Teaching Kids to Relax through Meditation

I teach my children meditation. We have a meditation corner at home where they can go for quiet sit-down sessions. When they were younger, I sat down with them a couple of times a day. Each time just 10 minutes just to quieten their mind.

It’s a wonderful gift to teach our kids meditation. Life will be stressful for them as the workload increase. It’s important to teach them how to relax.

There’s No need to go into any difficult methods or anything religion based. Just sit down with them and tell them to focus on their breathe. Tell them the busy mind will have a lot of images and feelings coming in, just let them go and focus back on breathe. That simple.

The trick is not to meditate too long, they’re still too young to sit for long time. Even 5 minutes is good. It’s the frequency of the practice, not the intensity, that counts.

They usually get pretty frustrated and frown 1st 5 minutes feeling restless but subsequently, they’ll relax and enjoy the clarity in the mind.

I buy them each their personal meditation cushion. It’s buckwheat husk inside and very nice to use. I even use one as my pillow.

I started my kids at around P1. I must say it takes discipline even though it’s 5 mins. As parent, I have to say, "let’s do it". Good to set routine, say before meal times.

Meditation is a life long practice. So please don’t be so hard on yourself. There’ll be periods of time when you stop. What matter is that you go back to it knowing that there is a way to help yourself get peace.

About the practice. sometimes, my mind get really noisy, chattery and restless. The best thing to get calm back is to just sit and meditate. Believe me, just 15 minutes and you’ll feel better. You’ll be fighting to settle down at first, all kinds of images, thoughts and feelings come in. Just
let them go and return to focusing on your breathe.

Basically, what we’re trying to do is to get our mind to be present. For example, if you hear a loud crash from the road outside, you tell yourself that was a sound. What usually happens is that we’ll start to think, hmm… could it be a lorry and a car? could it be a Toyota car, such a loud crash, someone must be badly injured, etc… This is why we need to go back to our breather to bring our mind back to present as those thoughts are of no use. With constant practice, we find that we’ll be able to focus on the present better as we go through our daily activities.

Please understand I’m not qualified to teach meditation, but I do experience the benefits from it and hope you will too.

If you really want to learn, you can try the Vipassana Meditation. They say it’s non religious but they do talk a bit about the Budddhist philosophy. Otherwise, the Yoga version is good too. Mathsparks recommended one too.

We care so much about our physical body. Must take care of mind too. It really takes so little effort. The point is, don’t give up. Keep it simple to start with. It’s not the intensity that counts, it’s the frequency. It’s at least so for me, still very much a beginner.

BTW, if you are wondering how to tell the time eg 5 minutes. I bought the
kids a kitchen timer for that.

By the way, other ways we can teach kids to relax is to get them to exercise, take walks in the parks or go to the beach for some salty air. We do these with our kids and as they feel the relaxation from such activities, I believe, they’ll turn to them when they are stressed later on in their lives, instead of smoking, drinking, etc.

How to still the monkey mind

Totally agree. This not only apply to kids, but adults as well. Our monkey mind is constantly on chatter mode, and not everyone can truly relax. When I say truly relax, that’s when our breathing is in sync with the rhythm of the universe, our body biorhythm. Slow, deep-breathing helps in relaxation and breathing with appropriate yoga exercizes helps improve circulation and remove toxin. Learning the correct way of breathing increases oxygenated blood circulating in the system and to the brain, thus improves memory and concentration. Gradually, we learn to tune-inward and still the monkey mind, even for 20minutes a day helps in a big way! 🙂

Yuanne Lau Thu, 31/03/2016 4:58pm

Thank you for sharing!!

Thanks for sharing!I also try to do with my knids.They denied to learn.

smartmummy Mon, 11/07/2011 9:30am

Thanks for sharing :)

Thanks for sharing 🙂

WCW Thu, 09/06/2011 9:39am

tks for sharing

amylqf Sun, 21/11/2010 12:00am

reply to hermes173

Hello Hermes173,

I’m not taking classes now. I have attended some before and find that Vipassana version makes sense to me. You can find out more or try the yoga version.

