Mindfulness & Yoga Skills For Children and Adolescents: 115 Activities for Trauma, Self-Regulation, Special Needs & Anxiety

Yoga Philosophy and Contemplation in Every Day Life

In yoga, the Yamas and Niyamas from Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, give us important constructs for daily living. The Yamas (called ethical restraints) and the Niyamas (lifestyle observances) are part of the eight limbs of yoga. The remaining 6 limbs, are: Asana–posture, Pranayama–breathing, Pratyahara–withdrawal of the senses, Dharana–one pointed focus, Dhyana–meditation, and Samadhi–oneness.

I have chosen to focus on the the Yamas and Niyamas because they can be easily applied to family life and school. Helping us to do non-harm (Ahimsa) can be a program for anti-bullying. Non-grasping (Aparigraha) can be an antidote to our consumer culture.

We need to empower children in an experiential way, so they “get it” in the body to counter the negative onslaught of the stress of modern life. Where we used to play outside we now use iPads on the couch. We used to play musical instruments and now we listen passively to iTunes®. We used to ride bicycles, hike and climb trees, and now due to safety concerns kids aren’t allowed to play outside without supervision. Parents struggle with childcare and jobs, and a simple activity of going to the park after school has to be scheduled. Every day, our hurried, complicated, and sedentary lives take us further and further away from the experience of a natural integration of body and mind.

Electronics can become the only connection to the world for some children. Yet this passive activity needs to be consciously balanced with other activities. Unless we make an effort to do this, we are doing our children and selves a disservice. Our children need us as adults to create and sustain that mind-body integration which is felt when walking in nature, playing a musical instrument or actively listening. It is experienced in arts, sports, or contemplation. These are the experiences that take us out of ourselves. Without these types of activities, our children may be missing a significant aspect of childhood and learning. We even may be shortcutting the human experience. Yet, through yoga, meditation, the arts, movement and lifestyle choices, we have a door back in. Unless we open this door, a sense of having a healthy, fully enlivened lifestyle, ripe with learning potential for ourselves and our children, could easily slip from our grasp.

SUPPORT TO FAMILIES AND TEACHERS: YAMAS AND NIYAMAS

I have chosen to focus on the specific principles of the Yamas (ethical restraints)and Niyamas (lifestyle observances) that can be applied immediately into our life and classroom. Examples such as not- bullying, truthfulness, not-stealing, keeping clean and uncluttered are relevant for our lives. Joan Shivarpita Harrigan, a practicing psychologist and the director of Patanjali Kundalini Yoga Care, states why they are worth looking at: “It contains essential advice for daily living. Patanjali has offered us guidelines that will allow us to have enhanced emotional and mental well-being and a more fulfilling and meaningful life. The Yoga Sutra is specifically designed to lead to greater happiness and spiritual fulfillment for you and everyone around you.”

Suspension Bridge Pose

Suspension Bridge

• Find a partner who is about the same size.

• Begin practicing breathing in and out.

• Try to get your breathing in sync with one another.

• Hold your arm out and grasp each other’s hand with one arm for support.

• Standing on one leg, raise the other leg behind, bending the knee as you grasp the foot with your other hand.

• Maintain your balance supporting one another.

• Continue to hold each other’s hand and come again slowly to stand.

The Arch Pose

The Arch

• Sit opposite your partner on the floor.

• Observe your breath going in and out.

• Sit on the floor with knees bent and feet under your knees.

• Reach out with arms extended and grasp the arms of your partner.

• Hold your partner securely.

• Raise one foot up at a time, and place it touching the foot of your partner.

• Holding the arms secure, make an arch with the legs as you bring the other foot up to touch your partner’s foot.

• Balance with legs raised and feet touching.

DEFINING THE YAMAS FOR DAILY LIFE

• Ahimsa: Non-violence. This can refer to not thinking thoughts and taking actions that are hurtful or violent, choosing to not indulge in violent games, speech, thoughts or actions or doing hurtful things. Do no harm and let things be

• Satya: Truthfulness. This can refer to sitting quietly and listening to your feelings, and tuning in when you speak to communicate what is true and helpful to others.

