Category Archives: Learn Something New!

How to Add Subtitles to Your Videos

As ASL interpreters, we know our videos must be captioned and accessible to Deaf and hard of hearing people – now more than ever. Subtitles are also good for hearing people who are in noisy places and can’t hear the audio, people who are in quiet places and don’t want to disturb those around them, English language learners….

Basically adding subtitles to your videos is good for everyone!!

But how do you make subtitles happen?!

I’ve been learning through trial and error over the last few years, testing out all the no-cost options I could find, and here’s what I’ve learned.

Get ready, this post is loooooong. You might want to bookmark it now to refer back to as you need it, and take breaks as you go through this. You know, self-care!

Here we go!!!  Continue reading

Self-Care Quickie: Brain Integration | Self-Care Strategies for Interpreters

Brain integration, dis-integration, why it matters to your interpreting and how self-care can help.

This information comes from Dr. Daniel J. Siegel, and I teach it to interpreters because it can dramatically alter our ability to attune to ourselves and regulate our emotional responses, attune to our consumers – allowing us to act with empathy and compassion, and it can also strongly impact our consumers’ ability to regulate their emotional responses.

Brain integration has a powerful impact on our interpreting interactions

Start with the hand model of the brain. 3 Parts:
PFC + Cortex – upstairs brain – executive function
Limbic Area – emotions and memory
Brain Stem – fight/flight/freeze, autonomic function

brain integration - interpreter - self-care - flip your lid

Flip-your-lid

When the brain is in integration:
Cortex, Limbic, Brain stem all connected
Cortex is regulating, soothing, and assessing all impulses from limbic and brain stem  areas/downstairs brain.

When downstairs brain overwhelms the capacity of the upstairs brain, cortex tries to hang on, to maintain integration – you know what it feels like when cortex loses its grip – FLIP-LID – in a matter of seconds we have lost our ability to regulate our emotions and behavior.

Disintegration is contagious

When one person has lost emotional equilibrium, it’s much easier for the other to lose it. You may feel this when you are interpreting – especially if it is a topic, attitude or behavior that is particularly triggering to you personally. During times of crisis, disintegration is even more common. 

Good news: Integration is also contagious

Integration is like a muscle, and involves several skills.

Any work that you do to create stronger connections in your brain promotes brain integration and will support you during times of stress and help you maintain integration with others who are experiencing disintegration.

Hand Model of the Brain. Flip your lid. Brain Integration as Self-Care for Interpreters

From: The Whole Brain Child, by Dr. Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D.

Self-care strengthens the muscle of brain integration

  1. In the moment – BREATHE – Deep, slow belly breathing, in and out your nose
  2. Reflective practice – meditation, mindfulness, conscious breathing practice trains the brain toward integration

Three resources for integration practice:

  1. Follow me on Instagram – in my story and highlights I share short mindfulness practices
  2. Self-Care Resource Page – links to free and accessible self-care resources to support brain integration
  3. Put On Your Raincoat: Energetic Protection for Sign Language Interpreters – online self-paced workshop worth 0.5 CEUs – includes a 7 day mindfulness practice

I’d love to know:
What helps you flex your brain integration muscle?

Thanks so much for being here with me. Take good care of your precious self.

100 Things for 2019

Photo of the clouds and orange sunset. "Do one thing every day that scares you. Eleanor Roosevelt"

I’m working through my Shining Year Workbooks, savoring every little bit of them, and am having so much fun dreaming into the little and big things I want to experience this year. My list grows daily, and I hope it will never be finished.

Can you help me get to 100?

100 60 Things for 2019

  1. Make a Life Book
  2. Get a dog
  3. Hand-letter something to hang on the wall
  4. Move >5 minutes a day
  5. Read 50 books
  6. Fix the Singer sewing machine
  7. Take a personal retreat
  8. Marry my best friend
  9. Stop using paper towels
  10. Make a collage card for each member of my family (Soul Collage-style)
  11. Take a road trip to a new place
  12. See live comedy
  13. Get a tattoo
  14. Give monthly
  15. Take a dance lesson with Chris
  16. Sunbathe nude
  17. Soak at The Everett House
  18. Learn harmony to a new song with Chris & Kylin
  19. Use Chris’ digital drawing pad
  20. Write a (work)book
  21. Learn a new art technique
  22. Record more of Grandma’s stories
  23. Visit Garden Valley
  24. Get my eyes checked (1/10/19 – 20/20 vision!)
  25. Rock the big project I’m working on
  26. Go to a Blazer game
  27. Make stickers and give them away
  28. Frame and hang some photos
  29. Get a new (to-me) van
  30. Keep my aloe plant alive
  31. Grow herbs on my balcony
  32. Give my family Aromatouch massages
  33. Visit a hot springs
  34. Have a pedicure
  35. Contribute monthly to my retirement
  36. Spend a day floating and reading on the water
  37. Star-gaze
  38. Hike a new trail
  39. Win at HQ
  40. Do a backbend
  41. Knit a hat
  42. Get an outdoor family hobby or ritual
  43. Float
  44. Get acupuncture
  45. Make fire cider
  46. Canvas for a political candidate I support
  47. Decorate the wall over the couch
  48. Go snowshoeing
  49. Practice more stillness with my kids
  50. Make a snowman
  51. Make dairy-free snow cream
  52. Watch an eclipse
  53. Go to the movies in my pajamas
  54. Finish B-School
  55. Fully fund my budget for the year
  56. Volunteer at Sisters of the Road
  57. Release a new Burnout Proof Academy course
  58. Spend a week at Brownlee
  59. Swim in the ocean
  60. Blog once a week

Tell me dear one,

What do you want to experience this year?

So much love to you.xo, Breana

If only CEUs were always this fun to earn…

I have been a staunch zero-makeup wearer and self-proclaimed low-maintenance person for many many years. I think the last time I wore makeup was in the mid-2000s, and it may have been this:
makeup
Not a look I’m ready to resurrect.
So when one of my dearest friends, acclaimed makeup artist and ITP buddy, Meredith De Leon, invited me to be a part of her workshop on using cosmetics as a tool to improve our interpreting work, let’s just say my palms got a little sweaty. I had a flashback to all those years of bad eyeliner and all-the-wrong shades of lipcolor. I wasn’t sure there was any hope for me. But, knowing Meredith, and being the ever-adventurous soul that I am, I decided to give it a go. There was something in me that harbored a tiny speck of hope…maybe I was not a lost cause.
So last week I took her workshop, and I left a changed person. I learned all of the foundational concepts about makeup that I had fumbled through and done without all those years. I brushed up and got some new resources on how to tell if your skincare and cosmetics are actually endangering your health, let alone nourishing the largest organ of your body. And most importantly, my tiny flicker of hope was fanned into a brightly burning flame. I am SO excited to add
this No-Makeup look, to my toolbox as a technique to show up more fully and confidently in life and in work.
I love Meredith’s philosophy that is not about beauty, but rather about bringing forward the best self. Taking the noise away from appearance, and finding integrity–presenting on the outside as you feel on the inside.
I’m feeling so inspired, that as soon as I saw this December offering I wanted to pass it along to you…Another strategy to add to your self-care arsenal!
meredith-workshop