The Mindful Warrior

What is the Mindful Warrior Program and Who is it for?

The Mindful Warrior is a Health and Wellness course that uses a unique blend of mixed martial arts, mindfulness meditation and behavior activation techniques in order to train self-regulation and build youth resiliency.

Youth with attention and hyperactive difficulties, learning differences, anxious or angry temperaments will find their training in the Mindful Warrior Program accommodating and on target with their special needs. Youth with these types of difficulties may have never had the opportunity to be part of a sports club before. Many of these youth have previously been misunderstood by an instructor/coach unfamiliar with their particular temperament style. In the Mindful Warrior Program they will find a home that strengthens youth protective factors while developing skills in areas of need.

This specialized martial art borrows from the time-honored traditions of Bushido (the Way of the Warrior) when warriors were faced with life and death challenges. The Mindful Warrior course helps students manage the difficult and necessary challenges of modern day society so that they can live a healthy productive and balanced life.

What are the Benefits?

The Mindful Warrior's unique design will aid students in the development of improved self regulation, attention, anger management, increased motivation, decreased escape avoidance reactions and improved social interaction, self confidence and self esteem for an overall increase in resiliency.

How is this Accomplished?

The Mindful Warrior Program targets Emotion Regulation as the primary intervention so that life skill development can take place. Emotion Regulation is,

"The intrinsic and extrinsic processes responsible for monitoring, evaluating and modifying emotional reactions especially their intensive and temporal features to accomplish ones goals" (Thompson, 1994, pp27-28).

We all want our children to develop the skills necessary to succeed in relationships, school and eventually the workforce, but if they are not emotionally regulated all efforts directed to these goals will fall short. Emotion regulation is needed first in order to make gains, if not low motivation and escaping difficult tasks because of fear of failure will persist. The Mindful Warrior Program targets emotion regulation as the first and primary step in health and wellness and the foundation for resilient skill development.

Mindful Warrior Demographic and Course Design?

The Mindful Warrior is designed for male and female youth who experience difficulty in self-regulation and self-management as young as 12 and as old as 18 years of age.

The Mindful Warrior is comprised of two semesters. The first term is a small class of 6 - 10 students in order to provide personal attention for the development of core emotion-regulation and self-management skill sets.

The second semester affords integration into a larger student body so that the student is able to continue to generalize the skills they have learned. Students are then introduced to more sophisticated principles and advanced coping skills to progress what they have learned in the first semester.

The first semester involves 20 weekly 1 ½ -hour class sessions followed by brief individual meetings between the instructor, student and parents. The participant may earn a yellow belt at the end of the first semester.

Who are the Instructors?

The instructors for this special program at Warrior Mixed Martial Arts are social workers and teachers working within York Region that have expertise in blending mindfulness meditation, behavior activation and mixed martial arts.

All instructors are supervised by Paul Badali, M.S.W., R.SW a registered clinical social worker.

System Developer
Paul Badali has a master's degree in social work and has been a child and family therapist for more than 12 years. His specialty is serving at-risk youth with learning disabilities and co-occurring disorders. He has been involved in martial arts for more than 36 years and has been practicing meditation for 18 years.

Mr. Badali has developed recreational health and wellness intervention programs for over a decade. Programs developed by him are active in Mental Health Agencies in the GTA area and now for the first time, are available in York Region.

No other martial arts club in York Region offers this rich combination of self-regulation based interventions interwoven in martial arts. Call for the Mindful Warrior Program Now to make a positive difference in your youth's life!

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