A free interactive app which brings virtual fairies, dinosaurs, and mini beasts to life in the Borough’s parks is expanding its offer to help people learn more about local history and improve their health and wellbeing.

The Love Exploring App has created virtual adventures for thousands of residents and visitors since it was launched across Stockton-on-Tees last year.

By using the app’s virtual quizzes, games and the latest augmented reality technology, people are encouraged to explore the Borough’s parks, enjoying the fresh air, and increasing their steps.

Following the success of themes popular with children and families, the app will now include new walking trails to encourage people to step outside this summer and learn more about their local area or find time to experience the positive, mindful effects of walking in nature.

The app works in five of the Borough’s parks and a heritage walk is available in Stockton Town Centre.

Where can I enjoy the trails this summer and what can I expect?

Preston Park’s Mindfulness Trail: Preston Park Museum and Grounds, Yarm Road, Stockton-on-Tees, TS18 3RH

Explore mindfulness in nature with poetic prompts and guidance as you follow the trail. This is best experienced through headphones.

Heritage Trail: Ropner Park, Hartburn Lane, Stockton-on-Tees, TS18 4EF

This trail highlights the original features found in Ropner Park and shows how they have changed over the years. Along the way, you will see and learn about the history of the Ropner Park owl, open-air theatre, park, bandstand, and many other features.

Heritage Trail: Stockton High Street, TS18 1BW

This trail allows you to explore the widest high street in the UK. On the app, you will see historic photographs of buildings that stand before you on the high street, accompanied by facts that appear onscreen.

Discover nature trails: Littleboy Park, Acklam Rd, Thornaby, Stockton-on-Tees, TS17 7EH

The trail starts at the main car park then continues past the play area, football pitch, tennis courts and finishing at the bowls club.

Discover nature trails: Billingham Beck Valley Country Park, Billingham, Stockton-on-Tees, TS23 1PB

This trail allows you to explore the Ecology Park Pond, becks, and woodland.

Discover nature trails: The Grindon Loop: Wynyard Woodland Park, Wynyard, Thorpe Thewles, Stockton-on-Tees TS21 3JG

This trail takes you through woodland and farmland on tracks. On route, you will come across the visitor’s centre, bridges, and wildlife ponds.

What do Councillors think?

Councillor Steve Nelson, Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council’s Cabinet Member for Health, Leisure and Culture, said: “We hope the Love Exploring app will keep people of all ages active across our Borough this summer.

“With fun virtual reality games, quizzes and mapped virtual trails, the app is the perfect tool to discover our beautiful parks.

“New features on the app include a Stockton Town Centre heritage trail where people can absorb facts about the town and some of its landmark buildings.

“Summer is the perfect time to take a walk outside and reconnect with the local area, and the Love Exploring app offers an all-new and exciting way to do this.”

We enjoyed the dinosaurs, mini beasts and more! What themes will be running through the summer holidays?

Throughout the summer months, you can enjoy two brand new themes on the Love Exploring app.

Tree Fairies

From 24 July to 13 August, the tree fairy theme will be unlocked. With this theme, you can walk around parks in the local area and point your phone cameras into the green spaces surrounding you to see tree fairies come to life.

Moths and Butterflies

From 14 August until the end of the school summer holidays, you can unlock the moths and butterflies theme at the Borough’s parks, where these beautiful creatures with colourful wings can be discovered.

Dinosaurs and Mini Beasts

In addition to the brand-new summer themes, the dinosaur and mini beasts themes can be enjoyed on the app throughout the summer.

I’m interested! What do I need to do to take part?

To take part, search for the ‘Love Exploring app’ in the Apple or Google Play stores on your phone or tablet and download it for free so the app is ready to use when you get there. You can also download it for free from the Love Exploring website. 

Once you arrive at the park, open the app, and you are ready to follow the mapped virtual trails to rediscover the local area.

Have you heard about the School’s Competition?

During the school summer holidays, primary-aged children who attend schools across the Borough will be able to take part in a special Love Exploring competition.

Link your Love Exploring account to your child’s school, and there will be prizes to be won!  

