Meditation training for young children can be very beneficial, particularly in our modern world with so many distractions pulling at their attention. Learning to calm their busy minds and train their attention to go where they want it to go will benefit their concentration ability in all aspects of learning. Beginning mindfulness exercises helps children learn how to relax, let go of stress, and connect with their own inner source of calm. Practices for focusing their attention help them develop an improved attention span, leading to less hyperactivity.
Early mindfulness training leads to a better sense of self-esteem and improves family relationships. Social anxiety diminishes, and friendships and social life are greatly enhanced. Many studies (including “Mindfulness Meditation Training in Adults and Adolescents with ADHD” by a group of researchers led by Lidia Zylowska in 2008) have shown that with mindfulness training, children with attention deficit disorder have an improved attention span and often need less medication to control their symptoms.
Mindfulness training for teenagers in learning to sit and watch their thoughts and emotions rise and fall without reacting, just watching, is an excellent practice for the often emotionally tumultuous teenage years. Youths who have mindfulness training are not nearly as vulnerable to the emotional storms that often come from early social encounters. They have developed the ability to watch the comings and goings of their thoughts and emotions and have become more adept at not reacting to these tugs and pulls and staying in centered awareness.
Another factor contributing to the improved self-confidence of young meditators is that the training of mindfulness diminishes the “me” center and its impact on the flow of interactions throughout the day, freeing them from the anxiety of taking everything so personally. In the teenage years, when the development of a personal identity is so important, taking everything personally and overreacting to even the hint of a slight from others often comes with the territory. With mindfulness training, this defensive reaction diminishes as practitioners develop greater skill at remaining unruffled by whatever happens in life.
Imagine the benefit for teenagers to know that every thought and emotion that arises in them throughout the day does not mean something is wrong with them! It is one thing to learn not to take everything that others say about you personally, but learning how to not take their own thoughts and emotions so personally gives teens a greater ability to stay unruffled in the face of trying situations.
Very young children can work with mindfulness training, focused attention, breath awareness, and all types of visualization exercises to help them train their minds. Of course they will need your assistance and participation, and this can be a wonderful quiet-time activity to take part in together. In the following exercises, instructions for you are given first, and then, where the quotation marks begin, are the passages to read to your child.
To avoid the awkwardness of writing “his or her” each time in referring to your child, genders will be alternated with each exercise.
Breath Awareness for Children
Teaching children breathing exercises is an excellent starting point for mindfulness training. There is nothing more immediate than our next breath, and training children to follow their breath is the surest way to help them come back to the here and now.
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Have your child sit cross-legged on the floor or a chair, with hands resting palms up on her thighs. Then offer the following direction:
“Sit as if you were a mountain, with your spine straight and tall. Relax your shoulders, relax your mouth and eyes, and be as still and quiet as a mountain. Now place your hands on your belly and take a deep breath into your belly and feel that it is rising and expanding, and as you breathe out, feel your belly falling and flattening. Let your breath be natural, and feel the rising and flattening of your belly with your breath. As your belly rises, say rising silently to yourself, and as your belly falls on the outbreath, say falling silently to yourself. Do this for two minutes.
“Now return to your normal breathing and notice how your body feels.”
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Children enjoy this exercise and often find the sound of their ocean breath quite relaxing. First have your child sit with his hands on his lap with palms up, spine straight and tall, being as quiet and still as a mountain. Direct your child to relax his shoulders, face, and entire body. Direct his attention to his breath, and encourage him to follow it down to his belly and back up through the nose.
Now have your child hold his lips in a loose O while slightly tightening the back of the throat, so that both the inbreath and the outbreath sound like ocean waves. Have your child practice ocean breath for two minutes and then return to natural breathing. Now direct your child to stop and feel the effects of this exercise on his body and mind.
Next, close your right nostril
and open your left nostril as
you breathe out on the left side.
To complete one cycle,
keep your left nostril open
as you breathe in on the left side.
Have your child repeat this cycle
for two minutes. Then have her
place both hands on her legs
and just breathe normally
and notice how she feels
after this exercise.
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This exercise is excellent for children to bring balance to their energy field. You can offer these directions:
“First sit with your spine straight and tall and place your left hand on your left leg with your palm up. Lift your right hand to your nose and place your thumb gently on your right nostril and your ring finger [you might need to identify the ring finger] gently on your left nostril. Place your middle and index fingers lightly on your brow. Now gently close your right nostril with your thumb and breathe in through your open left nostril.
“Next, close your left nostril with your ring finger and open your right nostril as you breathe out. Then keep your left nostril closed and your right nostril open as you breathe in on the right side.
“Next, close your right nostril and open your left nostril as you breathe out on the left side.
“To complete one cycle, keep your left nostril open as you breathe in on the left side.”
Have your child repeat this cycle for two minutes. Then have her place both hands on her legs and just breathe normally and notice how she feels after this exercise.
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This exercise is suitable for people of all ages and is particularly helpful to introduce children to meditation.
First have your child sit in a comfortable position, with a straight spine, the head and ears in alignment with the spine, and the head tilted slightly forward. This can be in a chair, with the feet flat on the floor and hands palms down resting on the thighs (palms down to direct sensitivity to the body). If your child is able to sit cross-legged or in lotus posture on the floor, all the better, as children are typically able to do this with more ease than adults, and they often enjoy being able to sit in postures that adults have difficulty with. Offer these instructions:
“Now with your eyes closed, focus on your breath. Let your breath become even and steady, breathing all the way to your belly and then gently exhaling naturally. Place your hands on your belly and feel it getting bigger with your inbreath and getting smaller with your outbreath. Do this for ten rounds, counting on each exhale.
