Meditating Children find Excitement within the Stillnesss

Sarah Wood Vallely Septemberl 2008

A meditation movement for children is quietly emerging across the United States and throughout the world. Children are learning meditation techniques at home, in school, in after-school clubs, and in churches, yoga studios and YMCAs. Parents, teachers, and therapists are finding that meditation helps children in as many ways as there are children learning its techniques.

Teachers report that their classroom environments are more peaceful with meditation. They attribute this to their students’ ability to express care and compassion for one another. Teachers also say their students’ academic skills and confidence have risen.

Therapists who work with children say meditation reduces test anxiety, builds positive peer relationships, and enhances anger management skills. Scientists find meditation decreases blood pressure and helps other physical functions, which may be adding to these positive shifts in children.

If meditation brings about these fantastic benefits in children, how does a child learn how to meditate most constructively? I’ve been teaching meditation to children for almost ten years and have found introducing a child to his or her senses, is the best way to not only teach a child how to meditate but to inspire him or her to meditate. Because let’s face it, when we become still and experience the world around us (and within us) with all of our senses, we are reminded of how exciting our world truly is. Who needs a TV show when a symphony of birds chirping and trucks rumbling, a celebration of cool breeze on our toes and an explosion of images of our favorite things are warming up around us, just waiting to be heard, felt and seen?

The senses are our vehicle for learning new things. If we take a tour of a castle, we not only see the stone abutments and the moat, and thereby understand what castle defenses were like, but we also learn what castles smell like through our nostrils. If we hear someone drop her purse, we learn what dropping something in a castle sounds like. We might run a hand down the stone wall and learn about its texture.

The senses children use most frequently to absorb information about their world, and to thereby understand it, are called by some researchers their learning styles. Some children are visual learners and learn best by taking in what they see; other children are auditory learners and absorb information most easily by hearing words and other sounds; yet others are kinesthetic learners and are most comfortable learning about the world by touching objects and feeling emotions.

Here are a few ways you can guide a child to learn meditation, with respect to visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning. You might not be aware of your child’s learning style, but using all three approaches will benefit your child.

Visual Learning- Sense of Sight

When working with your child to establish personal goals, help him create a collage of pictures representing a particular goal or dream. Then lead him through a meditation in which he visualizes his goals being met. To help your child improve his relationships, have him close his eyes and visualize resolving the conflict he is having with another person. For example, ten-year-old, Noah watches himself ask his sister to please stop taking his toys out of his room during his meditation.

Auditory Learning – Sense of Hearing

Guide your child to hear things during meditation. Afterward, ask him what sounds he heard. For example, if you lead your children through the Grounding Cord meditation, ask him if he heard things moving down his grounding cord. During this meditation, children let go of energy and objects down a cord, into the center of the planet. They might see, hear and feel blue dust move out of their body and down the cord. Or they might see pictures of homework and people go down. These objects are not bad, just things they do not need to think about in that moment. Learn more about this meditation.

Kinesthetic Learning – Sense of Touch or Emotional Intelligence

Art activities cater to the kinesthetic child. After meditating, do projects inspired by your child’s meditation that involve touching the medium, such as finger painting and handling clay.
Your child will love exploring exciting worlds and peaceful states of mind with their new power – meditation. Your child might become aware of the clock ticking and the wind rustling through the trees while they sit quietly in the mornings with you. Or they might feel warmth in their heart and a tingling in their toes while meditating before bedtime. Whatever the sensation or the time of day, your child will become more centered and familiar with their inner most feelings and the subtleties of their world, with meditation.

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