• Asteya: Non-Stealing: This refers to not using up or wasting others’ time and energy for yourself and also literally not stealing.

• Brahmacharya: Energy Moderation. This refers to knowing when to use your energy to rest or be active, or when to walk away and avoid a conflict. It can refer to knowing when to stop listening to a friend repeating the same story over again, and choosing instead to do your homework or chores. It can refer to knowing when not to chase after every desire or pursue a desire that may not be helpful in the long term.

• Aparigraha: Non-clinging, non-grasping. This quality is useful in letting go of what isn’t really yours, or not holding onto a bad experience too long, not keeping it alive when you can dismiss it. It also refers to not needing every new type of product that comes out, not clinging to friends or sad stories that aren’t good for you in the long run. It can also refer to letting go of desiring something that you didn’t get, and moving on. This can refer to not identifying with a feeling that you have to have something just because it makes you happy, (“I must have that chocolate ice cream.”) Also, not being overly attached to a positive experience if it may be distracting you from being in the present moment (thinking too much about a past event, e. g.,. a movie you liked, or your friend’s new phone, when it’s time to move on to other things). It is about being in the current moment and not needing more.

DEFINING THE NIYAMAS

Saucha: Purity. Refers to keeping things clean and orderly.

Santosha: Contentment. Being happy in the present moment with what you have and where you are.

Tapas: Right effort: This refers to your willingness and possible discomfort in doing the hard work that it takes to accomplish your goal, to go through a difficult passage or endure with self-discipline. It can refer to hanging in on a group project when your group isn’t working well together, and persevering until everyone gets it right, practicing a musical instrument or a project that appears difficult, and working through the feelings of fear or inadequacy to reach completion.

Swadhaya: Self-study. This refers to doing self-inquiry and looking within for our happiness, instead of outside. It refers to asking ourselves, “Who am I and how do I live? Do I leave my homework until the last minute? Do I tend to make good choices? Do I treat others with respect?”

Ishvara Pranidhana: Dedication to the highest: This refers to looking for the highest good in every moment and letting that guide you.

A definition of attunement from Merriam Webster^® is: to cause (a person, company, etc.) to have a better understanding of what is needed or wanted by a particular person or group, to bring into harmony, tune to, make aware or responsive. When I think of the word attunement, I can’t help but remember my daughter’s elementary school string orchestra of cellos and violins. The loving focus and inner stillness of the music teacher was palpable as he went from student to student tuning the instruments. His compassion, patience and acceptance of what was in front of him, was mesmerizing and would infuse the room. The parents patiently waited in the audience, listening to the cacophony of sound. They talked softly and watched in fascination. It was as if they were somatically experiencing the instruments being tuned. The music director would step forward to give the audience a signal that he had finished this finely crafted task. I felt a sense of alertness and anticipation as the parents listened. The children could now produce a piece of music worth listening to. I felt a sense of ease and peace. I sensed in the room that all was well in that moment.

In the same way a music teacher tunes the instruments, giving support to the students to do their job well, a family can tune their lives to give support to one another. The parents may need help to learn to do this. Therapists can offer tools based on embodying, mindfulness, and breathing to teach parents. This support cuts across cultures, religions, race, and is based on yogic principles and the wisdom of the ages.

The stress of our fast-paced lives increases the risk of losing the opportunity to “attune” again to what is important to us. Having a holistic profile offers us a framework and a door to find our way back again to what’s important and of personal value. We can see our reactions to what is out of our control and is causing stress. When we make a choice to hold the stress differently, empowering the whole family, it becomes much easier to let go of non-supportive, negative habits.

THE ATTUNEMENT PROFILE: CULTIVATING BALANCE HELPS THERAPISTS AND FAMILIES

In the 30 years I have worked with children and families, I have learned that we are never just treating the child in a vacuum. As I travel around the country, I have heard that many school therapists consult with parents and teachers and have reduced treatment time with children. Therapists are often instructing the parents to deliver the treatment to a child.

