The Health Spot With Omar - Alternative Solutions Podcast · The Health Spot Uk

017 - Emma Bayou - Mindfulness, Emotional Regulation, Mental health and Wellbeing for our Children

·46 min·3 clips

Emma Bayou says, “there are no bad emotions” and breaks regulation into three clear steps.

1. The Health Spot With Omar episode 017 focuses on Emma Bayou and Mindfulness’s work on children’s mindfulness, emotional regulation, and wellbeing. 2. Emma Bayou is the founder and CEO of Mindfulness, and Omar introduces her as someone supporting children’s mental health through education, community work, and criminal justice settings. 3. The episode asks how children can learn to name feelings, manage “big emotions,” and avoid being overwhelmed at school and at home. 4. Emma says Mindfulness started in education because of her background, then diversified into criminal justice and community interventions for people facing barriers to positive mental health outcomes. 5. She describes a social impact not-for-profit branch that began with co-designed community work, including free mental-health-focused football sessions for children living in poverty. 6. Emma also mentions parenting workshops for parents whose children cannot access services and consultancy work in schools and prisons. 7. Omar asks why mental health has become such a central topic, and Emma links the rise in attention to COVID-19, which she says made the world quieter and more ready to listen. 8. She says COVID-19 was detrimental to wellbeing but also increased media attention and made it easier to discuss therapy, anxiety, and stigma openly. 9. Emma explains that she founded Mindfulness partly from personal experience, including her own anxiety, parenting challenges, and the feeling that she needed these services herself. 10. On mindfulness itself, she defines it as being “completely present in the moment” without being overwhelmed by the “45 plates spinning” in her head. 11. She says mindfulness can help people understand emotions better, cope with difficult thoughts, feel calmer, and improve attention and concentration. 12. Emma argues that children often come home angry or tearful because they are “masking at school” around friends and social pressure. 13. She says emotional regulation should be a whole-school approach, with schools investing in emotional literacy and emotional regulation for all children. 14. Her key principle is that “there are no bad emotions,” and she says the children she works with are taught that all emotions are normal and okay. 15. Emma breaks emotional regulation into three parts: understanding and communicating emotions, identifying triggers, and developing practical strategies before emotions become overwhelming. 16. She gives concrete examples such as adults naming their own feelings, children noticing a person with “their head to the floor,” and using a check-in wheel on the wall. 17. Emma says trigger situations can be places, times of day, or events that create big emotions, and she wants children to learn this early rather than having to do a deep adult-style analysis later. 18. She says strategies can include breathing exercises, meditation, yoga, and therapy putty, and she recommends parents model regulation when they make mistakes. 19. The tone is conversational and practical, with Omar using examples from divorce, parenting, and his daughter’s recent dairy allergy result to test Emma’s advice. 20. People looking for child mental health tools, school-based emotional regulation ideas, or parent guidance will get the most from this episode, while listeners wanting a fast entertainment format may skip it.

As heard by us

Practical ideas for helping children name emotions, with a wider look at education and criminal justice.

Omar and Emma keep the episode on emotional regulation and the small, practical ways adults can help children talk about feelings. Emma ties emotional literacy to reading and writing, then keeps landing on examples that are easy to use: naming an emotion out loud, using age…

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If you want a simple starting point for talking to kids about feelings, this episode has that.

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