SENDsational mind body soul

SENDsational mind body soul Wellbeing for carers and the people they care for. SEN specialism. Providing tools for child/caregiver co-regulation. Wellness sessions Ashford

Mindfulness activity boxes: handmade and hand delivered to local families with advice on how to use them.

Breathing exercises do not need to be complicated or boring! Because breathing is automatic, it is really difficult for ...
09/09/2026

Breathing exercises do not need to be complicated or boring!

Because breathing is automatic, it is really difficult for children to grasp the concept of breathing. They don’t even know breathing exists.

Think back to your child’s first birthday. Maybe even their second or third birthday too, and you will see how many years it can take to master blowing out the candles on the birthday cake. But, they get there in the end. Blowing (exhaling) becomes an awareness, because of cause-and-effect. I blow, and something visibly happens in front of me.

Exhale always follows an inhale, so blowing games are a good place to start. Exhaling activates the parasympathetic nervous system. This is the part of the autonomic nervous system which is active when we are in ‘rest and digest’ mode. Essentially, when we are calm.

Try games which require a gentle, steady out-breath, such as blowing bubbles, blowing through a straw into a cup of plain water, or using pop-up blowers. Pop-up blowers are toys (whistles) which you blow into to levitate a small ping-pong ball on the end. You will find them online.

Shola-Bear and I hope the message on the back of our SENDsational sweatshirt is loud and clear! ‘Nurturing Special Minds...
06/09/2026

Shola-Bear and I hope the message on the back of our SENDsational sweatshirt is loud and clear!

‘Nurturing Special Minds. Enabling Learning’.

Because…

❌You cannot learn if you are anxious.

❌You cannot learn in the wrong environment.

❌You cannot learn if the goal is set too high and you feel like a failure.

❌You cannot learn with a dysregulated nervous system.

❌You cannot learn if people ignore your special interests.

❌You cannot learn if learning is measured by tick-boxes.

❌You cannot learn if everyone focuses on discussing what you can’t do.

❌You cannot learn if the people supporting you only talk about mitigating triggers, and forget to teach you how to recognise your glimmers.

❌You cannot learn with low self esteem.

❌You cannot learn if it feels like you’re doing it to please someone else.

🧠The mind narrows under stress, and attention can fixate on what is not useful. When we are relaxed, the mind opens, attention and concentration improves.

✅You can learn when you are motivated by special interests.

✅You can learn when you feel like you’re achieving.

✅You can learn when you are respected.

✅You can learn when your self-esteem and confidence are nurtured.

✅You can learn in the right environment.

✅You can learn when you feel safe.

✅You can learn when you’re not afraid of getting it wrong.

✅You can learn when people work with your strengths.

✅You can learn when you are supported to recognise the positives in your life.

That’s why we are gifting free mindfulness resources to families, because we know that young minds need to feel safe, positive, and able to recognise one’s own strengths. We include glimmers, grounding techniques, emotional regulation support, social stories, and meaningful, achievable activities.

Say hi to Shola-Bear!Do you like our little mascot Shola-Bear? This bear is named after my daughter, Shola, the inspira...
02/09/2026

Say hi to Shola-Bear!
Do you like our little mascot Shola-Bear?

This bear is named after my daughter, Shola, the inspiration and main educator behind SENDsational mind body soul.

Shola has taught me so much over her 17 years of growth and development. She has inspired me to learn, to be curious, to observe, and to understand. She has inspired all of our resources and methods. She has enabled me to grow, to open my mind, and to study and qualify in the methods best suited to supporting children with profound autism.

If you have received our free mindfulness and emotional regulation resources, you will find Shola Bear is featured on many of the resources, guiding children and their caregivers through the activities!

Some lovely feedback from a family accessing our free mindfulness resources! 💕We are so grateful to everyone who has don...
30/08/2026

Some lovely feedback from a family accessing our free mindfulness resources! 💕

We are so grateful to everyone who has donated to our ‘Mindfulness for Special Minds’ initiative. It brings me so much joy to be able to gift these bags of tools to families, providing meaningful mindfulness-based activities to support emotional regulation, and more importantly providing short bonding activities for parents and caregivers to enjoy with their child or young person.

