Lie down, relax and take a deep breath. Feel the air, fill your lungs as you pay attention to what is happening in the moment, right now. Feel your toes, one by one, think about your feet and your legs, are they heavy, or light? Tired or rested? Move your way up, and think about each part of your body. If you feel a sudden emotion, experience it fully and then let it go. If a thought enters your mind, recognize it and let it go. Pay attention, to the present moment, deliberately and without judgement.

What is Mindfulness?

This simple exercise is part of what is called a body scan, a standard activity in mindfulness courses and trainings. Mindfulness is a way of thinking that promotes moment-to-moment attention to yourself and the environment. Often, but not always, mindfulness takes the form of meditation and has been used in the medical world to reduce stress, anxiety and pain. Recently, mindfulness practice has become more common as people incorporate it into their daily lives, as well as their children’s.

Mindfulness promotes reflection and body and mental awareness. Practicing mindfulness with children helps improve their Executive Function (EF) skills as well as emotional regulation and pro-social skills such as empathy. Getting children in the habit of becoming aware of themselves, their feelings, how their attention wanders, and the details of the world around them helps them better engage in regulating their thoughts and actions through their EF skills.

The Need for Mindful Environments

Children constantly interact with adults (teachers/parents), other peers (students/siblings), and objects in the environment. While they do this, they need to keep in mind classroom/home rules (e.g., no running, no yelling, etc.) and social rules (e.g., sharing, responding to others’ emotions, etc.) and change their behavior to follow those rules. At the same time, children have their own internal thoughts and emotions motivating them to act. Sometimes these impulsive influences are stronger than the thoughtful EF skills needed to regulate them. For example, a child might know how to play in a group and take turns, but one day the same child might have had a bad night of sleep and skipped breakfast and gets off on the “wrong foot.” The child then acts aggressively in a situation where he or she would typically be kind and cooperative. Situations like these happen when feelings like excitement, stress, and hunger, override self-regulatory skills which are still under-developed in childhood.

Mindfulness practice helps train people to recognize and accept their emotions and thoughts and thereby reduce the impact that bottom-up influences might have in our day-to-day lives.

For example, being mindful of your thoughts and emotions might help you recognize that your hunger is making you more impulsive and less regulated than usual (such as being more likely to get angry with your kids). In response, you could learn to take a few deep breaths before making decisions to allow for a pause and reflect moment and your “best self” takes back the reins from the stress response.