Mindfulness Activities

sites.google.com/roavc.com/wellnesscenter/home/mindfulness-activities#h.bu9bn4nc9c60

When a person is confronted with anxiety, their body undergoes several changes and enters a special state called the fight-or-flight response. The body prepares to either fight or flee the perceived danger.

During the fight-or-flight response it’s common to experience a “blank” mind, increased heart rate, sweating, tense muscles, and more. Unfortunately, these bodily responses do little good when it comes to protecting us from modern sources of anxiety.

Using a variety of skills, you can end the fight-or-flight response before the symptoms become too extreme. These skills will require practice to work effectively, so don’t wait until the last minute to try them out!

TEDx - Growing up Stressed or Growing up Mindful

Teens are the most stressed population in America. Learn how simple mindfulness exercises not only physically change our brain for the better, but also help our response to stress.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znlsoaM_ALQ

The Feeling Exercise

Collect a number of interesting objects such as feathers, putty, stones, or anything else that might be interesting to hold. Give each child an object, and ask them to spend a minute just noticing what it feels like in their hand. They can feel the texture, if their object is hard or soft, and the shape. Afterwards, ask the children to describe what they felt. With bigger groups, pair children off to take turns completing the exercise together.

The Seeing Game

Ask the children to spend one minute silently looking around the room. Their goal is to find things in the room that they’ve never noticed. Maybe there are some big things like a poster or a picture, or just little details like cracks in the ceiling or an interesting pattern on the door. After the minute is up ask the kids to share the most interesting new things they noticed.

Ocean Breathing

Have the children sit or lie down in a comfortable position. Ask everyone to slowly breathe in through their nose, and then out through their pursed lips (as if they are blowing through a straw). Point out that the slow and steady breathing sounds like ocean waves, gently crashing on shore. Let the children continue breathing and making the ocean sound for one to two minutes.

The Power of Listening

Ring a bell, a wind chime, or anything else that creates a long trailing sound. Ask each child to listen, and silently raise their hand when they can no longer hear the sound. After the ringing ends, ask the children to continue listening to any other sounds they can hear for the next minute. When the minute ends, go around the room asking everyone to tell you what sounds they heard.

Build a Stress Ball

If you’re feeling brave, and are prepared to clean up a mess, provide the children with balloons, flour, and funnels to build their own stress balls (you may want to double-layer the balloons). Some other filling options include rice, small beads, or the leftover dots from punched paper. Once the kids have built their own stress balls, try using them with The Feeling Exercise.

The Body Squeezing Exercise

Have the children sit or lie down in a comfortable position, and ask them to squeeze and relax each of the muscles in their body one-by-one. They should hold each squeeze for about five seconds. After releasing the squeeze, ask the kids to pay attention to how it feels when they relax. Children understand this exercise better if you help them visualize how they can squeeze a particular muscle using imagery, such as the following:

Curl your toes tight like you are picking up a pencil with your feet.
Tense your legs by pretending like you are standing on your tippy-toes, trying to look over a fence.
Suck in your stomach as if you are trying to slide through a narrow opening.
Make fists with your hands and pretend like you are trying to squeeze all of the juice out of an orange.
Pretend like a bug landed on your nose, and you’re trying to get it off without using your hands. Try to scrunch your face and move your jaw to make it fly away!

The Five Senses Exercise

Take the children outside if the weather is nice, and have them lie silently in the grass. Begin to call out each of the five senses in turn (sight, smell, sound, taste, touch), and ask the children to notice everything they can with that particular sense, until you call out the next one. This exercise can also work well on walks, and in a number of other situations.

Progressive Muscle Relaxation

During the fight-or-flight response, the tension in our muscles increases. This can lead to a feeling of stiffness, or even back and neck pain. Progressive muscle relaxation teaches us to become more aware of this tension so we can better identify and address stress.

Find a private and quiet location. You should sit or lie down somewhere comfortable.

The idea of this technique is to intentionally tense each muscle, and then to release the tension. Let’s practice with your feet.

Tense the muscles in your toes by curling them into your foot. Notice how it feels when your foot is tense. Hold the tension for 5 seconds.
Release the tension from your toes. Let them relax. Notice how your toes feel differently after you release the tension.
Tense the muscles all throughout your calf. Hold it for 5 seconds. Notice how the feeling of tension in your leg feels.
Releasethetensionfromyourcalf,andnoticehowthefeelingofrelaxationdiffers.

Follow this pattern of tensing and releasing tension all throughout your body. After you finish with your feet and legs, move up through your torso, arms, hands, neck, and head.

Imagery

Paint a picture of the calming place in your mind. Don’t just think of the place briefly— imagine every little detail. Go through each of your senses and imagine what you would experience in your relaxing place. Here’s an example using a beach:

Sight: The sun is high in the sky and you’re surrounded by white sand. There’s no one else around. The water is a greenish-blue and waves are calmly rolling in from the ocean.
Sound:You can hear the deep pounding and splashing of the waves. There are seagulls somewhere in the background.
Touch: The sun is warm on your back, but a breeze cools you down just enough. You can feel sand moving between your toes.
Taste:You have a glass of lemonade that’s sweet, tart, and refreshing.
Smell: You can smell the fresh ocean air, full of salt and calming aromas.

Deep Breathing

It’s natural to take long, deep breaths, when relaxed. However, during the fight-or-flight response, breathing becomes rapid and shallow. Deep breathing reverses that, and sends messages to the brain to begin calming the body. Practice will make your body respond more efficiently to deep breathing in the future.

Breathe in slowly. Count in your head and make sure the inward breath lasts at least 5 seconds. Pay attention to the feeling of the air filling your lungs.

Hold your breath for 5 to 10 seconds (again, keep count). You don’t want to feel uncomfortable, but it should last quite a bit longer than an ordinary breath.

Breathe out very slowly for 5 to 10 seconds (count!). Pretend like you’re breathing through a straw to slow yourself down. Try using a real straw to practice.

Repeat the breathing process until you feel calm.