The competition will run from 21 July until 3 September. 

How do I find out more everything Love Exploring has to offer?

For more information about the app, upcoming themes and trails, visit our Love Exploring webpage. 

For Council news direct to your inbox sign up to our My Council Newsletter.

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Meditation is the practice of focusing the mind and becoming more present in the moment. While many forms of meditation require practitioners to close their eyes, most people are not open to being still and silent for even a quarter of an hour at a time. They want to find time to meditate while traveling or doing active work.

This is possible by practicing a different type of meditation—Open eye meditation and dynamic meditation. These two meditative forms encourage individuals to meditate with their eyes open and even while in motion.
Open eye meditation and dynamic meditation are two different types of meditation practices, and there are unique benefits associated with both practices. Here’s an overview of the benefits of each practice:

What is open eye meditation?

OPEN YOUR EYES Open eye meditation has individuals meditating with their eyes open to promote mindful presence

Open eye meditation involves focusing the mind and practicing mindfulness while keeping the eyes open. During the practice, the eyes remain relaxed, still, and unfocused while the mind remains centered and focused.
In open eye meditation, you find a quiet space, relax your eyes, set an intention that aligns with your specific needs and focus on one object or on breathing.

This promotes mindful presence and serves as a tool for relaxation and focus. Whether in daily life situations or in specific meditative practice, open eye meditation provides a balance between focus, relaxation, mindfulness, and deep awareness. Just as with closed-eye meditation, it’s all about practice, persistence, and repetition.  Unlike traditional meditation practices, this technique encourages practitioners to focus their attention on the external world, without being attached to or distracted by it.

What is dynamic meditation?
Dynamic meditation is an active form of meditation that combines elements of free movement, breathwork, and mindfulness to promote relaxation and stress relief.  The practice aims to help individuals release their pent-up emotions, negative energy, and emotional blockages. Through the process, practitioners are said to experience intense feelings of joy, peace, and inner calm.
The practice consists of five stages, each of which lasts up to 10 minutes. The stages include intense breathing, cathartic release, dancing or jumping, stillness, and relaxation.

Here’s a closer look at each stage:

1. Intense breathing: The first stage of dynamic meditation involves deep, rapid breathing that exerts the lungs and oxygenates the body. The goal is to stimulate the body to release any tension and stored emotions.

2. Cathartic release: In this stage, participants are encouraged to express their feelings through shouting, screaming, or making any kind of sound. Emotions like anger, frustration, and tension are released to enable the individual to let go of negative emotions.

SHOUT, SHOUT, LET IT ALL OUT In dynamic meditation, a cathartic release has participants expressing their feelings through shouting, screaming, or making any kind of sound

3. Dancing or jumping: The third stage involves dancing or jumping while listening to fast-paced music. The goal is to use physical movement to release energy and stimulate the body. This stage helps to activate the body’s natural healing processes.

FOOTLOOSE Dancing or jumping is utilized in dynamic meditation so that the person can release energy and stimulate their body

4. Stillness: The fourth stage of dynamic meditation involves stepping into stillness and just standing, not moving, and not thinking. The objective is to let the body’s energy settle down, encourage inner peace, and focus on the present moment.

5. Relaxation: Finally, in the last stage of dynamic meditation, individuals lie down to relax and let the mind and body rest. This stage aims to help practitioners experience deep relaxation, rejuvenation, and peace.

Dynamic meditation is a powerful technique that can help individuals release negative energy, emotions, and tension. It’s a simple practice that can be done by anyone, regardless of age, gender, or physical ability.

By incorporating dynamic meditation into your daily routine, you can experience improved physical and mental health, increased mindfulness, and inner peace.
In summary, both open-eye and dynamic meditation practices can promote relaxation, reduce stress and anxiety, and improve overall mental and physical health. The specific benefits of each practice will depend on the individual practitioner’s goals and preferences, as well as openness and diligence.

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When I became an employee of the Tennessee Department of Human Services back in the late 1970s, I was first assigned to do recertifications for recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children, or AFDC. After several months, I was transferred, at my request, to my home county and took on a new assignment — Child Protective Services.