“Now tell yourself that you would like to have your whole body relax. Notice wherever your body doesn’t feel soft and relaxed, and imagine in your mind’s eye that you are sending a beam of warm light to the tight area, making it soft and relaxed. Breathe right into the tight area, projecting your beam of light with your breath. Go wherever you first notice any tight feelings, most often the neck and shoulders, and breathe into the tension until it dissolves. Relax your eyes and face muscles and then move your beam of light throughout your body, noticing any tight feelings in your stomach, chest, or heart. Breathe into the tension and dissolve it.
“Now stop and feel the effects. Sit with this relaxed feeling of well-being as long as you like.”
When I was first learning yoga, my teacher would have us do a series of exercises and then lie down in corpse pose with this directive: “Now stop and feel the effects.” We would just lie there, taking note of how our bodies felt and noticing any subtle differences from our practice. I find this to be great advice for your child to periodically stop and feel the effects of whatever practice you are teaching. This cultivates mindfulness and awareness of sensations arising within the body and mind.
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Loving-Kindness Training for Children
This type of meditation is particularly accessible for children and can be easily taught. This practice has a long-term transforming effect on the psyche and improves children’s social skills by awakening in them a compassionate interest in the well-being of others.
Children are particularly adept at imagination and visualization exercises. For children, loving-kindness practice is much the same as it is with adults, but you change the phrases and images to make them age-appropriate. Offer these instructions:
“First sit tall in your chair. Feel your feet touch the ground and your hands resting on your legs. Notice your breath in its natural rhythm without any effort on your part. Follow your inbreath from your nose down through your lungs and into your belly. Now follow your outbreath from your belly up through your nose. Do this a few times and pay attention to the moment your breath changes from the inbreath to the outbreath and from the outbreath to the inbreath.
“Now you are going to send friendly thoughts to someone you care about. You could picture a friend, someone in your family, or a favorite pet that you would like to send your friendly thoughts to. Hold on to your friend’s image and silently say the following in your mind:
I wish for you to be happy.
I wish for you to be free of all bad feelings.
I wish for you to be safe and loved by others.
I wish for you to be filled with love and kindness.
“Say these friendly wishes several times, picturing that you are sending the energy of these phrases to your friend’s heart. With each time you send your friendly wishes to your friend, picture energy filling your friend with light and warmth.
“After you have done this for a few minutes, see your friend sending you these same friendly thoughts directed to your heart. Imagine your friend saying the following to you:
I wish for you to be happy.
I wish for you to be free of all bad feelings.
I wish for you to feel safe and loved by others.
I wish for you to be filled with love and kindness.
“Imagine hearing your friend’s words several times, and with each time, the energy in your heart grows and grows to ultimately fill your entire being with its light and warmth. Rest in this feeling and notice how you feel after this exercise.”
After the children have learned this, they can then extend their circle of loving-kindness to include their family, all of the children at school (even ones they have had difficulties with), the whole community, and ultimately the whole world and all of its creatures.
Visualizations for Bedtime
An excellent time to have children practice visualization exercises to help them quiet their minds is while you are helping them get ready for bed and are tucking them in for the night. There are fewer distractions calling for their attention, and the visualizations help them go to sleep peacefully.
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This visualization exercise is excellent for children and is particularly helpful before bedtime to help them enter the dreamtime with a warm, loving, secure feeling within. Providing children with this training can be an excellent resource for them when they are confronted with troubling dreams or thoughts. They can do this practice to restore a sense of inner happiness.
This exercise can be done while sitting in the daytime or when lying down at bedtime. First have your child close her eyes and imagine a friend, a loved one, or a favorite pet in her mind’s eye, and let the feeling of a smile come over her face. Have her visualize the energy of the smile coming through her eyes as if she were smiling through her eyes.
Tell her to take this energy of the smile on a journey through her entire body. Have her focus the energy beam of her smile on the inside of her head and brain. Encourage her to smile through her throat and then her chest and lungs, and then let the energy of the smile settle into her heart. Ask her to enjoy a few breaths from her smiling heart, and then take her smile into her stomach, lower abdomen, and all the way to the base of the spine. Have her imagine every cell in her body smiling and happy, as if her entire body were radiating a smile. Now have her stop and feel the effects of this practice while basking in this healing radiance.
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Very young children are not ready for meditation training in the formal sense, but teaching them to steady their minds with a focus on their breathing and then guiding them into visualizations can be very helpful before going to sleep. It can be terrifying for young children to be alone in the dark with just their imagination. Parents often seek to alleviate young children’s fears with a statement such as “Don’t worry about that—it’s just your imagination.” This identifies the problem, but the child is still stuck with their imagination, which can’t just simply be dismissed as if it isn’t real. Although imagination is not tangible, the experience of their imagination trapped in a fearful place is very real and scary indeed.
As an alternative to dismissing our children’s imagination, we could again identify the source of their fears as imagination and then teach them how to use their imagination in empowering ways, as in the following example:
“That is your imagination and it can get scary, right? Do you know that you can train your imagination to be your friend and help you feel good?
“First snuggle into a comfy position. Now just follow your breath with your attention. Notice it on your inbreath as it goes down to your belly and how your belly gets bigger, then notice how your belly gently flattens on the outbreath. Can you do this five times?
“Now let’s go to your imagination, and imagine the sky above you filled with twinkling stars and a bright full moon. These are the nighttime lights. Notice how their lights are soft and soothing. Different from the sun’s light in the daytime, these gentle lights are your nighttime friends.
“Now imagine that you can gather these twinkling, soft lights into your forehead. Can you see the lights twinkling in your mind’s eye? Now imagine that you can breathe these inner lights all the way down to your belly, and with each breath, these nighttime lights are spreading throughout your whole body. How do you feel as you imagine these starlights twinkling throughout your body as you go to sleep?”
In the concluding chapter, we will further explore incorporating the benefits of meditation into everyday life.