Meditation-Mind Blog

Did you happen to see Patricia Leigh Brown’s article in the New York Times about kids learning mindfulness meditation techniques? Entitled, In the Classroom, a New Focus on Quieting the Mind, it described some programs in schools in California and Pennsylvania which helped kids learn some simple stress management techniques.

A couple of times a week,  they were led through 15 minutes of such mindfulness techniques as focusing on their breathing and imagining loving kindness toward people in their lives.

The article mentioned some of the ways kids seemed to be using the techniques they had learned. One young boy had learned to “take a moment” to calm himself when he had started feeling like hitting someone on the playground.  I especially loved the story about the 4 year old girl who called out “Mommy, Mommy, you have to sing the breathing song!” as her distressed mom was dealing with road rage.

Just follow the link above if you’d like to read the article.

Reading about these programs left me wanting to know more, so I went looking for some specifics. If someone with an interest in calming techniques wanted to share them with some of their favorite children or had an interest in putting a program together what might be some good resources for doing that?

MP3’s

I was delighted to discover a collection of meditations from the Mindfulness Awareness Research Center at UCLA,  one of the places mentioned in the NY Times article. Written and recorded by Diana Winston, their Director for Mindfulness Education, they are excellent examples of the kinds of experiences that could be offered. These MP3’s are absolutely free and left me feeling wonderful. I loved the loving kindness meditation I listened to. You can check out their whole collection of mindfulness meditation MP3’s and see what you think.

Books

The article also mentioned that the programs had been influenced by the works of Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. Two books of his that you might want to check out on Amazon are Full Catastrophe Living and Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

Online Training

Susan Kaiser Greenland at the InnerKids Foundation offers online training programs through a site called eMindful for people wanting to teach mindfulness. I haven’t tried them, but with titles like The New ABC’s: Teaching Children About Mindfulness, they look promising. You can find out more about these online meditation courses by looking at the eMindful site.

CD

Maybe someone reading this knows the breathing song that the 4 year old girl encouraged her mom to sing. If we can’t track that one down, as it happens, some hypnotherapists whose opinions I trust, recently recommended a recording by Marcel Klasen, a hypnotherapist and musician. 

It’s a CD called HAPPY SONGS, that is intended for ages 9-12, with a combination of music and positive suggestions, along with instructions for breathwork, a story about healing, a song about world peace and even a rap song. You can contact Marcel at marcelklasen@yahoo.com for ordering information.

**************** 

Care to Add One?

That could be enough to get you started. If you have any additional or alternative resources you’d like to recommend for learning and teaching mindfulness meditation or its close cousin, self-hypnosis, whether for children or adults, I invite your suggestions. Just click on “comment” at the end of this post and share your thoughts.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 26th, 2007 at 3:40 pm and is filed under Meditation Techniques, Self-Hypnosis, Stress Relief, Book and CD Recommendations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.