Welcome to the Parent Center
A welcoming space where parents come together to practice mindfulness, share experiences, and grow in compassion. We believe that bringing awareness and intention to parenting creates stronger families and healthier communities.
What You Need To Know About Us
“Mindfulness Into Action” working with parents is an approach that helps parents move beyond simply understanding mindfulness concepts and actually apply them in everyday parenting situations. It combines self-awareness, emotional regulation, compassionate communication, and intentional responses to create healthier family relationships and reduce stress within the home.
Post-doctoral research:
Dr. Mariana I. Vergara, EdD. is implementing the Mindfulness into Action (MIA®) Initiative incorporating the MIA® pedagogical analysis approach to increment emotional intelligence and measure the academic impact and reduction of dropout rate facilitated by an app/platform, ensuring the sustainability of these results. The MIA® approach, rooted in Dr. Vergara's doctoral dissertation (Vergara, 2016) at Teachers College, Columbia University, with Dr. Edmund W. Gordon as dissertation committee chair, focuses on transforming subconscious behavioral tendencies (habitus).
In her interactions with Dr. Edmund W. Gordon, she has been introduced to the concept of habitus proposed by Pierre Bourdieu. As a new immigrant, Dr. Vergara sensed this concept but did not know it had a name. Habitus refers to the behavioral tendencies that humans seem to enact on a subconscious level and is shaped by a person’s social class. It develops in individuals everywhere as a function of how they live their lives and their status within society. For financially disadvantaged populations, the habitus they develop often has limited utility as they navigate cultures that have gained hegemony.
Developed since Autumn 2005 in close collaboration with Dr. Gordon, this pedagogical analysis uses indigenous practices and organizational learning techniques, incorporating both qualitative and quantitative methods for analysis. Data from its implementation with college students in New York, USA; Trondheim, Norway; and Ibarra, Ecuador, demonstrates that participants, irrespective of race, age, gender, culture, language, location, or socioeconomic status, tend to overcome subconscious limitations and reduce the constraining force of habitus through consistent application of these techniques and indigenous practices (Vergara et al., 2017).
MIALab: a business consulting process
The Parent Center is dedicated to empowering parents and strengthening families through education, advocacy, and community engagement. Our mission is to support parents as active partners in their children’s academic, social, and emotional development by providing resources, workshops, referrals, and family-centered programs.
Finance & Transformation
The overall goal is to empower parents to respond thoughtfully, foster secure emotional connections, and model emotional intelligence for their children.
In practice, a “Mindfulness Into Action” program with parents may involve:
Guided mindfulness exercises
Reflective discussions
Role-playing parenting scenarios
Strategies for conflict resolution
Journaling or self-reflection activities
Home practices to strengthen mindful parenting habits