In that new role, I would have a caseload of about fifty families a month, which I was to contact and/or visit monthly or more, if additional supervision was warranted, would investigate allegations of abuse or neglect, would be a familiar face around the courthouse, and, when necessary, take children into custody and, rarely (thankfully) cooperate with law enforcement in helping to put abusive or severely neglectful parents in jail.

I was also sent for additional in-service training. One of the most helpful courses was “Active Learning.” It was there that I discovered that the vast majority of people do very little real listening. Oh, we hear people talking, but the average person doesn’t really hear. This is especially true when people disagree about … well, about anything.

Let’s say I get into an argument with another person. While I hear the words coming from him or her, I am already forming my response in my mind. Most of the time, as soon as the other person takes a breath, I rush in to give my defense and perhaps even make counter allegations of my own. And on it goes. One of the most consistent complaints I have heard from married people who are in crisis is, “He/she never listens to me.”

Dale Carnegie, in his classic self-help book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” states that one of the most important characteristics of a successful person is the ability “to be a good listener.” He tells the story of Abraham Lincoln who, during a crisis deciding whether he should sign the Emancipation Proclamation, summoned a friend from Illinois to the White House.

When his friend arrived from out of state, Lincoln proceeded to rant for hours about the positives and negatives of freeing the slaves in the states of the Confederacy. He read letters he had received and newspaper articles on the subject. He argued for both sides of the question and, all the while, his friend remained silent. Finally, Lincoln thanked his friend, shook his hand, and sent him back to Illinois. Lincoln never asked his friend for an opinion. What he needed was someone to simply listen.

According to ZipRecruiter the hourly sum that people pay for a psychiatrist range from $100 to $300. If folks desire a cheaper alternative, the average hourly rate for a psychologist is $47.02. I realize that these professionals do more than just listen, but isn’t that part of the reason that people are paying such prices? Someone to listen?

In the “active listening “courses I took as a requirement for the job, I did come to the realization than very few people, including myself, really listen unless they are intentional about listening. To understand someone, one first must know what people are thinking and have some inkling of why they do what they do and why they say what they say.

Police officers are usually pretty tight-lipped with people unless those people are fellow law enforcement personnel. When I first became a police chaplain in 1989, I was warned that the officers might not want me in their vehicle and might not want to have any conversation. Some of them were understandably concerned that I might “talk religion” or that my goal was “to get them saved.”

I learned that I could ask one question and then just keep quiet for a time. That question was, “So, how did you become interested in law enforcement?” I never had an officer fail to tell me about how they became police officers. If I just listened and kept my mouth shut, I discovered that I could learn a great deal about the person with whom I was riding. I was genuinely interested, I liked and respected law enforcement, and I was intentional about listening.

It only takes watching just about any news channel to realize that hardly anybody is listening. People are talking over people, people are shouting at each other, and virtually no one is listening. To anybody.

Perhaps active listening, intentional listening, should begin at home. Do parents really listen to teens? Do teens listen to patents? Do spouses intentionally listen or are they always trying to make their own point without attempting to listen to what their spouse is actually saying?

We know what the world is like with everybody talking. We experience it every day. Can you imagine a world where people are listening — really listening? It’s a powerful thing. It is so powerful that one man listening, without saying a word, helped President Abraham Lincoln end slavery in America.

[David Epps is the Rector of the Cathedral of Christ the King (www.ctk.life). Worship services are on Sundays at 10:00 a.m. and on livestream at www.ctk.life. He is the bishop of the Diocese of the Mid-South (www.midsouthdiocese.life). He may be contacted at davidepps@ctk.life.]

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Shots fired, now what? The right training can make all the difference when the worst happens at your workplace.

One week before their May 1st presentation at RIMS in Atlanta, Ike Jenkins and Marc Vincent updated their slides with the latest figures on U.S. mass shootings. By the time they’d checked into their hotels, that figure was already outdated.

