I don’t even know her name.  My grief is selfish in its anonymity.  I was not her friend, nor her family. I heard about her through mouths and news stories. 15 years old, and gone because she found this world unbearable. I cry and then feel guilty because I think for a moment it’s not my grief.

But I think some more, I FEEL some more and I realise, It’s OUR grief.  It is our collective grief that we did not teach her how to manage and understand her feelings and her mind. Almost the same age as my own sister, she was someone’s sister, someone’s daughter, someone’s friend.

She didn’t have the words to share her pain. She didn’t have the tools to step back, to watch the thoughts and breathe through them till they passed. Her neurology and biology made functioning too hard continue.

It is our grief because it is our job to teach them how to be in this world. My research indicates a gap in what we are teaching at school. Every child in New Zealand experiences one thing the same – our education system.

15.6 out of every 100,000 New Zealand young people can see no way out but to take their own lives. One in every five of our children will be diagnosed with anxiety or depression by the time they are 18. For a country of only 4 Million, New Zealand’s suicide rates top the list of 41 OECD and EU countries.

Mindfulness is the keyword everywhere from boardrooms to prisons for its impact on mental well-being. My framework teaches awareness, understanding and respect for our physical body and control over our thoughts and emotions. The practice of Yoga has sustainable recognition as an adjunct therapy for Post-traumatic stress Disorder and mental health conditions.

In a yoga class we get the opportunity to build an emotional vocabulary by starting with sensations that certain stretches create in our bodies. We recognise the impact that purposeful breathing and stretching has on heart rate variability and stress.  We get the opportunity to encourage self-kindness by not pushing to hard into something that hurts. We learn resilience when holding and breathing in something that is challenging and empathy by seeing how different and unique the minds and bodies of the people around us are.

Yoga is an accessible context through which we can teach anatomy and neuro-science so our young people understand how their minds and bodies work. You cannot help but respect your spine when you admire its design. Knowing that anger and fear have natural, biological responses in our bodies and learning how to manage these is empowering – and essential. We can learn to respect our feelings and our minds, and admire their design, through deeper understanding. We can give our children the vocabulary and the tools to feel deeply and feel supported. We can understand ourselves and at the same time, understand others.

I know it works because I’m still here. There is no candle lit for me in a quiet church by a stranger.

Like 1 in 5 New Zealand children I have a history of self-harm and poor mental health. Like my flatmate and so many of my friends I have been medicated and worked with clinical psychologists, therapists and counsellors.

I have the tools, the passion and the knowledge to work where we are struggling. My personal experience of this pain, my personal experience of Yoga and my personal experience of our education system as a student, and as a teacher in our classrooms inspires and informs my mission. My mission uses Yoga as a context for teaching these skill-sets that our young people are missing.

It is a mission that works. For two years I have gathered research whilst writing and piloting a program teaching these things to young people. My local city council has supported the growth of the program and together we have gathered feedback from over 500 children and teachers. I have run trainings and created resources including a Yoga Card Deck support classroom teachers and parents.

I have seen the change of  young boy. From not sleeping before 11pm and crying before school every day to a young man choosing to practice his self-created bedtime movement and breath routine, this nine year old has begun to understand not only who he is but how he can best function in this  world.

I can show a picture of his bedtime routine that he does every-night without prompting and I can share a picture of a certificate from school to demonstrate that he ha been using breathing skills to manage his emotions at school. His parents and grandparents can tell me anecdotally; I can take pictures of his certificiates and movement sequences; I can hear that he is a different child but how can I prove to the world that what I am doing is making a genuine impact?

This year we were acknowledged by the New Zealand Fitness Industry for our contribution to our community, National Radio, UNICEF NZ and the Education Gazette are taking notice of our work. I have been doing this for two years with my local city councils support but I have reached the end of my knowledge capacity and their financial capacity. We are working hard to make it sustainable by seeking community, parent and school funding and I know Seedling can function as a sustainable Social Enterprise.

I have begun a Master’s in Education to gain a faculty of peers and to better understand how to measure the impact and improve the delivery of this program. This is the first step towards my PHD and there is a scholarship that can make this possible for me. I will do it anyway, but with the Toptal scholarship I can afford to train, support and compensate other yoga teachers to deliver this program, expanding not just the programs impact but increasing the network of teachers implementing and reviewing and contributing. With this team behind me I can increase not only the amount of data collated but the number of people available to young people who ned someone to care about them.

To win the Toptal scholarship would mean not just financial possibilities but, even more valuable, the provision of a mentor. My ideal mentor would be someone who understands Social Enterprise and can guide me to lead and develop an increasingly sustainable organisation . One with a cooperative and well-supported team that continues to deovier supportive and valuave content while I write what will eventually be a measurable, implementable wellbeing curriculum that countries across the world will model theirs on.

One day I will write the curriculum for classroom teacher training in New Zealand based on my PhD thesis.  I will ensure that all New Zealand young people are taught how to care for their own mental, physical and emotional well-being in their classrooms by well supported and trained teachers.

In New Zealand there are too many lit candles for lives we could have saved. It is painfully apparent to me that it is not just grief, that drives me. It is the knowledge that it is our responsibility  to lead change that drives my work and I know that the answer lies in Education.  In the words of William Butler Yeats, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” Let us light a candle of knowledge instead of a candle for the passing of a life.