On February 22, 2021, we organized a public webinar How to reduce stress – and help yourself to maintain inner peace (even during the COVID-19 pandemic) using knowledge about the functioning of the brain. Webinar was lectured by Mgr. Kristýna Farkašová, a participant in our training program focused on supporting of children’s mental health and the education of pupils with challenging behavior.

In times of pandemic, mental health care is essential, so the first webinar focused on the topic of maintaining inner peace in difficult times.

The first block started with the topic of stress and was focused on answering following questions: How we behave in stressful moments? Is there any “good” level of stress? What helps us to become resilient, instead of sensitive and more fragile? Whether we have the opportunity to choose our inner peace and know what supports it and what destroys it?

Several times during the webinar, participants were offered a safe space to think about the following questions: What is helping them at this time? When do they feel calm and rest? What little things help them to find balance each day? What do they need to remember to feel well in the world? We are important, it is impossible to skip our own feelings and focus only on of children.

“One of the ideas I learnt from our Norwegian colleagues is Bruce D. Perry’s reflection on the five states of mind. It shows how we can practically feel and act in the various states of our mind, how our possibilities to think freely, to think ahead gradually narrow. How much we need to understand in what state of mind the person / child we are working with is. So we don’t miss him/her and work with him/her according to actual state. Gradually, to help him/her to get through states of high activation back to calmness. And we need to keep ourselves calm so that we can help others find their peace thanks to our simple calm presence, ”said the lecturer.

The webinar also provided participants with practical tips on how to take care of their body, how to plan the day, so they could stick to the structure. The webinar received a lot of positive feedback. And although it was informative, the participants stated that they had rested during the event. Perhaps also because the intention was to strengthen the participants’ awareness that while we cannot influence how a pandemic will develop, we can influence a lot in terms of our own mood, our own balance and our own calmness.