For UW, by UW Podcast

Welcome to For UW, By UW – a podcast by The Whole U. Episodes explore topics and perspectives in health and well-being with experts from across the UW’s campuses and health system. View episodes below and find resources mentioned. Learn more about your podcast host Anna Tegelberg, program manager for The Whole U here.

Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction with Dr. Jane Compson

Burnout and stress are at all time highs as we head back to work, school, and press play on another fall quarter. We talked with Dr. Jane Compson about mindfulness based stress reduction, how to alleviate burnout symptoms, and practices to incorporate into your daily life for mental and emotional well-being.

Jane Compson is an associate professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington, Tacoma, where she teaches philosophy, applied ethics and religious studies. Her research includes mindfulness and compassion training, both in theory and practice. Jane is a trained teacher in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction and Compassion Cultivation Training, and has published numerous articles in journals including Mindfulness, Contemporary Buddhism, Journal of Nursing Education and Practice. Most recently, Jane has developed a training program called CARE, designed to be a portal into self-care literacy and practice.

Listen: Anchor, Google Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Breaker

Episode 1 Resources

Meditations with The Whole U and UW experts
What’s all this self-compassion talk about? Article by The Whole U
Workshops with The Whole U and Jane Compson: Practicing Self-Kindness, Recognizing Our Common Humanity

And more!
https://mindfulnessnorthwest.com/programs/
https://centerformsc.org/
https://self-compassion.org/
https://www.compassioninstitute.com/the-program/compassion-cultivation-training/
https://positivepsychology.com/

Queer Trans Yoga Liberation with Allé K, Yoga Instructor, Activist, & Educator

Tune in to this dynamic conversation about yoga and the queer trans experience in yoga and well-being spaces. We begin by exploring how yoga can be a space for learning, growing, and community, and quickly find that no topic is off limits when it comes to the intersectionality of yoga and well-being for all people, but especially queer bodies. We discuss capitalism and the wellness industry, challenge societal standards for image, and explore how to improve the experience of groups excluded from the fitness & wellness industry.

Our guest is Allé K, a queer, fat, trans masc activist, educator and certified Yoga Instructor currently based in Asheville, North Carolina and all over the world (on Zoom). He provides LGBTQIA+ inclusive, trauma-informed, weight-neutral yoga classes online. Allé is a spaceholder, a connector and a disruptor. Website: https://transyogateacher.com/about

Listen: Anchor, Google Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Breaker

Episode 2 Resources

Allé K’s website, including trainings, classes & more!
The Q Center, University of Washington

Social Robots for Teen Mental Health with Project EMAR

It wouldn’t be the year 2022 without social robots lending a hand in the fight against a growing teen mental health crisis fueled by chronic stress levels in teens. Meet the team at the University of Washington behind Project EMAR – a social robot designed to help teens recognize mental health needs and serve as an intervention to improve teen mental health. Designed with input from local Seattle teens, this robot is nothing like C-3PO.

What began as a wild idea to try something new, has been nurtured by a female-led research team into a fully functioning robot that has the potential to revolutionize robotics within the mental health space.

Project EMAR is currently funded by the National Science Foundation as part of the National Robotics Initiative and is housed in the Human-Centered Design and Engineering department at UW. The development team includes cross-campus researchers at the University of Washington, based at UW Tacoma and UW Seattle.

Listen: Anchor, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker

Meet the guests:

Elin Björling – Human-Centered Design and Engineering (HCDE)
Elin is a Senior Research Scientist in Human-Centered Design and Engineering at UW as well as a Clinical Faculty Researcher in the School of Nursing and Healthcare Leadership at UW-Tacoma. Over the past two decades, Elin has studied adolescent health utilizing mixed-methods and new technologies from a participatory design perspective. Her recent research has focused primarily on using an Ecological Momentary Assessment approach to study stress in adolescents. As the project lead for Project EMAR, Elin is leading an interdisciplinary team to build a social robot to capture stress and moods from teens. Elin is a trained program evaluator with experience in educational program evaluation. She has designed and implemented evaluation plans for several large educational grants both state and federally funded.

Maya Cakmak – Computer Science and Engineering (CSE)
Maya is a Robotics Researcher specialized in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) and Programming by Demonstration (PbD). She is an Associate Professor at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering. Her research goal is to enable end-users of general-purpose personal robots to program new capabilities on their robots. In particular, highly interested in Ph.D. in which users can achieve this by providing demonstrations of what they want. Her work investigates challenges faced by potential users of such programmable robots and develops interaction mechanisms, learning algorithms and interfaces to make PbD more efficient and effective. Her Ph.D. thesis develops mechanisms for guiding users during PbD interactions, such as teaching instructions or questions asked by the robot.

Patrícia Alves-Oliveira – Computer Science & Engineering
Patrícia Alves-Oliveira is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the field of Human-Robot Interaction, in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. Patrícia is part of the Human-Centered Robotics Lab, where she works with Prof. Maya Cakmak, and works closely with the Human-Centered Design and Engineering Department at the University of Washington, with Elin Bjorling. Her research passion lies in investigating ways to use social robots to empower and extend human abilities. In her work, Patrícia relies on methods from design research, psychology, and engineering to design, develop, and fabricate social robots. During her Ph.D., Patrícia studied how social robots can be used to nurture human creativity.