This is our third week teaching Meditative Story Telling to School Children.
I have to share a secrets with you…even though the children range from 5 years (in the lower elementary classes) to 15 years old, they (the children) are doing so well!! They seem to love the stories, and naturally follow the meditation.
As it stands today, I only had a chance to visit about half of the intended classes and only once.
Here is a short article I recently wrote for the school:
“Meditation and Social Science for Children”
The word Meditation has been used in connection with many old and new relaxation techniques and traditions.
Let us look at the nature of meditation.
For both adults and children, Meditation is the most natural process initiated by our body to reach a state of relaxation and rejuvenation.
The most overlooked meditation, of course is sleep. This is the most natural way where your body volunteers you to a relaxed state of rest and rejuvenation. (there are times when sleep is necessary, but difficult and I promise to speak of it in another article)
Meditation like state is automatic during all creative moments, writing poetry, playing a musical instrument, artistic expression during dance even sporting events. That would explain why it is very difficult to be creative when tiered.
Natural states of Meditation will also occur during moments of extreme danger, when your focus is necessary, for survival. Even during positive emotion of love and joy, we will have this incredible surge of energy and meditative state.
During these natural meditative moments we often find that time just seems to pass without our noticing it.
“Meditative Story Telling” for children is an integrative approach to learning where stories are presented to teach important social lessons and Meditation is used as a tool help naturally relax the body and the mind, inevitably improving social interaction and academic progress.
As mentioned above: “The word Meditation has been used in connection with many old and new relaxation techniques and traditions.”
During the Social Science classes, Meditation is a “Quiet Time”. With their eyes closed, the children are encouraged to simply self observe relax, notice their breathing, their thoughts, and simply listen to the natural guidance of their body.
As the children relax they often notice their body naturally guiding them through very unique intuitive stretching exercises, postures and movements (often even naturally guided to the floor).
This natural form of Meditation has been designed promote relaxation and rejuvenation, but has proven to do much more…
Teaching the children the skills of this self regulation meditation at an early age has proven to help them to be more confident, achieve better social skills, to better retain new information, become more creative, show more positive initiative and much more.
We are hoping that soon this meditation tool will be available to all students, in both private and public school systems.
