API that can be used to essentially write several of its functions using Java that can be deployed to multiple, essentially all the major cloud providers. So namely, specifically Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud, that it can also be deployed as a serverless function using Knative. So that's ideal for a Kubernetes cluster, OpenShift, or if you're targeting either in the cloud or on premises, that's where Knative comes into play. And it can also be deployed as a standalone service. Even if it's using serverless, that's like a fifth option if you wanted to do that. So we won't cover when you should use serverless. There was another great talk about serverless computing a couple hours ago by Steve Tran and John. I strongly recommend you guys check that out if you miss it, once the video is available. But what I want to cover here is when you should consider using Quarkus funky. So the idea is that you've identified that you want to use serverless, that you have a good use case, a good fit for serverless. Obviously, that's not always the case. But if you fall, you have one of those use cases where serverless is a great fit, then when should you consider using Quarkus funky? So if you're trying to target multiple cloud providers, this is definitely a great fit. Or if you're targeting hybrid, so you have some things that are maybe on the cloud or on premises, you have a combination of that. And then, or maybe you have plans to swap cloud providers in the future, or you don't want to be tied, like, to one vendor, Quarkus gives you that flexibility, or specifically Quarkus funky. And then the other big selling point I would say is if you want to minimize your learning curve. So I'm going to show you essentially how you would write a serverless function in all for all these cloud providers. And you'll see that, even though it's like serverless, the serverless function, you'll see how there's variations between all these implementations. So when should you not use Quarkus funky? So there are a few limitations, right? Because Quarkus is one way to think of it. Quarkus funky is kind of the common denominator across all these clouds. So that's how they provide this portability. So it won't give you access to everything that you would have for a specific cloud provider. So specifically, namely more like low level access to APIs that are specific to your cloud provider. It's also not a full replacement for service. I mean, you can certainly use it. But if you want to expose the full serverless API, then this Quarkus funky may not be the best way to do it. And I explain why. Quarkus funky infers your methods and they end up exposed as a rest or as a get or a post method so you don't have full control about what method gets used. Like for instance, you don't get delete or puts. And then not every like all HTTP features are available. So similarly, like low level specific features in the case of HTTP are not going to be available. So if you need any of that, you know, Quarkus funky may not be the best option. So how do you get started with Quarkus funky or Quarkus in general? So obviously if you're new to Quarkus, I recommend you to check out Quarkus.io that has great information about Quarkus, like quick start tutorials. It also has a link to this UI, the code Quarkus.io and that's great to get a project started. So you fill out this form and then you have the option to download start a project and then you choose what Java version that you're trying to use and maybe Java versus what build tool you want to use, whether it's Maven or Gradle, along with other functions like specifically what libraries, what extensions you would like to you, including your starter project. And I included just like a subset of the funky specific libraries, but in general, if you're trying to do, even if you don't use funky, if you're doing any cloud development at all, like for AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, I strongly recommend that you check out the extensions that we have available about the Quarkus offers because it really is a time saver. I've done a lot of development in my case for AWS and it was really a time saver because you don't really have to know a lot about the details. I mean, it really does help you get started and it saves a lot of the boilerplate code that you would have to write otherwise. So here's now let's get into some of the specifics. So how do you write an AWS Lambda in Java? So here's a very simple greeting Lambda that's implemented and there's an interface that you have to implement the request handler and that's a stray from the AWS SDK. That's not Quarkus specific, but then, you know, Quarkus uses the built-in, you know, Java CDI dependence injection that's built into Java. That was kind of like in the Java X namespace. Now it's in the Quarkus 3.0 that was moved to the Jakarta because that's using the Jakarta E specification. So these annotations, that's what I'm talking about, the inject and the name annotation, those are part of the Java built-in CDI. So fairly simple service here. So you have an entry point. This is your handle request method.  