Saturday, June 9, 2018 will mark the seventh annual Global Wellness Day (GWD) celebration and the fourth time the special day is being celebrated internationally. This year over 4,000 locations in more than 100 countries are celebrating GWD by offering a range of free, non-commercial, health & wellness activities for the public. With a motto of “One Day Can Change Your Whole Life,” the theme for Global Wellness Day 2018 is the GWD KIDS PROJECT and the goal is to decrease the worldwide depression, obesity rates and even future crime rates.
GWD Founder, Belgin Aksoy Berkin has developed a curriculum for the GWD Kids Project. In consultation with the reputable universities, clinics and international wellness leaders, the curriculum will be implemented between the years of 2018 – 2019 at preschools as 5 minute wellness circle time each morning and in the following years as the second stage of the project at elementary schools as 1 hour wellness class per week.
GWD Kids Project will be focusing on three different subjects: Self-Love, Breathing, Mindfulness. Kids will be learning about breathing exercises to improve their health and manage their stress, about mindfulness (from healthy eating to nature walks) to improve their emotional and physical wellbeing, and about self-love to let go of shame, anger, blame and to feel at peace, learning to accept themselves and others.
With Self-Love, the project will target depression by teaching how to love ourselves first and then people/animals around us, with Mindfulness the project will target obesity by teaching mindful eating and with Breathing the project will target crime rates. A research that has done in jails has proved that, unless they have a neurotic mind, most of the criminals may undo their negative actions if they had a chance to know how to take that one more breath which will calm them down.