Star Wars Mindful Matters

Star Wars Mindful Matters is a video series on StarWarsKids.com and the Star Wars Kids YouTube channel. Each episode stars Ashley Eckstein teaching mindful lessons inspired by Star Wars characters and stories.
==Development==
Ashley Eckstein's interest in mental health started before she joined Star Wars because her sister struggled with issues of anxiety while they were growing up. There was a stigma for discussing mental health at the time, so Eckstein tries to be outspoken about it today. Eckstein has been greatly impacted by cyberbullying and she had to learn how to navigate her mental health and the lessons and how to use mindfulness techniques of meditation and deep breathing to help in her daily life. Eckstein decided to pass on what she had learned.
The origins of Star Wars Mindful Matters stretch back to 2012. Eckstein had the idea for the series in 2017, which was before she wrote the young-readers book Star Wars: I Am a Padawan. She said that the idea actually came from the fans, especially the young ones. Eckstein often met children when she appeared at Star Wars Weekends at Walt Disney World Resort and most of the kids wanted to learn how to be a Jedi. At the time, Disney Parks offered lightsaber instruction in the form of Jedi Training Academy events. Eckstein noticed there wasn't much centered around other tenets of the Jedi, such as compassion, mindfulness, and the Force. She decided that the lessons should be taught because she viewed them as lessons of hope. Additionally, Eckstein was often asked by kids how they could be a jedi, so she related lessons that Star Wars charactes learn to the kids' everyday lives. She also did breathing exercises with children while saying "I am one with the Force and the Force is with me." Eckstein found the exercises to be very personal because she'd always related exercises to her favorite characters. All of this inspired Ecksein to create the Mindful Matters series, which had been a passion project for her for a very long time.
In 2018, the concept crystalized into something Eckstein saw as a digital series. The series was created by Eckstein and Lucasfilm in collaboration with her friend, Cindy Citrone from Citrone 33. She said that writing the episodes felt like her own exercise because she once said she would never be able to write the episodes, but she managed to overcome her fears. In the series, Eckstein took lessons from Star Wars and combined them with clinically-based mindful and mental health exercises, as well as clinically-based grounding exercises. Eckstein worked very closely with behavioral health experts at the Nationwide Children's Hospital and their On Our Sleeves movement to be certain that the exercises she showed were clinically-based. Citrone brought together a group of passionate people who were all working in the mental health space with the goal of turning awareness into action. One of the doctors that Eckstein worked with was Ariana Hoet, the clinical director for the On Our Sleeves movement. Eckstein made it her top priority that the lessons can be learned from Star Wars. She wanted to provide a free resource to as many fans of all ages as possible. Eckstein worked with Matt Martin from the Lucasfilm Story Group to ensure authenticity and to make sure all of the episodes were accurate from a Star Wars story perspective. In the episodes, she combined clips from the movies and shows, and she taught viewers how they could also learn the same lessons that the characters learn. She said that she was very thrilled that she able to show these clips in the series. When Eckstein was one week away from filming Mindful Matters, the filming had to take a long pause due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
==Release==
On May 2, 2022, Eckstein posted a picture of her meditating and she said it was a sneak peek of a project that she was launching. The first two episodes of the series were released on May 4, 2022, which is known as "Star Wars Day." Additional episodes will release throughout May, which is Mental Health Awareness Month. Eckstein will be releasing the episodes on her Instagram account. She felt very grateful that the episodes were released when they were and she felt that the timing was perfect. The videos were briefly removed from StarWarsKids.com and the Star Wars Kids YouTube channel before being re-listed.
==Legacy==
After coming up with the idea for Mindful Matters, Eckstein wrote the young-readers book Star Wars: I Am a Padawan. The book used lessons that Eckstein had always wanted to teach through the series. On May 19, on National Health Action Day, Eckstein attended an Embrace Pittsburgh summit, and she and Citrone talked about the Mindful Matters series. Eckstein was a guest at Celebration Anaheim where she did exercises from the series with kids on the Kids Stage on May 26, 28, and 29, 2022.
==Episodes==
Episode	Image	Title 	Original Airdate
1 	 	"Feel The Force" 	May 4, 2022
2 	 	"Breathe, Just Breathe"	May 4, 2022
3 	 	"Droid Friends" 	May 23, 2022
4 	 	"Wookiee Roars" 	May 23, 2022
5 	 	"The Cave Challenge" 	May 23, 2022
==Sources==
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==Notes and references==
==External links==
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Category:StarWarsKids.com
Category:YouTube series