In this case, this is a simple greeting service that just returns an output back. So how do you write the similar function in Azure using Java? So you can see how this is the same, like a, you know, a gradient function that's been effectively the same. And you can see how there starts to get a little more complex. I mean, nothing wrong. I mean, that's just how they implemented functions in Azure. So that's also a little more I'm never handling here, but it gives you the idea how there's these differences that if you're actively developing to providers, then there's gonna be a learning curve for both of these. And then the third flavors, the Google Cloud Functions, again, similar function, I mean, the same function, similar code, but it's likely different. So now you have three flavors of the same code using effectively doing the same thing. And then the last example for K-natives, that's also also fairly somewhat complex compared to the others, but still for doing something simple, you know, there's about 10 lines of codes that you need to write for this. And it would be very depending on your cloud provider. So now how does this look in quite, if you were using Quarkus Funky, that's it, right? I mean, this is it, like you essentially use the adfunk annotation. And then here's the service, it's just calling the same service method and returning an output and then the same injections, so CDI injections to inject your service. So it does simplify a lot of things. And then, I mean, especially if you're targeting like the two or more of these cloud providers, and it will save a lot of time, and especially if your development and it minimizes your learning curve. So now let's get into the demo details. So what we did is we essentially wanted to showcase that, hey, you know, you have the same code base, can you deploy to these multiple cloud providers and K-natives as well. So the way we started this program was using this maven command, which is the equivalent of what you can do in the code quarters IEO. That one will give you a CIF file that you will start striking your local directory. This will just essentially generate those files in your local file system. So it kind of saves you one extra step. So it's just a matter of preference, but this was kind of the starting point for the template for our demo. Obviously we added more code to it. And then the other approach was because, you know, this, when you deploy it, it's even though it's the same Java code the dependencies are gonna be different. Like you need to include your cloud specific libraries. So your Google Cloud library for Google Cloud functions or your Azure functions or your Lambda functions. So that's why we have, or the approach we do was to essentially create a, kind of like a specialized POM file. The POM file is in maven. That's where you define your Java dependencies for those unfamiliar. You could do the same with Gradle. And then essentially using that POM file is the same code base just a slightly different dependencies because you don't wanna bake in all the, you know Azure libraries into an AWS deployment that wouldn't be a good practice. So with this specific POM files then you can generate different jar files and then you would deploy that to your specific cloud provider or to your Kubernetes cluster. So now let's actually get into the demo. I'm gonna showcase the AWS and Azure and then we'll switch back to Heather who'll do Google Cloud and Knative. So let's, well, not quite done yet. So can still see if I can see the screen or maybe not. Okay, no, no, please. They didn't share mine. Yeah, I can, I can, I guess I needed to re-share my screen as I switch to the slides. You can, you can. Is that, that's my, right? That's, sorry. No, it's just a little bit, a little bit like, can you, can you see my screen now, Heather? No, not yet, okay. Let me, let me just try it again. Oh, sorry, I was, yeah, I needed to do this entire screen. Now I got it. Okay, is it now sharing the, so are you seeing the GitHub? Yes. Okay, thank you. So yeah, so this is that link that I share on the chat. This is essentially we'll give you the instructions how you wanna, how you can build it locally, this project. And then, like I said, this is instructions that's specific to Azure and then London, each cloud provider, along with any, any prerequisites that you want to, that you may need to, like if you don't, if you're not doing AWS, it's usually the CLI. In this case, we're also using SAP for the deployment. So let me start there. I'm gonna start with the AWS deployment. So I'm gonna show that I'm gonna call the, this is the AWS CLI, so I'm calling the STS service with getColorIdentity just to confirm that I'm indeed locked in. So I did that, oh, sorry, it's typo. And yep, that's showing that I'm there. I'm already locking. So now I'm going to just follow the instructions. I'm going to do a maybe clean package. So that's building, rebuilding, I'm skipping tests. The one important theme I wanna highlight here is that I'm pointing to that from AWS, from a specific that has the dependencies that I need to deploy into AWS. So next I'm going to use, so for those not familiar, if you're doing landed wellness, you need to use SAP, which is kind of like a specialized CLI and templates for deploying serverless artifacts. And what that will do, it's essentially generates at the end of the day is a CloudFormation template that's being generated. So here I'm gonna just, I'm using the guide as I'm gonna set the default parameters. Except for this one, I have to say, yes, this is okay. And then this is gonna start my deployment. So it's essentially taking that jar that I built and then it's loading into an S3 bucket and then it knows how, by using some, it knows how to tell London to use that, upload a jar from the S3 bucket directly. So now if I switch to