Kids and the importance of Mindfulness Meditation
"Meditation is the most powerful tool we have to create smarter, kinder, more balanced kids. Our planet needs this now more than ever" - Chris Willitts
My mother-in-law offers such an incredible source of wisdom. Having 5 kids herself and now 11 grandkids I don't take lightly the comments she makes. At the time I never think much of them but in hindsight I find myself reflecting on the advice and I'm amazed about how timely and true it is. The latest thing is meditation. There has always been yoga but now it's chanting to a secret mantra by Deepak Chopra! We don't do this as this comes with a private yoga teacher however I often catch her on a Sunday or holidays with a visiting grandchild insisting they lie quietly on the bed and meditate (concentrate on the breath). The kids squirm around and resist the quiet and stillness but before you know it they are fast asleep. In such a busy world with the kids lives often as hectic as the adults they too need to learn how to stop for a minute, concentrate on the breath, be present, be aware and slow down. So why not take the time these holidays to teach your kids the foundations of meditation. We do it with our 3 year old and its simply a few deep breaths lying in bed at night. You can see the benefits after the first few breaths as instant calm washes over him.
Daniel Goleman: Breathing Buddies video is a great starting point to meditate with the littlies. Read through some of Sarah Rudell Beaches techniques to see what resonates.
8 Ways to Teach Mindfulness to Kids by Sarah Rudell Beach - writer, mother, teacher, and blogger at LeftBrainBuddha.com
1. Listen to the bell. An easy way for children to practice mindfulness is to focus on paying attention to what they can hear. You can use a singing bowl, a bell, a set of chimes or a phone app that has sounds on it. Tell your children that you will make the sound, and they should listen carefully until they can no longer hear the sound (which is usually 30 seconds to a minute).
2. Practice with a breathing buddy. For young children, an instruction to simply “pay attention to the breath” can be hard to follow. In this Edutopia video, Daniel Goleman describes a 2nd-grade classroom that does a “breathing buddy” exercise: Each student grabs a stuffed animal, and then lies down on their back with their buddy on their belly. They focus their attention on the rise and fall of the stuffed animal as they breathe in and out.
3. Make your walks mindful. One of my children’s favorite things to do in the summer is a “noticing walk.” We stroll through our neighborhood and notice things we haven’t seen before. We’ll designate one minute of the walk where we are completely silent and simply pay attention to all the sounds we can hear — frogs, woodpeckers, a lawnmower. We don’t even call it “mindfulness,” but that’s what it is.
4. Establish a gratitude practice. I believe gratitude is a fundamental component of mindfulness, teaching our children to appreciate the abundance in their lives, as opposed to focusing on all the toys and goodies that they crave. My family does this at dinner when we each share one thing we are thankful for. It is one of my favorite parts of the day.
5. Try the SpiderMan meditation! My 5-year-old son is in to all things superheroes, and this SpiderMan meditation is right up his alley. This meditation teaches children to activate their “spidey-senses” and their ability to focus on all they can smell, taste, and hear in the present moment. Such a clever idea!
6. Check your personal weather report. In Sitting Still Like a Frog, Eline Snel encourages children to “summon the weather report that best describes [their] feelings at the moment.” Sunny, rainy, stormy, calm, windy, tsunami? This activity allows children to observe their present state without overly identifying with their emotions. They can’t change the weather outside, and we can’t change our emotions or feelings either. All we can change is how we relate to them. As Snel describes it, children can recognize, “I am not the downpour, but I notice that it is raining; I am not a scaredy-cat, but I realize that sometimes I have this big scared feeling somewhere near my throat.”
7. Make a Mind Jar. A mind jar is a bit like a snow globe - shake it up and watch the storm! But soon, if we sit and breathe and simply watch the disturbance, it settles. As do our minds.
8. Practice mindful eating. The exercise of mindfully eating a raisin or a piece of chocolate is a staple of mindfulness education, and is a great activity for kids. You can find a script for a seven-minute mindful eating exercise for children here.
Above all, remember to have fun and keep it simple. You can provide your children with many opportunities to add helpful practices to their toolkit — some of them will work for them and some won’t. But it’s fun to experiment!
Click here to read the full article. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sarah-rudell-beach-/8-ways-to-teach-mindfulness-to-kids_b_5611721.html
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