The seemingly nonstop cadence of U.S. mass shootings is top of mind for many. The number of mass shootings as of April 30 this year has seen a 135% jump from the same date just five years ago. Mitigating the risk of active shooter incidents has never been more of an important topic for the risk management community.

Coverage for these incidents exists. Active assailant coverage was first offered in 2011 and has seen a rise in take-up in the last five to ten years. Coverage after the act, though, is small comfort to the people and organizations impacted by these tragic events.

Mitigating risk is about training, said Jenkins, director of risk management for the University of Delaware. “The active shooter does not care about your policy, the active shooter does not care about your insurance coverage.”

To put an even finer point on it: “If you’re not doing active shooter training, you’re doing a disservice to your employees,” said Vincent, emergency preparedness manager for the Georgia World Congress Center Authority, this year’s rims’ RISKWORLD venue.

Piggybacking on other kinds of emergency training is ineffective, said Vincent. He raised the well-known Columbine High School shooting as an example.

Two weeks before the shooting, the high school had done a routine tornado drill. So when the first shot was fired on April 20, 1999, teachers began following tornado drill procedures, instructing students to crouch under desks and cover their heads — leaving them essentially sitting ducks.

With appropriate training, said Vincent, it’s likely some or even all of those who perished that day might have survived.

Avoid, Deny, Defend

Vincent went into detail about the active shooter training that every employee of the Georgia World Congress Center Authority receives, which can be summed up with three words: Avoid. Deny. Defend.

Marc Vincent, emergency preparedness manager, Georgia World Congress Center Authority

Part one, avoid, means getting away from the action, if it can be done safely. Know where the exits are, leave if you can, and call 911 once you’ve reached safety. “Avoidance is your first and best option,” said Vincent.

If primary exits are blocked, consider tertiary exits. That could mean breaking windows or even breaking through drywall in order to get to a safe exit.

If you can’t avoid, deny. That means actively denying entry, he explained, securing all means of access to your location. If the door or doors can’t be surely locked or blocked, try tying it off with a belt, a purse strap, anything available. Even outward opening doors can be secured this way, which is a called a tactical cinch, he explained.

When denying access, it’s essential for the shooter to think the room you’re sheltering in is empty. That means turning off the lights and ensuring everyone in the room puts their phone on silent and remains quiet.

When you can no longer deny, your last option is to defend. “It’s all about positioning,” Vincent said. Look for any weapon of opportunity. With no other options, even having the opportunity to grab the gun muzzle and point it away can safe lives.

When it comes down to it, said Vincent, remember that “shot” doesn’t mean dead, unless it involves the head or vital organs.

The Role of Emergency Responders

Organizations that opt out of training, believing the police will handle it if push comes to shove, will not fare well. The average police response time is three minutes. “Three minutes is an eternity” when bullets are flying and you’re afraid for your life, Vincent said.

Even when reinforcements arrive, training is essential so that everyone knows how to behave to stay safe. Remember that when the police arrive on the scene, the situation is still in chaos and the police may not yet know who or where the perpetrator is.

It’s important for everyone on the scene to follow commands and remain still and to show their palms. A phone in someone’s hand could easily be mistaken for a gun in a tense high-stress situation. Police may behave in ways the public does not expect in those situations. Knowing how to act can reduce the risk of someone being injured by “friendly fire.”

Basic emergency medical attention must also be part of the training if the goal is to minimize loss of life. Keep in mind that EMTs will not be allowed on the scene until law enforcement has declared the area safe. That means people on site should have basic knowledge of what to do to increase the chances of survival for anyone injured.

Seek training on basic life-saving procedures, said Vincent. “But if you don’t do anything else, Google ‘stop the bleed’ ” to find information you can share with your team.

For organizations newly embarking on or updating their active shooter plan, look to emergency responders as a resource for developing your plan, and invite local responders to tour your facility and familiarize themselves with it.

Insider tip from Vincent: “If you feed them, they will come.” &

Michelle Kerr is Workers’ Compensation Editor and National Conference Chair for Risk & Insurance. She can be reached at [email protected]

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