‘Mindful Emotion Coaching (MEC) helps individuals recognise, understand and regulate emotions by encouraging awareness and empathy, promoting resilience and healthier emotional responses’ Hoda Elidrissi January 2025
'Sarah's combination of self-awareness and self-care practices together with practical, easy to remember tools for managing emotions not only supports mental and physical wellbeing including mental health but also models effective emotion management for children, fostering a nurturing environment that promotes healthy emotional development'. February 2025
Sarah highlights how our early experiences shape the brain’s ability to handle emotions—and why having consistent, supportive people around us makes so much difference. Emotion validating interactions help build strong brain pathways for emotional resilience and buffer against the impact of childhood stress. Sarah’s work brings together research on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) with the latest neuroscience, giving people the tools to have meaningful, coaching-style conversations. And this isn’t just about “talking things through”—it’s about developing real-life skills like emotional intelligence, emotional literacy, and executive function. The result? Better decision-making, healthier relationships, and stronger emotional wellbeing for individuals and families. For parents and carers, it’s also about creating a more emotionally attuned way of parenting—one that can genuinely change a child’s life.
Dr Sarah Temple's book 'all emotions are ok' is free to download here
Click next (bottom right of this page) to stream a sample of video clips that have been the most popular over the years we have been running this programme. We've recently added a short video from The Royal Foundation 'Shaping Us' campaign as Kate Middleton returns to her role in promoting social and emotional wellbeing in Early Years.
Daniel J. Siegel is an internationally reknown researcher, psychiatrist and psycho therapist. He has created a series of easy to understand metaphors which we have adapted over the years. That's why his video clip is the first in the series linked to this webpage.
John Gottman is an American psychologist who has studied human relationships for decades. He describes 4 relationship styles : Emotion Coaching Style (serve and return or responsive), Emotion Dismissing Style (often motivated by a desire to fix eg don’t worry, you’ll be fine), Emotion Disapproving Style (ofen motivated by a desire to control or regain power) and Laissez Faire, Permissive or 'No boundaries' Style.
- Dan Siegel talking about emotional connection using The Hand Model metaphor
- Amy Harper's interpretation of Dan Siegel's Hand Model
- Dr Sarah Temple's adaptation of Siegel's hand model for health and wellbeing
- John and Julie Gottman talking about healthy connections and relationships
- 'Shaping Us' Managing our Emotions video clip
- Brene Brown - Empathy vs Sympathy
- learning about serve and return interactions- from The Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University
- The Shark Musice provided by Circle of Security
- a selection of videos created by The Human Improvement Project. They are also available on The Happy Child App - we are very grateful that we have been given permission to share them with you here
- Vickie shares her story of accessing Talking Therapies
- A 10 minute clip from The Goldie Hawn Foundation featuring Dan Siegel alongside adolescents talking about their lived experience
- Just Breathe provided by Julie and Josh Salzman - with a group of children talking about their emotions and feelings and sharing mindful activities. This last video provides an opportunity for discussion when watched as a family or a group in a club or school.
