Akamai Kids

A Resilience-Based Mental Health Curriculum For Hawaii Kids

Mental Health From The Inside-Out

We're taught to search outward for answers, but rarely how to understand ourselves. The truth is, we’re all sitting in the resources we need to face life’s challenges successfully, but we just didn’t understand it well enough. We already have everything necessary for mental and emotional well-being; despite the circumstances we must face.

Who We Are

We are a group of Hawai'i educators and therapists who see a pattern:

Many children are struggling with behavior and emotions.

And it is not because something is wrong with them, but because no one teaches them how they work on the inside.

Just as we are all born with a body designed to maintain physical health, we are also born with an innate capacity for mental health; a well-being and resilience that naturally restores when understood.


The Problem
Many young people struggle with emotions and behavior not because they’re broken, but because we’ve never fully understood mental health or clearly defined what true mental wellbeing looks like.

So teachers and parents try to:

• manage behavior

• fix emotions

• control outcomes
  
  

without ever understanding the deeper source of our experiences.

The Missing Piece

Most people grow up trying to change their circumstances to feel better, without realizing their experience is created from within.

We innocently blame the outside environment (family situations, the behavior of others, friendships, etc.) for how we feel without examining the internal processes shaping our experience. Children come to believe their feelings are controlled by the world around them.

While circumstances matter, our moment-to-moment experience is shaped from within - by how the mind interprets those experiences in real time.

The Akamai Kids Approach

Kids discover that thought is like the steering wheel of our experience, quietly shaping how we feel moment to moment. Thought happens so quickly that we rarely notice it. When children learn that feelings are created from within via thought, they come to learn that the world around them doesn't control how they feel. Children stop looking outward for relief and can be taught how to access their innate capacity for well-being and resilience built inside them.

Our approach goes beyond cognitive re-framing. It points to the human spirit, the intuitive mind, and the deeper built-in resources and gifts human beings already possess.

These deeper resources have always been present, but we have not fully understood them well enough to consistently recognize their purpose or direct people toward them (until now). Their role is to help us do well in navigating whatever shows up in life.

Our Philosophy

Every child is born inherently whole, with an innate intelligence that supports their well-being both mental and physical. We are born with a body designed to maintain physical health as well as an innate capacity for mental health; an inner resilience and well-being that naturally restores.

Vision

A world where everyone feels connected to their well-being and is grounded in aloha and inner wisdom.

Mission

To help children access their innate mental-health
and resilience by providing clear understanding
about how our experience of life is created from
the inside-out.