Faun Sun, 26/09/2010 10:18pm

Reply to minnie2004

Dear minnie2004

To be frank with you, I’ve been trying meditation for many years too but I don’t go very far either. In Buddhism, they have a few stages for meditation and I’m still at the basic stage, mindfulness meditation. I encourage you as well as myself to keep trying. I think if one can be a mindful person in her daily life, that is a great achievement already.

As for the giggling. It’s the same with my kids. The 2 of them will giggle and take a few minutes to settle down. Don’t get irritated with your dd. she’s probably finding it uncomfortable to suddenly be so conscious of her being and not having to respond to the world around her.

My son sometimes can’t even bother to sit with a straight back. I just let him be and just do what I want them to do also. Getting frustrated and nagging them will spoil the session. It may take many sessions before they are willing to do it properly. The energy you create around them as you are calm will eventually calm them too.

Faun Sun, 26/09/2010 10:07pm

Thanks for sharing faun!

Thanks for sharing faun! I’ve been doing yoga for quite sometime and still find it hard to meditate. There are just always too many things going thru my mind. I find focusing on breathing helps though. Yesterday I tried to ask DD to meditate with me but she kept giggling. After reading your article, I think I’ll try again today.

minnie2004 Sun, 26/09/2010 3:35pm

Tips on How to Begin

Thanks for this timely article.

I’ve been flirting with meditation over the last 2 years – trying it out on my own on a non-regular basis, mostly just before I go to bed which is a bad idea as I inevitably end up dozing off.

I’ve also considered getting dd to do it with me but the problem is that I’m obviously too inexperienced to do it myself.

Do you go for classes? If so, mind sharing details like where and contact details? Thanks.

hermes173 Sun, 26/09/2010 11:21am

Reply to gaagaa

Hi gaagaa,

See reply for where to buy buckwheat pillow/cushion.

About what goes on in the mind during meditation. Well, lots. If you sit in the MRT waiting for your station to alight or wait in a traffic jam, you notice the thoughts flying pass in the mind. Our mind are always jumping from one thing to another. They call it the monkey mind and it needs taming.

It’s the same during meditation, we are not forced to focus on a task so our mind will start to drift. Thoughts of ‘what if’s’, ‘what should have been’, makes us regretful of the past and fear the future. We can’t help feeling such as life is tough and human relationships are so complex. Hence, meditation gives some respite and let us enjoy the present moment for awhile. It’s a time where I am just me, not mother, wife, daughter, etc. Mindfulness meditation is powerful and simple but not simplistic. You can learn more about it, practice and teach your children. The best years to do so are their childhood years when they are still openly curious and will try out things that we teach them to do.

I wish you all best if you are trying out meditation. If you find it difficult to try on your own, you can join a group you are comfortable in. If you find sitting meditation difficult, you can join Hatha Yoga. They sometimes end the lesson with Yoga Nidra which brings your mindfulness to every part of your body.

Faun Sun, 26/09/2010 12:16am

buckwheat husk pillow

check out the website http://www.manzaistore.com.

The lady selling is called Wendy. The pillow is great for sleeping. These pillow/cushion are rather heavy because of the husk. You can adjust the height you like by buying the husk by kilos and fill in as much as you like.

Faun Sat, 25/09/2010 11:21pm

Thanks Faun for sharing.

Thanks Faun for sharing. I’m so motivated to involve my girls and myself after reading your article.

schweppes Fri, 24/09/2010 11:20pm

Good Idea, thanks.

Hi, I have been practising yoga and some form of meditation but it didn’t come across my mind to do it with my kids. Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll try meditating with my elder girl. BTW, where did you get the husk pillow?

Cheers!

kerbaya Fri, 24/09/2010 11:13pm