A Meditation for Kids: Coming Back to the Positive

What good happened today? Children and young people can find this eight -minute meditation to see positives.

Abstract

• Children often focus on terrifying or unpleasant ideas, which can affect their mental health.
• In this short meditation of children, conscious breathing and pleasant ideas have been used to help look at the good and more positive.

Our brains are running hard to see the negative. This is part of how our ancient ancestors were able to survive in a permanent threatening environment.

But this negative bias can make it difficult for us and our children, even in our relatively low -risk environment, other everyday pressure, such as big tests, arguments or frustrations.

This exercise is specifically designed for young meditators, Dr. Mark Britain shows children to help comforting the nervous system, how to guide their attention to these positive things.

A meditation for children: return to positive

1. Lie in somewhere comfortably. Let your arms and feet fall to the ground. Close your eyes slowly.
2. Start seeing how your body is changed with every breath. Every time you breathe, your stomach grows, and your stomach goes down. If it is easy, put your hands on your stomach. Or if you want, keep the animal filled there there.
3. Every time you breathe, your stomach runs. Your hand, or your toy, rises, and then falls. See if you can count ten breaths like this. I am breathing, ABreathing, A. (Repeat nine more breaths, and nine more breaths.)
4. When you lose the count, don’t worry about it. This is normal, and happens to everyone. Come back to whatever number you remember last.
5. Now, move your attention toward your day. In breathing, pay attention to your breath as your stomach is up. Breathing, pay attention to something that is going well today.
6. With every breath: Breathing, watching the movement of your stomach, and every breath, is watching something that is going well today.
7. Now, make some pictures about yourself that you are proud of. Focus on breathing, moving your stomach. Breathe, make a picture of a picture that you are proud of. If something does not come to mind, sometimes it happens. If you feel the same way, instead make a picture of what you want for yourself.
8. Finally, bring in mind that makes you happy. Before we finish, try another exercise. In breathing, look at your stomach move. And now, breathing is a picture of someone who makes you happy.
9. When you come to the end of this exerciseTake some deep breaths, and start to shake your arms and feet. Parse and decide what you want to do next.
10. It is normal to have thoughts that make us scared or bad. We should never ignore anything important, but it is useful to focus on the rest of our life. It takes a few minutes every day to see what’s fine, and see what happens next.