Incorporating a daily mindfulness practice into their day is a wonderful way to help children and teenagers connect to themselves, improve happiness, reduce stress and increase focus. Mindfulness is a tool which can be used throughout our lives and increases awareness of the present without judgement. Ideally this practice will be repeated at the same time each day (for example after lunch recess) to help instill the habit of mindfulness and reap the greatest benefits.

Here is a simple two minute mindfulness practice/lesson to repeat daily and includes one minute of mindful listening and one minute of mindful breathing.

• Sit quietly, lengthen your spine by reaching the crown of the head to the sky, feet or bottom firmly connected with the earth, close your eyes.
• Bring your attention to the sound you are about to hear. Listen until the sound is completely gone.
• Ring a mindfulness bell, or have a student ring the bell. Use a bell with a sustained sound or a rain-stick.
• Raise your hand when you can no longer hear the sound.
• When most/all of the students have raised a hand ask them to slowly and mindfully move their hand to their stomach and feel their breathing.
• Breathe in and out, paying attention to the breath as it moves in and out of the body. Is it warm? cold? shallow? deep? smooth? even? ragged? long? short? Breathe in, breathe out.
• Ring the bell after one minute to end as students open their eyes and resume their day.

Here is an mindfulness bell audio clip that you can use for this activity if you don’t happen to have a chime, bell or rain stick on hand.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Visit our Mindfulness Category for many more games, activities and techniques which teach children and teens to live mindful lives. We add new content all the time so be sure to subscribe (e-mail or RSS) to receive these posts directly to you.

Photo courtesy of cogdogblog