Books

Heart rate variability or HRV is a biometric that measures the differences in successive heartbeats. While simple, HRV provides an incredible amount of information on the health of our autonomic nervous system and brain. A simple smartphone application takes the data from the monitors, applies algorithms, and provides users with accurate data on their mental, physical, social, and cognitive health and wellness. Heart Rate Variability explores how professionals and organizations can implement HRV to track the psychological, social, and physical health of those they serve, their staff, and the organization.

Are they functioning at their best, or are they burned out?

The ability to manage and recover from stress is crucial for resiliency and cognitive, medical, mental, and social health. Burnout is the enemy of productivity, creativity, and overall business success. Until recently, it was difficult for leaders to get reliable data on people’s ability to perform at their best and understand levels of burnout within the business. The Heart(beat) of Business presents the science behind peak performance and how stress and burnout destroy people’s health and devastate business outcomes.

Due to recent technological advancements, a leader can use a biometric called heart rate variability (HRV) to get daily, weekly, and monthly data on the health and wellness of their workforce. HRV data provides leaders with an understanding of the capacity their people have to perform at their best.

The Heart(beat) of Business gives leaders and businesses a roadmap for implementing and using biometric data to measure and address burnout. It also provides a set of best-practice strategies using HRV data to improve cognitive, medical, mental, and social health crucial for business success.

If your business relies on people for success, becoming an early adopter of HRV will help you create a business environment that outperforms any competition.

Today, something is going to happen to an innocent child. Tomorrow, that child will walk into their school. What happens next will impact the rest of their life.

What is this powerful event? Childhood trauma. Most students will experience some form of emotional, physical, or sexual abuse, neglect, family dysfunction, racism, homelessness, or poverty by their eighteenth birthday. If left untreated, their traumatic experience may have lasting implications on their physical and mental health and their success in school. Our growing knowledge of trauma is a call to action for every person that works in education and cares about the wellbeing of children in their community.

Trauma-Sensitive Early Education: Helping Pre-School & Elementary Students Thrive! explores the devastating effects that trauma inflicts on students, and how the resulting anguish manifests in the classroom as academic and behavioral struggles. Understanding the problem is just the first part of the journey taken in the book. This in-depth exploration guides educators in the process of creating trauma-sensitive classrooms and research-based instructional strategies that help students with trauma experience social and academic success.

As a follow-up to the successful Connecting Paradigms, Talking about Trauma & Change: A Connecting Paradigms’ Supplement provides analogies and models to help people understand the complexity of changing behavior and healing psychological trauma. Talking about Trauma & Change presents the approaches that Matthew Bennett has used in his training and clinical work in a format that is easily integrated into individual or group conversations. Change and trauma are sensitive and complex topics; the use of these straightforward analogies and simple models helps people see their past, the present situation, and their future in a whole new positive light.

Connecting Paradigms: A Trauma-Informed & Neurobiological Framework for Motivational Interviewing Implementation provides an innovative approach to helping those struggling with past trauma to make critical life changes and heal from their pain and suffering. Scientific understanding of the brain, the impact of trauma, and research around behavioral change has grown exponentially over the last several decades. This knowledge is challenging and transforming thinking around how we provide mental-health and substance-abuse education, medical care, criminal justice, and social work. Connecting Paradigms presents an integrated model, combining research in neurobiology, trauma, behavioral change, harm reduction, and Motivational Interviewing into a practical skill set easily implemented across a variety of settings and professions.

One of the most important scientific advancements of the past few decades is our increased understanding of the brain and the impact of our environment on this complex neurobiology. This new volume by some of the leading experts in the field compiles a comprehensive overview of the core issues we need to understand affecting the neurobiology, neuroscience and the assessment and treatment of sexually abusive youth as well as the child and adolescent victims of sexually abusive and aggressive behavior.

Co-wrote Chapter 7: Neuroscience Applied to the Therapeutic Milieu with my mentor and friend, Jerry Yager, Psy. D. This book was an honor to be a part of both due to the great content and impressive author list.