Aiko Smith

Aiko Smith is a 2x TEDx speaker, mother of three, mindfulness writer, facilitator and teacher trained by UCLA’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior’s Mindfulness Awareness Research Center. She is a Black and Japanese American Woman, born on a naval base in Okinawa, Japan but raised in Los Angeles, California.  Growing up with a single immigrant mother, in poverty she developed a keen awareness of how women and mothers struggle with their mental and emotional health in our current system. Driven by creating a kinder, more compassionate country, Aiko has devoted her life and career to teaching people how to mindfully confront their suffering through self care as an integral part of the process of dismantling harmful paradigms and oppressive systems. As a thought leader, my vision is to see a society that values all human beings as sacred. My presentation will be about how we can make mindfulness meditation accessible and as ritualistic as possible so we are consistently caring for ourselves in a way that improves the quality of overall wellbeing.

Aims & Objectives for Aiko’s Workshop:

• When parents are feeling a sense of mental and emotional wellbeing they make better choices for themselves and their children.

• The goal of this workshop is to teach parents how to become aware of and decrease emotional reactivity when interacting with their children.

• Parents will learn mindfulness exercises to cultivate calm and patience so they are making choices from intention rather than fleeting emotions.