Practice Mindfulness With Your Children by Pretending to Be Trees
We know how mindfulness can help reduce stress, anxiety, or lack of attention in our child (and our own), especially at times like this. However, it takes a little creativity to get our kids interested in these practices. Even the simplest of mantras, breathing exercises, or body scanning techniques that you use in your daily mindfulness practice can fly right over their heads, making them bored or even more nervous than when you started.
This is the problem that writer Steph Fairington faced when she tried to apply a routine of meditation and gratitude with her 4-year-old daughter Marty. (Marty naturally took the opportunity to act out her stupidity by exclaiming how grateful she was for the ice cream and the farting – who couldn’t?) So Fairington took a trip to figure out how to incorporate Marty’s creative playfulness into the game. practice of mindfulness.
After some research and interviews with experts, she writes for the Washington Post that she is ready to put the plan into action – by pretending to be trees:
Marty and I squatted down and imagined that our fingers were the big, bold roots of our trees. Then we slowly got up and stretched out the bodies, assuming straight postures. Taking a deep breath, we gently extended our arms over our heads, wiggling our fingers (leaves) and arms (branches) in the light breeze, exhaling, letting them fall to our sides. “This is not just imitation, but real becoming,” Lisa Miller, professor of psychology and education at Columbia University Teachers College and author of Spiritual Child , assured me. “The feeling of a child is that he really can be a tree. This maintains their natural sense of unity. ” Marty, as believable as a tree that Stanislavsky could be proud of, really made the practice her own, rolling over in the gusty wind and begging me for help.
From there, Fairington and her daughter pretended to be the wind (the tornado sent Marty through the park) and the sun.
Using a special wood, wind and sun technique is great, but you can adapt this idea to anything that speaks to your child’s personality. You can do Darth Vader’s breathing exercises or practice walking like a deer . Or you can do what my son’s soccer coach does and have the kids spend a few minutes lying on their backs doing herbal angels on the field before the game.
Anything that allows them to slow down and act out something purposefully and methodically is a great start to practice mindfulness.