Kids | Calm, Ages 9-12
Use this simple breathing exercise to help your kids nurture feelings of calm and relaxation.
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Hi, my name's Andy. So make sure you're sitting comfortably for this exercise or if you prefer, you can do it lying down. And in this exercise, we're gonna practice letting the body relax and unwind. And when we let the body relax and unwind, then the mind starts to feel increasingly relaxed as well. And we're gonna start off by focusing on the breath. Then we're going to move on to focus a little bit more on the body, as we scan down through the body and then we're gonna bring the attention back to the breath at the end, where you just enjoy that feeling of having paused for a moment and just experiencing a quieter, calmer mind. So just begin by taking a nice, big deep breath, breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth. If you like, you can just place your hand on your stomach for this bit. If you like, you can close your eyes as well. So as you take a deep breath in, you feel that stomach expanding and rising. As you breathe out through the mouth, just feeling, stomach shrinking, getting a bit smaller again and just staying with that rising and falling sensation. And then just letting the breath return to its natural rhythms. You don't have to breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth now, you can just let the breath do whatever it normally does, probably in and out through the nose. And you can just place your hand either down by your side or on your legs, and starting at the top of the head, we're just gonna imagine scanning down, mentally scanning down through the body. And as we scan down, we're noticing how that part of the body feels today, but at the same time, it's almost like a very relaxing, heavy, calm feeling as we move down. So on the one hand, we're noticing how it feels and at the same time, bringing to that part of the body a sense of calm, sense of ease. So starting at the top of the head, just moving down through the head, through the face. So almost as though behind the eyes, behind the nose, behind the mouth. Everything just starts to feel calmer, more relaxed. As it moves down through the throat and the neck. Feeling of ease down into the solders, to the upper back and the chest. Any tension in the body, it's almost as though it dissolves as you scan down. Continuing downwards into the stomach and the lower back. All the way down to the waist. Just come back up briefly to focus on the arms, again, the mind scans down both arms. Perhaps a feeling of heaviness in the arms, they feel increasingly relaxed. All the way down to the hands and the fingers. And then we continue to watch as it scans downward now from the waist, into the upper half of the legs...
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About your teachers
- More about Andy
A former Buddhist monk, Andy has guided people in meditation and mindfulness for 20 years. In his mission to make these practices accessible to all, he co-created the Headspace app in 2010.
- More about Eve
Eve is a mindfulness teacher, overseeing Headspace’s meditation curriculum. She is passionate about sharing meditation to help others feel less stressed and experience more compassion in their lives.
- More about Dora
As a meditation teacher, Dora encourages others to live, breathe, and be with the fullness of their experiences. She loves meditation’s power to create community and bring clarity to people’s minds.
- More about Kessonga
Kessonga has been an acupuncturists, therapist, and meditation teacher, working to bring mindfulness to the diverse populations of the world.
- More about Rosie
Rosie Acosta has studied yoga and mindfulness for more than 20 years and taught for over a decade. Rosie’s mission is to help others overcome adversity and experience radical love.
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