I would encounter a myriad of parental issues including finances, divorce, kids’ behaviors, nutrition, family dynamics and childcare. I would meet parents trying to raise children without a guidebook for parenting or their own personal fulfillment. As a consultant, I wanted to give clients options to their stressful lifestyle in a non-judgmental way. I asked questions such as:

• Would you enjoy having a family discussion?

• Would you enjoy having a connection to something greater than yourself?

• Would you enjoy making time for silence?

As a consultant therapist working with families, I struggled to find any adequate holistic assessments, so I developed my own. I felt if we could examine family life in terms of mind, body, and spirit, we could better help our kids and ourselves. I gleaned from my own life experience, as a meditator, a Waldorf parent, an occupational therapist and the single mother of an adopted child, and I designed the questions to help others cultivate balance. I used visual images with questions.

Families today are finding it more difficult with work and after school activities to have dinners with everyone in the family together and it is becoming a lost art. A question on the profile might be: Does the schedule of the family allow everyone to enjoy having a family dinner at some time? If not what would need to be organized so everyone could eat together on occasion?

I found and utilized an integrative assessment developed by Dr. Rob Ivker, an integrative physician called “The Fully Alive Questionnaire,” which was divided into mind, body, and spirit. As I worked on developing my profile I realized that I felt that the mind, body, spirit were the keys to helping families come back into alignment from the myriad of stress we encounter. When a family would make an attempt to keep mind, body, spirit in balance, whether it was eating breakfast together, taking a walk together or all reading and discussing homework in the dining room, there was a better chance of communication, alleviating stress and the child’s improving.

Over the years, I have found that most families want the same basic things. Some of us have more recourses and capabilities. The mind body spirit approach gently presents many “doors in” to reflect, on less stressful lifestyles.

LETTING GO AND ALLOWING

I found in my own life that when I was over-stressed, I would at times perceive my child’s behavior as the cause of my stress instead of the other way around. I would become short-tempered and start blaming. When I could take a minute to repeat a mantra or breathe, I could see what was really causing me distress. I then would ask my daughter to sit down and we would discuss the situation. This discussion would allow me to trust that there could be a solution yet unknown to me, ask for guidance and let go to a higher power. I often ask myself the question from the profile “do you have a connection to something greater than yourself?”

A humorous incident involving a flat screen TV, is an example of this question and how it plays out in daily life. My daughter wanted to make a particular room in the house into a media room and buy a flat screen TV. Given that I have never been a TV person, it was not easy getting onboard with her desire. She was all ready to strip a favorite sitting room of mine of furniture and create her media cave. Feeling pressured with too much on my plate, I expressed I wanted the sitting room as it was and set my boundaries. Secretly, I wished she would just let go of this idea.

Determined to fulfill her desire, my daughter decided to buy the TV herself, but asked me to come along. Giving up my anger and relaxing into the unknown, we had fun picturing a really cool media room, and seeing ourselves watching movies and laughing as we drove to the mall. At the store, I watched in awe as my daughter sat on the floor in front of each flat screen assessing which was the perfect one. She was very focused and motivated and arrived at her choice after discussing many electronic details with the salesperson.

On the drive back home, laughing and talking, she continued to picture how she wanted the media room to look and the type of furniture she wanted. As we approached our house, we saw a neighbor putting out a couch in great condition on the street. We decided to look at it. My neighbor’s husband came out and offered to put the couch into his pickup truck and help us bring it into the house. We had a hilarious adventure getting it up the stairs. Laughing hysterically, we got stuck holding the couch on the steps and couldn’t move. Then suddenly a solution arose and the couch made it up the steps. Voila! A media room was created.

I am always amazed at how quickly the universe can provide when we know what we want, as evidenced by my daughter’s clear desire for the TV. When our thoughts are positive and focused, things happen. When I was able to get past my resistance, my energy shifted to allowing an unknown solution to emerge rather than blocking it. This has been a helpful technique when working with special needs children.