Short five minute mindfulness exercises, aiding engagement, focus, positive thoughts, reflection and grounding.

Encouraging communication.

Supporting co-regulation.

Social story poetry.

Sensory and play-based learning.

Feel free to drop us a message if you would be willing to share feedback!

Love,

Julia and Shola.





29/08/2026

What is Proprioception?

I have written this explanation which I hope you will find helpful:

Proprioception is a person’s sense of their body in relation to space, objects, and motion. Every day we do hundreds of things which require proprioception, because we use it all the time. Some examples of proprioception would be; knowing how much pressure to apply with the pen when writing, sensing how far away the chair is as you go to sit down, and awareness of where each body part is in relation to the rest. It’s what prevents us from tripping over our own feet!

Proprioception comes from our proprioceptors in our body. These are a type of sensory receptor located in muscles and tendons and these receptors are connected to our brain via signals. Our proprioceptors give us our sense of physical existence, so we feel present, grounded, and aware of our body position.

It is not unusual for people on the autism
spectrum, particularly growing children, to have some difficulties with proprioception. Quite often, these difficulties are mistaken for ‘clumsiness’ and even ‘laziness’. For example; it is easy to assume that a child who briefly waves their toothbrush across their mouth (I’m thinking of my own daughter here) is ‘being lazy’ or ‘can’t be bothered’ to do it with effort, whereas, in fact, they have not developed the sense of how much pressure to apply in order to get an object (the toothbrush) in contact with a surface (their teeth).

Is it possible to develop our proprioceptors?

Yes! We can improve our proprioception by regularly engaging in activities which require movement, resistance, weight-bearing, coordination, and spatial awareness. For example; using the apparatus in the playground, walking on varied terrain (such as pebbled beach versus sandy beach) swimming, cycling, and all fine and gross motor activities. Sensory Circuits and obstacle courses are a brilliant way to incorporate all of these things for children as an engaging activity.

As a dance, and movement instructor I always promote dance as one of the most effective ways of improving proprioception, coordination, balance, and neurological functioning. However, there are so many ways you can sneak a bit of extra proprioceptor activation into your child’s day! It can be the small consistent things which really count; carrying their own school bag (even if just from house to car) wiping their placemat clean after lunch, having a go at stirring the cake mixture, rinsing their own hair with the shower head. I know that these tasks can seem overwhelming for children who are demand avoidant due to anxiety, so I would recommend using a count-down method or timer. A trick I use at home is, for example; “I’ll stir the cake mixture for a countdown of ten, and then it’s your turn for ten”. Some days are more successful than others, and I know we have to choose our battles sometimes, but I do hope this explanation of Proprioception is helpful!





Three emotional regulation toolkits, and three ‘mindfulness for special minds’ gift bags ready for families who have con...
28/08/2026

Three emotional regulation toolkits, and three ‘mindfulness for special minds’ gift bags ready for families who have contacted me. Thanks to generous donations to our GoFund me fundraiser, we are able to gift these for free. This really means a lot to me as a SEND parent myself, because I recognise the soaring cost of products and support for special needs. Huge profit mark-up takes advantage of families in difficult circumstances.

The emotional regulation tool kits contain a comprehensive guide to supporting emotional regulation, activities, and tools for supporting breath-work as well as sensory items.





