Preparing to Teach Children Exercises to Calm the Body and Focus the Mind

Instructors need to practices stillness and calming before trying to teach the children to:

• One of the instructors goals is to be a guide and a co-learner to the children. This type of learning is easier to grasp from practice and visible cues more so than a textbook.
• Children learn better if they are actively participating in the lesson.
• Children also rely on rituals and routines. Below are a few practices that could be beneficial: Have a corner or section of the room for the child to go to if they feel overwhelmed or stressed out, calming music could be playing in the background of lessons, find opportunities to go outside or have a lesson that includes the outdoors.

Exercises to Calm the Body and Focus the Mind for Five-Seven Year Olds

At this age, children start to verbalize their thoughts and are able to have judgments about themselves, they want to be like the adults in their life, develop coping strategies for stressful situations with play, welcome instructions while learning something as long as encouragement is present, concentrate on quiet activities for about 20 mins at a time, enjoy routines and rituals.

Exercise 1: Getting Relaxed and Muscle Relaxation

Help the children realize what their body feels like when it is calm versus when it is stressed.

Use deep belly breathing in order for their bodies to relax.

Progressively tense and release different muscles in their bodies.

Important to start with a couple moments of silence in order to build mental concentration.

Instructors does the deep breathing with the child and shares with him/her on how that felt.

Ask the child to be aware of how they breathe and be able to explain it to the instructor.

After completing the body relaxing exercise, the instructors should ask the child to explore how their legs feel or what was the hardest part of their body to relax.

Drawing or writing down their feelings about the experience will allow it to stay in their minds longer and blossom their creativity.

For homework, the children could try this exercise at home and write or draw their experience explaining how much easier or harder the exercise was compared to when they did it in class.

Exercise 2: Mindfulness

This exercise is designed to help children be aware of what is happening as it’s happening. Practice quieting the Mind and using the breath as a focus point.

If thoughts, feelings or sensations come up during the exercise it is important to remember that these are welcomed and part of the experience.

If the Mind starts to wonder however, use the breath as a point of reference and go back to focusing on that.

Start the exercise by playing I-Spy. Begin with something simple and use simple descriptions for them to find it. As you go, pick more complicated or hard to find objects with more complex descriptions.

After The instructor is done, it is the child’s turn to try this exercise.

After I-Spy, get some food, something small and ask the child to pick it up and explain what it looks like, feels like and smells like. Then the child should eat the food and explain what it tastes like, feels like in the mouth, and anything else they notice about it.

Finally spend some quiet time and focus on the sounds around the room and instruct the children to do the same. Let them explain what the hear while also focusing on their breath if they do not hear anything.

Exercises to Calm the Body and Focus the Mind for Eight-Eleven Year Olds

● At this age children are energetic and have active imaginations, learn best by having new skills and lessons broken down to singular steps, require a lot of positive feedback, enjoy having conversations with adults and teaching adults things they didn’t know, need to know why they are doing something they are told is important.

Exercise 1: Pregressive Muscle Relaxation

Ask them to think of a place that makes them feel calm or special. They will need to refer back to this place when they feel stressed or angry about something.

Ask them to explain what their special place looks like. Is there any sounds or smells that they notice in that place? After doing this ask them to come back to reality and explain how their body feels, how fast their heart is beating, how calm they feel.

Now ask them to take themselves to a time where they were upset, stressed or scared. It may help for the instructor to do the same thing with them.

Ask them how they felt in that moment, what does their body feel like while recalling that memory? Explain to them how better they felt thinking about a calming place than a stressful one.

Give them the a checkbox sheet that the children can use to identify what they feel like when they are stressed.

Explain that paying attention to how we breath goes a long way in quieting our mind and relaxing our body when we are stressed.

Practice abdominal breathing with the children. Tell them to focus on their belly going up and down as practice for focusing on the now.

Both the instructor and the children should write down in a journal what they fought of the exercise and share them with the class of they feel like it.

Paying Attention: Mindfulness

The first part of the exercise is to try the game that requires the teacher and the students to pat their head and rub their stomach at the same time. This helps focus the child on the moment and what they are doing with their hands. The goal is not to do it correctly, but to train our minds.

After completing this, the instructor should move on to more challenging tasks like doing it on one foot or blinking one eye at a time while doing it.

The next game is trying to balance two books on top of the head and walk across to the other side of the room. The goal is for the child to realise that if they do the task slower, they will reach success quicker.
The mindfulness breathing exercise also works with this age group. The instructor could try extending the time or asking more complex questions about the exercise in order to meet the intelligence of this age group.

Ask the children to write down their experiences in their journal and the teacher should make their experiences down in theirs too.

For homework, the child could try to focus on a task they do at home and write down everything that is happening in that exact moment.

Exercises to Calm the Body and Focus the Mind for Twelve Year Olds and Up

● This age group have a strong need to make their own reasons for completing a task rather than someone telling them why they are doing something, suffer with a fragile

self-esteem and need encouragement from adults, struggle to belong and want to be a part of a group, notice hypocrisy in adults and are less likely to do something an adult tells them of they don’t do it themselves, sensitive about their bodies due to puberty, thrive on rituals and want independence.

Progressive Muscle Relaxation and Body Scan

Start the exercise by asking the child about something stressful they have gone through, the teacher should share the same thing.

Then define what stress is and mention how it isn’t bad to be stressed and how it is simply an emotion that will pass. It also needs to be mentioned that people experience stress is different ways, not everyone goes through it the same way.

Abdominal breathing also works for this age group as it is a good way to de-stress the Body and the mind. The teacher should explain the benefits and ask the child to focus on how they breath.

Explain that deep breathing is healthy for us and that when we are stressed out, we sometimes breath rapidly which only prolongs our stress.

Ask the students to focus their attention on one body part at a time and put all of their energy into flexing that part of the body than release it.

After doing this, ask the child how it felt after releasing the stress and what body parts it was easy with and which ones it was hard with.

Ask them to write their experiences in their journal and the teacher should show them their journal so they see they are not the only ones doing it.

Ask the child if they feel comfortable sharing the journal, and if they don’t it is important not to force them to. The teacher should try to share theirs though so the student sees that it isn’t a big deal to share what is written.

Paying Attention: Mindfulness

Start this exercise by having 15 objects placed on a tray with a cover over it. Show them the objects and tell them that they will have a limited time to look at them, not touch or write down.

After the time is up, cover the tray and ask the students to write down as many objects as they remember. If they do not do well, take another 15 objects and try it again with them. Most of the time they will do better on the second attempt.

The next game will be slowly eating an orange and focusing on what is tastes like, how hard or easy it is to peel, what it seems like, feels like and anything else that involves the orange. Do this exercise for about 3 mins. They cannot speak during this time and must try to completely focus on the task.

After the time is up, ask the child about the experience. Was it hard to focus so long on one task? What did you notice about the orange that you never paid attention to before?

Lastly, ask the child to sit still and allow their thoughts to go where they may. It is important to explain that they shouldn’t judge the faults as bad or good, just thoughts. After the time limit, ask them how many thoughts they can remember and share some with the teacher.