An example of this occurred when attempting to do feeding with a resistant child who didn’t want to hold a spoon although physically capable of it. Although I wanted to follow his lead, I often fell prey to becoming pushy and wanting what I wanted when I wanted it. When I was able to let go of my need, he would surprisingly grab the spoon and bring it towards his mouth. The more I practice letting go of my resistance; it becomes clear to me that a hitherto unknown solution can arise.

Often, as parents, we don’t understand how the stress of the life we are living is a factor in our child’s behavior. We see the problem as outside ourselves. A never-ending cycle occurs as parents are stressed by a child’s behavior and then the child is stressed by the parent’s reaction to that behavior. Dealing with our own stress is paramount to finding some viable solution for the family as a whole.

CONTEMPLATION: AN ANCHOR FOR THE UNKNOWN

We create a lifestyle from what our families and cultures have taught us. It might be what popular culture tells us, or what society is asking of us. It might be what we imitate from others or have gleaned as important for ourselves. It might be the lack of knowing what else to do. This can have both positive and negative implications. No one really spells out what is the way to have a healthy lifestyle. There are many books about how to do A, B, C to make your children smart or creative. But we as a culture are failing miserably. Living life and raising children is not easy. There are many nooks, crannies, junctures, and all of it can challenge our capacity for patience, love and forgiveness daily. How we think and feel has the potential to influence everything about our health, children and extended family. Knowing how to practice contemplation has helped me many times in critical parenting junctures. Here is an example of how contemplation helped my family in a difficult time and was an anchor for me.

When my daughter was 20 she wanted to do service learning abroad. For months she sent in applications, applied for scholarships, and set her heart on going for the year to study abroad. She worked three jobs during the year and summer to raise the money to go. She was determined to do this. She received several prestigious scholarships. We kept meeting people who had traveled to her country of choice and had wonderful stories to share. She was glowing with the excitement. It felt as if everything was pointing to the trip.

One morning, a close family friend and mentor called me. He alerted me to a disturbing story in the news of a dangerous incident in the town my daughter would be living in abroad. He suggested that perhaps choosing a different country might be safer in the long run and better professionally. He thought that somehow this incident could be a lamppost for an opportunity to change the plan. Then the bottom began to drop out of the trip. One problem after another arose. Several long and stressful phone conversations with the organization around security issues occurred. I was trying to understand and sort out the details. I felt as if I was losing my mind at times. I was being torn between a normal concern about safety and not worrying.

I knew in my heart that the trip was wrong, and I was very scared. I was bracing myself for a difficult conversation with my daughter. I sat down with her to explain about the phone call from our family friend and what options she had. I told her she couldn’t go under these circumstances. Of course, there were many tears and questions. She wasn’t on board with my feelings and didn’t want her trip to be deterred or listen to the family friend’s advice.

What made the situation even more complex was that the organization we were working with didn’t recognize my concerns for her safety. The next morning, I insisted that my daughter withdraw from the program. The program countered with a new safer placement by the afternoon and she was re-enrolled. I insisted that one semester was enough and she agreed. We went back and forth all summer, with the trip’s departure date changing several times. It was very stressful. There would be positive conversations with the program director and then doubts as well.

Throughout all of this, I held dearly to my meditation practice. I used contemplation to feel my way and figure out the next step. There were days when I felt as if I were losing my mind. My heart and head weren’t always lining up. I knew on one level the year placement wasn’t right. Having made the change of location and reducing her time abroad to one semester seemed a better fit now. Yet something still didn’t sit well with me about the organization we were dealing with. I contemplated, meditated and had serious conversations with my daughter and friends about the daily changes to the plans and trip schedule. There was a lot of pressure from the organization and the scholarship committee. It was very confusing to sort out.

Five days before her departure date in mid-September, my daughter came to talk to me. She had just learned from another student that the organization hadn’t been telling her the truth about some important details. She was devastated, angry and defiant all at the same time. She wanted to go abroad, but was really disturbed that she had been lied to. We both felt concerned that important information was misrepresented to her. We sat quietly together in silence.

My daughter was raised with meditation and contemplation since she was a small child. Although she might not practice regularly, she knows how to turn within in times of crisis. She told me she was going to walk up a nearby mountain to contemplate what to do.