my console and then I go to the CloudFormation, which is the templates that you would use to deploy any artifact to AWS, I should see, so here's my, they call them stacks, right? So here's the stacks that shows how, they deploy the resources that are being created. So it starts with a role, it's going to, well, this tells me, like, and it's a Lambda and then it requires an HTTP, an API gateway in front of the Lambda to expose the HTTP. So while that's going, let me just jump into the code for a little bit. So here's our function, right? This is really, that's it. Like there's a greeting service. We did include an additional function here because you can have multiple functions in the same deployment. You may not need that, but in this case, just to show it's a demo, so that's okay. So one thing, what I was showing that when you see this method that has an input, so the funky framework will infer this and it will automatically make it a post operation because it knows that it needs an input. If it doesn't have any parameters like this function here, this hello, this is just a get, right? But you don't really have control as to say, oh, I want this to be a delete. So that's what I meant earlier about not being a full rest replacement. So the other thing I wanted to highlight here for those not familiar, and this has nothing to do with Quarkus, sorry, with funky is just in general, Quarkus gives you this capability that will actually generate this SAM template for you where just by building this jar with the libraries, it will generate this SAM template that you can use to just say, hey, go ahead and deploy this. So if you don't know how to deploy a serverless function, this is a great way to get started, right? So you can see how this is using the, it will generate the JVM. So as Heather showed, you have the JVM builds or you can also use the native build. So if you both flavors that you can use, it's just gonna be a different command line. And I did include on the read me, here's the native build. I'm not gonna show that around this here because it does take a few extra minutes to do the native build, but we can see now that our deployment is completed. So I'm going to export this through an environment variable named URL, and I'm gonna export this. And then I'm gonna use my, I included like a test command here that you can use. The first one is just doing a simple get with a Quark command and it's including the time. Now you notice this is actually the start of the call start. So it does take like six seconds, but if I just rerun it, then it's taking like, it's a lot faster, right? Because it's already kind of like warm up. So now let me just show you and the example of the post method, which is essentially the function that does take a parameter. And then I'm passing AWS and it's just gonna echo back like hello AWS. And this is already one of warm up. So it's all these response times are gonna be sub seconds. So just a quick, showing you the resources we have refreshed this style, you can see how generate a Lambda function here and also an API gateway that's front-end in the Lambda function. And that's just like an AWS specific requirement of how they expose or how you can expose Lambda functions. And that's the function deployed. So now let me quickly switch gears to the Azure demo and so let me switch to this step. I already have these parameters exported. So if you're running this one with your own account, just make sure you populate those values. So I'm gonna do AC login. I should already be logging in, but just to show that it's locked back in. And now I'm gonna use the this main clean package. So Azure, this demo is the only one that's a little more different than the other, or at least the AWS Lambda and Google Cloud are gonna be very similar. In that we're using like the CLI provided by the vendor to deploy. In this case, we're actually using an Azure plugin. I may even plug into deploy. So that's why that command was a little different. And while that's going, I wanna show you just the difference. So if I compare the palm files of AWS and Google Cloud, just to show you how really the only difference is that library, right? That Amazon Lambda or Google Cloud. Now, if I compare AWS with Azure, that is gonna be a little more different, but that's just because of, we're using that Azure plugin, right? That's really, it just needs more information, more parameters about how to deploy it. But for the most part, it's just gonna be that library that's really the main difference. And yeah, this is Azure specific parameters. So let's, this is still, okay. So now this is running. Let's see, it's not deployed here. We may need to, let me try it one more time. And then if not, we'll just skip this demo. I tried before, right before the call. So not sure why I wanna fail. But I mean, the idea is the same. Like once it gets deployed, now you have your Azure function deployed. This looks a little better. And then it's just gonna show up here as a function app. And let's check question so far. Let's do a quick refresh here. So once this is deployed, I'll use the same command just to kind of like show you the hello word. It only really takes a minute. If you have any questions in the meantime, feel free to put them, drop them in the chat and we can answer along the way. No, the token should be valid. I think it's working this time. I just, this is a step that takes the longest. Okay, we may wanna maybe switch, you wanna switch over to your demo