If you know how to listen to your body, it tells you a lot. Our body is very sensitive. It immediately reacts to tension, anxiety, fear, joy, positive or negative thoughts in our minds. Those signals are not in vain. It tells you how you are experiencing the moment you are living. Tense shoulders, rapid heartbeats, stomachache… Mindfulness teaches you to leave your mind and notice your body.
Here are 2 different meditation approaches for the kids who feel nervous, or some pain in their bodies:
Butterfly Breathing
Everybody sometimes get butterflies in their stomach. Perhaps you feel them fly around before the first day of school. Or when you are heading to a new summer camp where you do not know anyone. You may feel your breath getting faster as you are both excited and nervous. When those butterflies just do not go away, notice where the butterflies are most crazy. Your heart? Your stomach? Or all over?
Imagine that those butterflies are all colorful. Red, pink, yellow, blue, orange… Beautiful butterflies!
Now take a deep breath through your nose. Pause. And get ready to blow them away. Then blow those butterflies away from your mouth. Imagine those colorful butterflies flying far away.
Try it again… Find the butterflies; breath in deeply. Pause and get ready to blow them away. Push your breath out from your mouth. All those beautiful butterflies flying away.
You may do this breathing exercise when you feel nervous, or excited about a situation.
A Meditation for Pain
Breathing can help you deal with pain, like stomachache, sore ankle, headache. Breath brings oxygen into your body and helps you relax and may reduce your discomfort.
Take a deep breath. Breathe in. One. Two. Three.
Pause.
Breathe out. One. Two. Three. Four.
As you breathe, feel the healing energy of the air. Imagine the air as a cooling blue color. As you breathe in, see how the air, blue color, travels through your body.
Put your attention on the area feeling pain. If you are having a stomachache, put your attention on your tummy. So your stomach breathes in that blue cooling healing air. One. Two. Three.
Let your body breathe in and out like this five to ten times, focusing on the area where you are feeling pain.
Hopefully, you will feel some relief after doing this simple meditation!