I sat down to meditate also. I wrote the problem out, and asked for guidance.

In the stillness, these words came to me: “drop it”. I decided to listen and let go of worrying and also to let the trip go. When my daughter came in from her walk she told me she had contemplated and chanted (sang). Through her practices, it had become clear to her that this trip wasn’t the right thing to do at this time. She was able to let it go with tears and open herself to the unknown of what would be next. She had come to her own resolution.

After a few deep breaths, we both quickly began thinking about the college where she was enrolled. She didn’t want to lose the semester. The next day, with the help of her advisor, she registered for classes on the last possible day permitted. After much contemplation, she was later accepted in another study abroad program that was a much better fit for her. My daughter and I had truly used contemplation and other practices to create the right stepping stones and map for her journey.

I have used a three-step contemplation with coaching clients and have taught professionals to use it during my seminars. It has always created a powerful and meaningful experience for those who try it. Once, during a group coaching session, a therapist identified herself as being addicted to staying busy. She was able to realize after the contemplation practice that she needed to calm down. Such a simple awareness can be a monumental breakthrough.

Once I was teaching a seminar in the same city as a prestigious clinic, on the same topic as their specialty area. I was invited to tour and to present an in-service but due to time constraints we decided I would just do the tour. When I arrived at the clinic, I was greeted and asked if I would mind presenting a quick in-service. I was taken aback and started to breathe deeply to get in touch with what I wanted to do. I had about 15 minutes to spend with the therapists after the tour. I choose to teach the three-step contemplation. The therapists had a profound experience. They all fell deep into meditation. They thanked me for the deep tranquility they experienced. As they dipped within to a still awareness, they became refueled for the day ahead.

This can be done sitting with eyes closed or open

1. Offer the practice with gratitude before you begin.

2. Write out on a piece of paper a problem or question that you have.

3. Sit quietly with eyes closed and focus on your breathing.

4. Sink into your heart, as you sense the heart area as a source of feelings while contemplating the question.

5. Focus on the breath and take several rounds of inhale and exhale.

6. Conclude your practice.

7. Write down whatever comes to you without censoring it.

8. Honor what has come from you as an answer to the problem.

1. Offer the practice with gratitude before you begin.
Write out the question or problem you would like an answer to.

2. Meditate with eyes closed. Use the equal or the three-part breath to assist you into meditation. Focus on the inhale and exhale, witnessing passing thoughts and letting the thoughts go. Continue to bring your attention back to the breath. Conclude your meditation and open your eyes.

3. Write down whatever comes to you from your inner self without censoring.

4. Honor the outpouring from your heart and inner self.

The teaching of the Yamas and Niyamas are a rich template to use for teenagers and for any age child. Take one guideline and explore it for yourself and watch the day through the eyes of that quality. Give yourself time and space to explore in your own way.

Contemplation can be done informally over a cup of tea or at your desk at work. We can invite our children to use these skills in critical junctures when decisions need to be made. Sitting formally for the three-step contemplation can bring remarkable results. It is a method of looking at our thought process and allowing our intuition to arise. When you use contemplation, try to avoid holding back from the activity. Just allow the thoughts to flow. As you become more comfortable, you will ease your way into using this helpful process.

Suspension Bridge

The Arch

CHAPTER 8

Yoga Philosophy and Contemplation in Every Day Life

YAMAS AND NIYAMAS

SUPPORT TO FAMILIES AND TEACHERS: YAMAS AND NIYAMAS

Team Building and Yoga Values

Values Index Cards: Yama and Niyama

Ask Questions About the Qualities

DEFINING THE YAMAS FOR DAILY LIFE

DEFINING THE NIYAMAS

WHAT IS ATTUNEMENT?

THE ATTUNEMENT PROFILE: CULTIVATING BALANCE HELPS THERAPISTS AND FAMILIES

LETTING GO AND ALLOWING

CONTEMPLATION: AN ANCHOR FOR THE UNKNOWN

DROP INTO THE HEART CONTEMPLATION

THREE-STEP CONTEMPLATION

TIPS AND TAKE AWAYS