19/08/2026

A Makaton reading of my poetry. This poem is in my guide to emotional regulation. We are donating Emotional Regulation toolkits to families and services. Busy getting orders of free resources ready this week. Poetry and Weather Illustrations by Julia Gerrard ©️copyright Julia Gerrard 2026

New tactile sensory social story with communication supports. Hand-illustrated. This one is about social-emotional intui...
18/08/2026

New tactile sensory social story with communication supports. Hand-illustrated. This one is about social-emotional intuition. Ready to go into a family bag for donation next week ☀️

A busy day printing my new comprehensive guide to emotional regulation. Supporting emotional regulation through the ap...
16/08/2026

A busy day printing my new comprehensive guide to emotional regulation. Supporting emotional regulation through the applied use of movement, mindfulness, and vagus nerve stimulation. This guide is very unique because it is for children (or adults) and their caregivers to use together. The visuals make it easy for children and adults with communication impairment and learning disabilities to be able to understand their emotions, and which tools they can potentially turn to, to help them to regulate. The additional comprehensive wording guides parents and caregivers through science-backed and body-based interventions including guidance on sensory tools. I will be making a video explanation of this soon. I am proud that this one is self-illustrated and a lot of mindfulness has gone into creating it! These can eventually be included in our donated resource packs!

Short version:The new proposals for Special Educational Needs reform, may mean that children will be expected to just su...
21/04/2026

Short version:
The new proposals for Special Educational Needs reform, may mean that children will be expected to just survive, rather than thrive. If you have lived experience, please consider writing to your local member of parliament.

Long Version:
Dr Stephen Porges, the creator of Polyvagal Theory, has dedicated a career to studying trauma, emotional regulation, and the nervous system. He said that the more time a person spends trapped in a place that gives them feelings of danger, the less likely they are to ever be able to recognise anything as safe.

Thinking about that description, it is no wonder that developing children who are on the autism spectrum and having difficulty comprehending the world around them, spend a large amount of their lives in chronic fight-or-flight mode. The more this happens, the harder it is to help them with co-regulation as they may no longer perceive anything as ‘safe’ and that can include the people around them and even the people who love them.

Co-regulation is emotional regulation with the support of a partner, it can be as simple as a hug or mirroring some deep breaths.

Other sensory difficulties can mean that things within a normal everyday environment can trigger sensory overload, overwhelm, and eventually what we know as ‘meltdown’.

We know that excessive cortisol and chronic stress can actually re-wire the brain and have a huge impact on executive functioning. Executive functioning is everything that drives your behaviour; decision making, critical thinking, impulse control.

As a parent myself, who has been there, done that and got the well-worn, faded t-shirt, I completely understand and really feel for those families who are receiving pressure from local authorities to send their child into a school that is completely the wrong environment. How heartbreaking it is to know that every day, little-by-little your child is damaged by trauma upon trauma, because in their world, their nervous system recognises a busy, loud, overcrowded, non autism-informed classroom, as a place of danger.

You can’t train someone to not perceive something as a danger, when that ‘something’ to them, is almost painful.

We have to respect that perhaps for that child, that environment really is a big threat to their comfort, mental health, and ability to learn.

Imagine how it must feel as a parent, trying to protect your child from further trauma, fight the system to get an appropriate educational placement in place, AND at the same time have to deal with pressure from a local authority that wants to force your child with special needs to attend an inappropriate school, or else you as a parent could be prosecuted.

Just take a moment to imagine how desperate and stressful that would feel. Knowing that every single day your child comes home a little more broken, and then you are punished for protecting them from total mental breakdown.

‘Avoidance’ is a coping mechanism and it is considered a core symptom of CPTSD. Now, I’m not a doctor, and I’m not saying that every child avoiding school has CPTSD but I think that the authorities do need to understand that when someone is evading a place or situation, it’s for a reason!

If a child with sensory needs were offered an optimum learning environment, then I’m sure that going to school, with all its activities and facilities, would be more inviting than staying at home. But, unfortunately children are expected to survive in a far-from optimal learning environment. This leads to eventual inability to cope with going to school.

Local governments are placing children with significant special educational needs into mainstream placements where they do not have access to quiet spaces, frequent movement breaks, therapies, or enough 1:1 engagement to help them to thrive. Basically, children are expected to survive rather than thrive.

I really hope that you’ll share this message and if you have concerns about the current situation with SEND education and proposed reforms, please write to your local MP with your story. Even if it’s just a few lines, please make your experience known.
©️SENDsational mind body soul 2026

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