The Balanced Life, Huntsville Alabama

About a month ago, Dana wrote a blog post about the benefits of mindfulness and those benefits naturally extend to our children! In fact, I’d say that kids and teenagers who are more thoughtful and calm is a benefit to us ALL!

Based on an article on the Positive Psychology website, research confirms that for children, mindfulness can:

• Mitigate the effects of bullying (Zhou, Liu, Niu, Sun, & Fan, 2016);
• Enhance focus in children with ADHD (Zhang et al., 2016);
• Reduce attention problems (Crescentini, Capurso, Furlan, & Fabbro, 2016);
• Improve mental health and wellbeing; and
• Improve social skills

          …when well taught and practiced with children and adolescents.

(https://positivepsychology.com/mindfulness-for-children-kids-activities/)

Just a few short weeks ago I had the privilege of teaching an all-day workshop here at The Balanced Life on teaching mindfulness to kids and teens and I thought I would share a few things from that training for those who were unable to attend (hopefully you can make our next workshop!).

Mindfulness is about being awake, alert, and aware of what’s going on in your body and mind and also the world around you in any given moment. Being present. According to John Kabat Zinn, author of Falling Awake: How to Practice Mindfulness in Everyday Life, Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness, The Healing Power of Mindfulness: A New Way of Being, and Mindfulness for All: The Wisdom to Transform the World,  it is the...

“paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, nonjudgmentally.”

Anything can be on the mindfulness exercise if you are paying close attention, being nonjudgmental and staying focused on being affective. While there are a few games/exercises that you can certainly play with kids to help teach them mindfulness, what I have found is that the best way to teach mindfulness to your children is to model it (i.e. learn to be mindful and practice yourself - modeling is strong!) and that you can make any given moment an opportunity for practicing mindfulness by simply asking your children a few simple questions.

• “What did you notice?” (Emotions? Physical sensations? Thoughts?)
• ”What kinds of things distracted you?” (Internal? External?)
• ”How soon did you notice you were distracted?”
• “What did you use to bring yourself back to the task/game/exercise?”
• “What can you do to make this exercise more or less challenging next time?”

Following up with your children after a mindfulness exercise or game is extremely important because it is this time for reflection and I need feedback that fosters discussion that allows the children to learn what mindfulness is and how to better practice it in the future.

Having a chance for feedback and follow-up discussion can be vital even if your child wasn’t playing a mindfulness game or perhaps wasn’t even being that mindful at all! With these questions, we can begin to point them in the direction of mindfulness and present-moment awareness.

The following is a list of mindfulness games/exercises from the Positive Psychology website listed above and is best practiced with children so that we can guide the practice and so that we can help keep the seven core attitudes of mindfulness in place: non-judging, patience, beginner's mind, trust, non-striving, acceptance, and letting go/be and non-attachment.

• Superhero Poses: Have your children stand like Superman or Wonder Woman with their feet  spread apart and their hands on their hips. You can have them stand like this for a few moments and instruct them to pay close attention to what this feels like in the body and what emotions this brings up or what thoughts spring to mind. You could also ask them what other Superhero poses they could show you and what those poses say about the hero and what they must be thinking or feeling and try them out as well. There is an excellent YouTube video on the TedTalk by Amy Cuddy about power poses that you could check out for more information about the research behind this!

• Spidey Senses: You can have the children move about the room practicing walking normally and then upon the command “Spidey senses“ you can have them freeze in place and act as though they have heightened senses of smell and sight and hearing just as Spiderman does when he is 'sensing' danger is close by!

• Safari Spy: For this mindfulness exercise, you can have your children simply walk around the neighborhood with you and pretend like you are on a safari in a jungle far away that you have never seen before. Check out the strange plant life or wildlife - this might also include the neighbor's little dog or even the neighbor! Notice the different colors or sounds in this strange jungle that perhaps no one has noticed before! Treat your neighborhood or the street you live on as though you've never seen it before and make sure to follow up with some of the questions listed above after the safari!

Research shows that most people spend over 95% of their waking hours lost in their heads thinking about the past or the future and when we are then our brains go into autopilot and our subconscious programming takes over. In order to make changes in our lives, we have to be present in the moment that we are faced with a choice... So that we can make a different choice than the one we've been making (and don't like)!

Be present. Be mindful. See what happens and how you can change your life for the better! For more information or assistance in how to do this, feel free to contact Maggie at 256-258-7777 x 103 or email me at maggie@thebalancedlifellc.com.