One of the great joys of teaching yoga and mindfulness to children is introducing them to the wonder of breath. The breath is our ally, it is always with us and can be accessed anytime, anyplace. When we learn to pay attention to our breath, it can tell us something about how we are feeling and with this awareness we can discover the capacity of using our breath for self-regulation. This can be particularly helpful for young children as they are often subject to sensory overload, not to mention that their brains are “under construction.” This is a term used by neuropsychiatrist Daniel J. Siegel to describe what neuroscience research has established; that the brain isn’t fully developed until the mid-twenties. As we consider our children’s evolving brains and that experiences help shape their brain, teaching children about their breath and how to use their breath to help regulate their emotions is key. When we teach kids to pay attention to their breath, then educate them on how to breathe fully and deeply we are actually familiarizing them with the effects of the parasympathetic nervous system. This branch of the autonomic nervous system induces calm and relaxation; it sends signals through the body that all is well and safe. From this place of calm and ease we are better able to access and strengthen connections to the area of the brain that helps manage our emotions and solve problems more skillfully. Empowering kids from a young age about the value of their own breath is a powerful tool for teaching self-regulation. Practicing breath work with your child creates experiences that help them integrate healthy ways for coping with strong emotions. Here are some fun ideas for teaching your child at home. Make it experiential! Using a prop like a pinwheel or bubbles can make breath work fun! These props not only capture a young child’s attention but can also help teach a child to slow down and extend their exhalation. This is important because the extension of the exhale is what helps ignite the parasympathetic nervous system. Teaching a child through the use of a prop can come in handy too when a child is having a meltdown. For example, handing your child the pinwheel that they’ve been practicing with can act as a visual cue, reminding them to breathe. What’s more, if you have a pinwheel to model with, you can practice along side your child activating your own parasympathetic nervous system. As parents, when we are in a state of calm, we are better able to attune and respond to our children’s needs. Here are some instructions for teaching breathing exercises with the use of a prop: Remember to make it fun and practice when your child is calm and alert. Keep in mind your child’s attention span, short periods of practice throughout the week works best.
There are many props to use to help facilitate breathing practices. Here are a few of our favorites:
Another breathing exercise and of one of my favorite methods for introducing breath awareness and diaphragmatic breathing to kids is called Rock-A-Bye Breathing. This is a great activity to use when your child seems particularly active. Because of the calming effects (activating the parasympathetic nervous system), try practicing before bedtime, during transitions or when your child is feeling anxious or worried; add calming music and see amazing results! Bring awareness to your child’s rise and fall of the belly by placing a small stuffed animal on their stomach. Notice as the animal moves up and down to the rhythm of their breath. Practice the same breathing technique mentioned above. Focusing their attention on their breath and the rise and fall of the stuffed animal is a great way to help calm the body and mind, especially before bedtime. The novelty of rocking their stuffed animal to sleep will surely capture their interest! This sweet little book will easily captivate your attention, providing you with an introduction to mindfulness meditation. In a simple and accessible way, it describes what mindfulness is and how mindfulness-based practices can help children calm down, become more focused, fall asleep more easily, alleviate worry, manage anger, and generally become more patient and aware. The book contains eleven practices that focus on just these scenarios, along with short examples and anecdotes throughout. Included with purchase is an audio CD with guided meditations. This is a wonderful guide for parents; I often recommend it to parents who have children between the ages of 4 and 12, who are looking for strategies to help support their child who is experiencing worry and anxiety. The book is written by Eline Snel, forward is provide by Jon Kabat-Zinn and guided exercises read by Myla Kabat-Zinn. One of my favorite methods for introducing breath awareness and diaphragmatic breathing to kids is a technique I learned during my teacher training in Toronto with Rainbow Kids Yoga. I call it Rock-A-Bye breathing; bringing awareness to the rise and fall of the belly by placing a small stuffed animal on a child’s stomach and noticing as the animal moves up and down to the rhythm of the breath. By teaching kids to breathe fully and deeply (diaphragmatic breathing) we teach them how to activate their parasympathetic nervous system, which induces relaxation and receptivity. This is a great awareness technique that kids can use when they are experiencing stress and worry, and a great way to help calm the mind before bedtime. With younger children, I often capture their interest by sharing that I have a friend (small stuffed animal) that is ready for a nap and that I need their help rocking the animal to sleep. Older children enjoy when they are offered a stuffed animal and learn to notice the effects of breathing fully, watching the small animal rise and fall. With each full inhale through the nostrils, the animal rises with the belly, and with each slow extended exhale the animal gently rides the breath back down. To assist in extending the exhale, I often ask children to imagining that they’re exhaling air all the way down their legs to their toes. Rock-A-Bye breathing can be used at the end of a yoga session during shavasana or on it’s own coupled with quite music and dimmed lights. In my experience this technique works wonders with even younger preschool-aged children, keeping them in shavasana for up to five minutes! Once introduced, this tends to become a favorite and is often requested during my yoga sessions. It no longer amazes me that children favor shavasana and Rock-A-Bye breathing. When we teach children how to cultivate calmness by simply coming back to the body and paying attention to their breath we are empowering them to go within to find their own calm and relaxation. What a gift! © Copyright 2015 Well-Bean Kid’s Yoga & Mindfulness Programs. All rights reserved. Below is a great video for young children that teaches belly breathing with Elmo. Check it out! Today Yoga Camp was all about connecting with nature, but first we practiced a breathing technique that looks and feels a little funny, but is actually quite balancing. Alternate-Nostril breathing is a great way to find balance when you don’t feel quite right or you’re not