and then we'll can come back to it if we have time at the end. So I'm saying good. Best stop. Can you see my screen now? Yes. Perfect. Yeah. We now start with a Google function. The idea is really similar. We use the same code artifact that users for AWS and Azure. The only difference is now that we add, we've got the different elements or the different configuration in the palm structure, but really the application is the same. Let me show, currently I use the same application that users for deployed out of that different elements. And how to deploy that? We need to, we need, currently I completed the need of my laboratory but currently I show how to configure that. Okay, in that case, I use the same configuration for that service. Now I need to choose the service for that. Okay. Currently I choose the project that I need to use for that. The current project is that. I configure that project in the Google Cloud. And now the idea is deployed, the current function with the current parameters. We can use the Google Cloud function deployed for our cloud function. In that case, CenturyPoint is the same quad-pointy PCP because it's focused to the Google Cloud. The function is HTTP quad-code function because it's the function that currently I want to deploy and at the rune time, the tiger. And in that case, a little authentication because I link it with my Google Cloud dedication. And in that case, it's in the target deployment that I need to create in that. Let me create that artifact. This artifact is with the same code for our different clouds. And now I deploy it with the Google Cloud query. So minutes for deploy that of different elements. Let me go with my screen. Feel free to ask any questions on the chat if all this is going on. Perfect. Now we have the application deployed in that URL. Let me add this URL for use in the consumption mode. Now I deployed in Google Cloud that application and only need to do this application. If your time take a little bit more time, in that case, it's four seconds. Well, let me consume the other context script and reduce. If I test again a URL, hello, we can see that the timing is really less because it only takes time when it started the first server element or serverless part. OK. And now for deploy, the Knative, we can use the same code that you can see in that part. But only the important thing is use, in that case, OpenShift with the Knative Cli and OpenShift Cli for different elements. How about OpenShift? In OpenShift, you need to create or you need to configure the serverless operator because we need to use that serverless operator for deploy all of that different serverless artifacts. What is the important configuration that you need to be present to deploy in the Knative service? That case is Knative service. You need to create one of that for deploy your different applications. The configuration is simple. In the newest version of that operator, you need to deploy it into the Namespace Knative service. But in the last versions, you could be changed that Namespace. OK, this is the configuration that you need for deployed serverless over OpenShift in the Knative way. Now we go to the code. Now, they just create the project from Knative. I was creating this project. The project is already. And we need to deploy that code. I need to use it. I use different Knative please, for the reason I use that. But we need to create a correction for the application. OK, it means the font part, the font deploy of UN security. Now the image is building. OK, in the well, if you have any questions, and this is just to point out that this is using the function, the font.jaml, that tells us how to deploy. So in this case, we're actually doing this in terms of time. It's actually pushing an image that's already pushed to Quayer. It's a public image, so anybody can also deploy that. But you can change that file if you want to deploy. You can tell how to build it. And I will actually build the image with your code and deploy it to the, in this case, to OpenShift. Yes, yeah, and this is a really important thing for use this kind of strategy. Because we get four important capabilities talking about the hybrid cloud capabilities. In Quarkus and Funky, it's built from the ground with cloud service principles in mind. And Polyglot support, because we can deploy the same artifact in different clouds and support multiple programming languages. In that case, you don't need to create in the different languages or different frameworks for the cloud. And you reduce your resource processing in your cloud and your cloud allocations. It's resource optimization. And you do the developer productivity. OK, OK, let me change. Is it using like a different jam, like funk jammer? Because it shouldn't be the same. Yeah, I forgot to change my way, Funky. OK, and I think we're close on time, so we may need to. Yeah, OK. OK, of course. All right, thank you so much, Jorge and Evert, for that really informative presentation. It's really great to know. We could do server lists with Quarkus on OpenShift. Now it's coming to the other public clouds as well. So we can run it on AWS on Azure and on Google Cloud as well. So as a reminder to everyone who's with us and thanks for joining us again, this is being recorded, and we will make it available to you on the Red Hat Developer YouTube channel. So thanks again and do join us for our upcoming sessions, both on this stage and on the other stage as well that are happening in parallel. Thank you, goodbye.