Samples of Class Work

Class 1

We started by talking about Meditation. How it is about calming your mind, and using your imagination. I explained that one way to your mind is by paying attention to your breath. We talked about the things we do that make it clear that we are alive. Breathing is of vital importance. I had the kids focus on the fact that they are breathing - we take that for granted too often- and we illustrated that by taking turns blowing bubbles. After that, we sat quietly and focused on several breaths: we inhaled deeply, even into our bellies, and then exhaled. (One of the children even shared some information about how trees take the breath we put into the air and turn it into oxygen.)

The lesson then moved on to the fact that our minds take in every bit of information that comes our way. We focused mostly on how emotions are also included, not just intellectual information. We brought a dry sponge (representing our mind) "back to life" by adding colored water. The colors stood for emotions. One important part of the discussion was the fact that we can make choices. It is our decision what and how we take things in. We have choices! The kids really added to this part, bringing up more analogies than I had prepared. For instance, when all the colors start bleeding into an unattractive color, one can just squeeze it all out, and start anew with a bright fresh one.

We then moved on to the fact that the brain is not isolated, but that it interacts with all other parts of your body and with who you are and how you feel. I brought a marionette puppet to illustrate this. Our hands being our mind, the part that decides what to do and what to feel.

On the large paper cut-out of a brain, which was then put in front of them, each child added their stickies on which they had written feelings or items or activities that make them feel good. The intention behind that exercise being that focusing on positive things and putting those inside your head creates living a happy life. This paper also had a bright golden spot in the middle. This lead us into a discussion about having a quiet and safe place inside our head where we can go to when the world gets overwhelming, or we just need some peace, ... our Mediation Sanctuary.

The kids found a pillow and lay down on the floor. They listened to the Quiet Space Meditation, from the Relax Kids book. All three of them settle down and listened quietly, ... every now and then opening their eyes to check on the others.

As the conclusion, each one got to choose a rock, as a representation of their meditation sanctuary. They added a few details with permanent markers. (If they are interested, those rocks could be placed in the middle of the sponge they took home.)

I hope this gives you a good idea of what we did today. It would be wonderful if you could keep it alive and current by periodically talking with them about the experience.

Class 2

We started the session by discussing what we had learned last time. To illustrate the importance of breathing, we inflated balloons, showing that what makes the balloon so much fun, is the fact that it has breath inside it. This lead us naturally into a discussion about how "what's important is on the inside."

We then did a meditation around the theme that everything they themselves need is inside. Inside themselves is where they can find peace, calm, beauty, joy, fun ...

Next, I introduced the concept that Nature is a great place to start leaning to feel grounded. The children spend some time looking through magazines, and selected pictures from natural things that spoke to them or made them eel good: animals, rainbow, beach, planet, universe, even molecules. They shared their feelings about these pictures with the group. (They brought these pictures home: maybe they can glue them into a collage? Or you could continue this theme by pointing out beautiful and relaxing natural settings to them, be that in your garden, on the beach, during a walk, ... ) The children took turns acting out "flowering seed": covered with blankets, pretending to be a seed, they slowly started growing, while the wind blew, the rain fell, and the sun shone ... making sure they were putting their roots down deep into the ground. To illustrate this weaving your roots into the ground to feel"grounded", we sewed a button into a piece of fabric - after having illustrated how the button would fly all over the place before being attached. At that point, the balloons came back into the picture, and served as an illustration of "crazy, ungrounded energy". Needless to say we had fun with that!

The "Being One with Nature" ending meditation, involved all of us sitting around a very interesting plant, and totally becoming aware of that plant. The children were asked to imagine making themselves really, really small to be able to climb up that plant, to explore it, have fun on it, while climbing, sliding, hiding ... They were imagining activities that would make them feel safe, happy, excited, strong, peaceful, confident, calm, in control

Looking forward to next week! Could you please send a picture of your child along? Preferable a full body one. We will continue with the concept of being aware of the world around us, including ourselves, introducing them to the fact that we all have an energy field (Aura) around us, which helps us with feeling protected and at the same time makes it possible to have a positive influence on our environment.