exactly sure what you need. Fostering awareness by paying attention to the body, breath, thoughts and feelings, this breathing technique helps create equanimity and allows you to modify your energy level and find balance when needed. We learned about the Amazon Rainforest, one of the world’s greatest natural resources. Among many other things, it provides thousands of medicinal plants for our health and use. We also discussed the reality of deforestation and the extinction of rainforest species and what we can do individually and collectively to protect our environment and save the rainforests. Also home to over 400 species of birds and millions of insects, we listened to the distinct sounds of the Amazon then played a yoga game that had us creating our own unique calling sounds and practicing mindful listening. We added to our yoga asanas practicing standing poses and warrior sequence. Our adventure then took us right outside the yoga studio doors to learn more about the Earth’s plentiful resources. Connecting with nature we touched, smelled, tasted and learned all about the medicinal value of plants in WellSpring’s garden with the help of Dr. Kim Palka. After exploring the outdoors, we came inside to create our very own teabags using dried herbs from Kim’s garden. While sipping our tea, we mindfully ate chocolate with cacao nibs and learned about programs like Endangered Species Chocolate that are working to preserve species conservation. As our exciting journey came to an end we found our way into shavasana and settled in for some relaxation. What an awesome adventure! When my son was in the second grade I use to visit his classroom weekly and share mindfulness lessons. This quickly became my favorite weekly activity and eventually turned into the creation of Wise Owl Yoga & Mindfulness in Education Program. Back then, and still today, the Mindful Eating lesson plan is always a classroom favorite! Involving all of our senses, we step out of "auto-pilot" by slowing down to focus on the smell, look, sound, feel and taste of food. This approach can completely change a routine activity, bringing us to the present moment, experiencing it as if for the very first time. Performed slowly and with conscious attention to the experience, students identify discrete taste sensations, build descriptive skills and approach food with curiosity versus reacting with judgment (I like it or I don't like it). Following this favorite activity I always challenge the class to try new foods at home; with a mindful approach. I invite them to share the experience (mindful eating) with a parent or favorite grownup. Maybe even trying a food they had eaten before, but hadn't really liked. I'll always remember one of the second graders in my son's class approaching me a week after practicing mindful eating. “Mrs. Rapanos" he said, "last week I tried something new. My Dad had an avocado on the table and I decided I would try it. At first I really didn’t want to, I thought it would be gross because I had tried one before, but I told my Dad about mindful eating and decided I'd like to try it again! "And?" I asked with enthusiasm “what did you think?" “I really liked it!” he replied. I gave him a high-five and we chatted a little more about the experience. I walked out of the classroom that day beaming, his story made my day! A 20-minute lesson had sparked curiosity in this child. He became aware that his first reaction to the thought of an avocado was dislike. He then mindfully decided to approach it a different way, with curiosity. Even if he found he didn’t really care for avocados, learning to notice his reaction and then approaching the experience in a new and more mindful way was the lesson learned! © Copyright 2015 Well-Bean Kid’s Yoga & Mindfulness Programs. All rights reserved. Teaching kids about their breath can empower them to use this effective self-regulation skill when they are feeling stressed, anxious, angry or just full of energy. The great thing is, the breath is always with us so we can use it anytime or anywhere! When we learn to pay attention to our breath, we learn to pay attention to the moment. When we become aware that we are feeling overwhelmed with an emotion or absorbed with our thoughts connecting with our breath teaches us to come back to the moment and to our bodies. It’s then that we can practice self-regulation. Teaching kids to breathe fully and deeply can actually help them activate their parasympathetic nervous system, which induces relaxation and receptivity. When the mind and body are calm we’re able to manage our emotions and solve problems more skillfully. When I go into my son’s 2nd grade classroom and teach full and deep breathing the Hoberman Sphere AKA “breathing ball” is always a hit! It’s a great visual to use with kids, teaching them diaphragmatic breathing. By the way…teenagers are fascinated by this cool ball too! (See picture above) Here are the instructions I use:
© Copyright 2015 Well-Bean Kid’s Yoga & Mindfulness Programs. All rights reserved. At Well-Bean we teach kids about a few key players in the brain. Our amygdala (or WATCH DOG) has an important job in protecting us from threats. We call it our Protective Brain because it is always looking out for our safety and our immediate happiness. When information comes into our brain and is interpreted as a threat, we respond immediately--this is our Fight, Flight or Freeze response system. Our Amygdala keeps us safe. However, our Amygdala isn’t so good at figuring out if something is truly a threat. Stress, worry, frustration or anger can cause our Amygdala to work overtime and instinctually cause us to react to situations without using our rational or thinking centers of the brain. When we teach kids to notice when their Amygdala is activated we can then teach them how to calm their amygdala so that they are better able to access another part of the brain which helps them manage their emotions and solve problems more skillfully. Teaching kids breath work is key! Empowering kids to use their breath to calm their watch dog is one of the most powerful tools for self-regulation. When our body and brain are calm, we are better able to access our Prefrontal Cortex (PFC). When our emotions and experiences are viewed through the lens of the PFC we can respond versus react to them more mindfully; that’s why we call our PFC our Wise Owl. The Prefrontal Cortex (PFC) is our learning, reasoning and thinking center of the brain—it is the part of the brain that can see the big picture. It helps us control our impulses, focus our attention, and also helps regulate emotions. When Wise Owl (PFC) is working and the Watch Dog (Amygdala) is calm we are better able to solve problems and manage feelings more mindfully. At Well-Bean we teach kids to become more familiar with these key parts of the brain. This understanding lays the groundwork for learning how to monitor and regulate their own behavior. By calming themselves in the face of stress and strong emotions they’re better able to access their more thoughtful, compassionate, creative and capable selves. © Copyright 2015 Well-Bean Kid’s Yoga & Mindfulness Programs. All rights reserved. |