The importance of mindfulness for children
“a mental state achieved by focusing one’s awareness on the present moment.”
Mindfulness is about paying attention and noticing what is happening outside of you, as well as your thoughts and feelings. It is a skill that can help us cope with big emotions and challenging experiences. Just like a muscle, it is something that we can build and practice.
Although this sounds relatively easy, mindfulness is no easy feat. It can take from weeks to years to master training your brain to focus on the present moment. This is a task even more difficult for children, whose brains are wired to be more active, their focus on playing with toys, exploring new obstacles or running to let off steam. This is where the benefits of yoga kick in - children love to move and yoga gives them fun and exciting shapes to try out with their bodies. Children are very much tuned into their feelings and mindfulness helps them gain a space between themselves and their emotions.
Despite the difficulty it takes to master, the benefits of mindfulness for children can be exponential.
Mindfulness exercises for children can:
• Encourage them to be more patient and compassionate
• Help them deal with tough emotions, such as anxiety, anger and frustration
• Boost focus and self-control
• Increasing self-awareness
• Improving concentration
Yoga for children
Thanks to coronavirus our everyday lives are on hold. As a result of school closures, children now spend most of their time inside at home and understandably, your children might be starting to go a bit stir-crazy (you might be too!). Don’t fear - mindfulness and yoga exercises can help you out. One of the best ways to introduce mindfulness to children is to teach yoga for children.
Although children tend to be resilient, they can be affected by long-term changes in their daily routines. Instead of trying to think of new ways of entertaining them and keeping them busy, try these exercises instead. They are particularly important for helping with the mental and physical symptoms that are associated with being kept indoors – there is no better time to try them than now.
Now you know the benefits of mindfulness for children, watch out for our next blog post which will teach you some of the basic yoga poses for children.
