Meditation for Health

5/1/2008

There are plenty of studies that suggest that a regular practice of meditation can improve immune response, lower blood pressure, relieve pain, reduce anxiety and depression, and improve stress-related conditions. While the studies have been done in adults, there’s no reason to think that children wouldn’t benefit as well.

What is meditation? Essentially meditation is a time-out for your mind, a way of getting outside your own thoughts and into a more relaxed and less judgmental state of mind. Meditation also affects the body, apparently by balancing the two arms of the nervous system. Practiced for 15 or 20 minutes a day, meditation eventually becomes one more healthy habit that helps you maintain physical and mental equilibrium.

There are a variety of techniques for meditation. Some have you focus on a specific word, phrase or image. Others have you focus on the breath, ignoring the stream of thoughts and images that arise, and just allowing them to flow by without judgment.

Children can be introduced to the simplest forms of meditation at a very early age. This exercise below, for instance, can be used with children as young as three or four:

• Turn on some relaxing music.
• Ask your kids to close their eyes, listen to the music, and just breathe in and out slowly and gently.
• Ask them to imagine a particular place or activity they love as the music plays.
• When the music ends in three to five minutes, ask them to open their eyes again.

As children get older, they can learn to do more focused meditation, using their breath, an image, or a special word or prayer. With practice, a middle-school student will eventually be able to meditate for 10-15 minutes once or twice a day. Meditation in the morning can get the day off to a relaxed start, and meditation before bedtime can help ease the transition to sleep.

Here’s a basic form of meditation for school-aged children. If your child prefers, he can use a meaningful word, phrase, or image as a focal point instead of his breath, but breathing should still be slow and relaxed:

• Sit in a quiet place in a comfortable position.
• Close your eyes softly, and relax your muscles.
• Breathe slowly and deeply from your belly. Put your attention on your breath, and only on your breath. When your attention wanders, bring it gently back to your breath.
• After about five minutes, open your eyes and enjoy the feeling of relaxation.

Resources:
Meditating with Children: The Art of Concentration and Centering, by Deborah Rozman (Integral Yoga 2002)
Peaceful Piggy Meditation, by Kerry Lee MacLean (Albert Whitman 2006)
Meditation for Optimum Health, 2-CD set by Andrew Weil M.D. and Jon Kabat-Zinn Ph.D. (Sounds True)