In our distraction-filled world, we are all desperately in need of strategies to help us clear, calm, and focus our busy minds. This is especially true for kids and teens who are constantly on the go. Practicing mindfulness can be a simple and effective solution to help kids and young adults relax their minds and re-focus their thinking power.
What is mindfulness?
An evidence-based strategy, mindfulness is the practice of aiming your attention to focus on the current moment. In other words, mindfulness is learning to be fully present in the “right now” instead of the past or the future. When you are in a mindful state, you can notice the sensations in your body and recognize thoughts that pop into your head in that very moment. With practice, mindfulness helps to foster a mental state of relaxation, focus, and clarity.
How can mindfulness calm, recharge, and refocus our brains?
Our brains are filled with thousands of thoughts on a daily basis. So often, we are spending our mental energy on thinking about the past and the future. When focusing on the future, we are spending time feeling worried about our long to-do lists, thinking about future obligations, and mulling over responsibilities we need to start. When focusing on the past, we might be remembering situations with friends or reflecting on challenges we dealt with.
Of course, thinking about the past or the future isn’t always a bad thing. We need to reflect on our choices to make better choices later on. We also need to brainstorm and develop plans to meet our future goals. The issue is that too much thinking causes our brains to be completely overwhelmed. This can leave kids and teens feeling anxious, stressed, unable to focus, and mentally exhausted.
By learning strategies for mindfulness, kids and teens can learn to quiet that extraneous thinking for periods of time. This leads to feelings of inner calm and relaxation. It also helps strengthen focus and attention. Ample research supports these claims and more (Keng et al., 2011). In fact, mindfulness also increases feelings of overall well-being, improves behavior regulation, reduces stress, builds optimism, and reduces emotional reactivity. It goes without saying that these benefits are important for kids, teens, and adults of all ages.
Since there are so many different benefits, kids and teens can practice mindfulness for a host of reasons. A few examples include:
- To start the day in a positive way with extra focus and calm.
- To feel calm again after a stressful situation comes up.
- To feel focused before an important activity like a big test or sports game.
- To feel relaxed when you notice you just start to feel upset or stressed, even if you don’t know why.
How can kids and teens practice mindfulness?
Mindfulness is a simple practice that can be applied with several different techniques like mindful breathing and noticing our surroundings with our senses. While it’s true that mindfulness is simple, it’s not always easy. There are lots of distractions around us from a friend texting us to the thoughts in our mind about responsibilities we need to do. We all can use lots of practice in focusing and refocusing on the current moment. The more we practice, the stronger our mindfulness muscles can get.
In the classroom, there are multiples times to integrate mindfulness practices into the day:
- Morning – Start your day with mindful breathing to set the tone for success.
- Before Independent Work – Encourage calm and focus with mindfulness before independent work activities like tests.
- Between Tasks – Use mindfulness as a brain break between activities.
- End of the Day – Add mindful activities to your end of the day to help finish off the school day in a positive way.
- Calm Down Area – Add a set of mindfulness cards or mindfulness coloring pages to your calm down area.
- Between Transitions – Help kids transition from activity to activity in a calming way with mindfulness activities.
- Anytime – The truth is that you don’t really need an actual reason to practice mindfulness; it’s an evidence-based practice for focus and calm which means it truly can be practiced anytime to boost these abilities and more.
Another bonus is that educators and parents can practice mindfulness right alongside kids and teens. In fact, this is best. Not only are you modeling the skills, but adults gain the same benefits and kids and teens. It’s a win-win.
Here are a few mindfulness activities to try with kids and teens today:
Mindful Breathing
To start mindful breathing, start simple! Begin by sitting in a comfortable position. Close your eyes. Slowly breathe in through your nose and slowly breathe out through your nose. Try to focus on the feeling of the air moving through your body as you inhale and exhale. Repeat this several times. If you get distracted by something (a sound, a thought, or anything else), just re-focus on your breath.
Once you have the foundation of mindful breathing, you can add in fun and engaging mindful breathing practices like “Cool Off the Pizza” and “Marching Band Breathing.” These activities might feel a little silly at first, but the important part is that they’re memorable. If students can remember the breathing activities, it’s more likely they will use later on throughout the day.
You can do any of these breathing exercises on your own without any materials, but it helps to keep your mindful breathing exercises on cards or somewhere you can easily access throughout the day. The more you practice, the stronger your mindfulness abilities can become.
Mindful Breathing with Props
Some students may need visuals and hands-on activities to fully embrace the idea of mindful breathing. For this, you can add hands-on mindfulness tools to your mindful breathing practice.
- Bubbles – While outside, slowly breathe in and then slowly breathe out to blow the bubbles.
- Pinwheels – Slowly breathe in. Slowly breathe out to make the pinwheel move.
- Visual Timer – Watch a visual timer as you slowly breathe in and out.
- Hoberman Sphere – Expand a Hoberman sphere as you inhale and collapse it as you exhale. This is a really helpful visual to think about air entering our lungs.
Breathing Visuals
Visuals can add an extra element to help kids and teens connect with mindful breathing. To start, use a picture of a rainbow. Follow your finger along each color as you slowly breathe in and out. Continue all the way through until you finish with the rainbow. To keep going, you can try mindful breathing with any shape, like a box or a star. Just breathe in as you follow one edge of the shape and breathe out for the next.
Another helpful visual is a figure 8 (because it keeps going!). Slowly trace the symbol as you breathe in and out slowly. Use this free mindfulness breathe board to give it a try.
Hang the visuals up in a calm down area or have students keep right on their desks.
Mindful Positive Affirmations
Choose some mindful affirmations. Repeat these to yourself as you slowly breathe in and out. Some affirmations to try include:
- I am calm and relaxed.
- Calm is a place I can go.
- I can slow down and breathe.
- I am going at my own pace.
- I am calm.
- My mind is focused.
- I breathe in and I breathe out.
Encourage kids and teens to try different affirmations and notice the ones that work best for them.
Using Our Senses
Sit in a comfortable position. Practice mindful breathing. Start to notice your surroundings. What can you see? What do you hear? What can you feel? What do you smell? What can you almost taste?
Kids and teens can think about each of these questions in their minds or write them out on paper. You can give this activity a try entirely on your own, or use these mindfulness lessons and activities for more structure in your classroom.
Mindful Coloring
Sit in a comfortable position. Using a coloring worksheet, slowly color as you breathe in and out. Do your best to not judge your coloring; just spend time coloring and let it be. Keep your mind focused on your coloring or your breathing.
Consider finding coloring books on different topics to tailor the activity to student interests. Some examples include coloring books on cars, nature, or animals. Start with these free mindfulness coloring pages or give these free focus-boosting coloring pages a try too.
Mindful Journaling
Introduce a mindful scene, like a forest or beach, and imagine yourself at that location. Picture what you might see, feel, hear, smell, and taste. With a pencil and paper, write down your mindful experience. Try not to judge whatever you are writing; just write and let the thoughts flow.
Try this with any relaxing scene or use a mindfulness journal for kids to give more ready-to-go ideas.
Mindful Nature Walk
Being out in nature in inherently relaxing. There are many different ways to practice mindfulness in the great outdoors! To start, take a walk together in nature and fully connect with the experience. Make it a point to notice your surroundings, thinking about what you see, hear, feel, smell, and almost taste. Try to go at a relaxed pace to allow the experience to fully sink in.
After the walk, you can come back inside, close your eyes, and picture the walk in your head as you practice more mindful breathing.
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