Meditation for children: reduce stress, anxiety, and fear

Stress, anxiety, fear, and other similar emotions are more and more frequent in children and youth.  They are finding themselves more and more confronted with information and problems that never existed before.  The use of internet, movies, television, combined with parents that are out of the house for long times or scarcely live with their children, causes children to have to deal with their small comprehension of information and experiences that they hear, see, and feel every day.

These emotions could cause a lot of internal tension, rebellious behaviors, or insecurity.  If they continue, over time this could cause all sorts of conditions like insomnia, stress, hyperactivity, attention deficit, poor memory, allergies, etc., due to the severe exhaustion that the nervous and immune system suffer by being defensive or fearing certain situations.

To alleviate this a bit, parents or those responsible for the children must do a meditation before going to bed, so the little one can go to sleep with tranquil and safe thoughts that nourish their minds and free tension from their bodies.  This helps them wake up with fresh spirits.

You don’t need to spend a lot of time with the child, if you spend quality time.  So bellow, we will give you a meditation for deeper communication with your child.

How do I perform this meditation?

You don’t need to meditate in a special place.  The best place is actually the child’s bed.  If there are more children in the room, even better.  Before meditating, if you could ask them what they liked and didn’t like about the day, for example, and what things they could have done to solve them or improve them.  This will helps the child feel like he/she can influence their environment, and it will help them have a better vision of things.  This can nourish them once again, with the participation of siblings or cousins, and even with a parent’s or tutor’s opinion.

You can even have this moment of reflection during snack time, which will reduce the child’s nervousness.  It might be difficult at first, but if the child gets used to the father, for example, and they ask them questions, or the father begins to talk about something and asks his/her opinion, the child will begin to do it as well.  And this is a good time to teach the child to leave problems “outside” when its time to rest or play.

Once you have had still brief session, then it’s time for bed, and a large part of their tensions will have eased, and you can begin the mind-nourishing meditation with the child.

Music

You must get some type of must that is very pleasant, so the child begins to get used to relaxing their mind when they hear the music.  The music can help when the father can’t do the meditation.  Just by hearing the music, the child will return to a start of relaxation that the meditation produces.  Useful music for babies could be instrumental, be it Beethoven, Mozart, or Celtic music.

Guided meditation

Meditation should be done with a soft voice.  Ask the child to close his/her eyes, and take a deep breath.  Then, visualize a ball of light, with their favorite light at the height of their frontal globe (you can point to it by lightly pressing between their eyes).

Then, tell them to imagine this ball of light as growing brighter, and growing, and that the light runs through their veins and their body.  For small children, you can point out a quick run through by softly touching their arms, legs, and back, simulating the path through the veins that their light should take.

Then, tell them that this light will suck up all the tension in their body like a vacuum.

Once you have done this, then tell the child to once again concentrate of the little ball of light, which will have ran through their entire body, and will have caught all their tension.  Then, ask them to send it far away, to some place in the universe, where it will explore, and turn into pure stars.

Once you have done this, then tell them to imagine themselves wrapped in a ball of light, which will serve as their protection.  Explain to them that during the night, this bright light will be their shield.

If the child falls asleep during the meditation, even better.  You can use your parents’ creativity to change the meditation every day.

If your child tends to be very nervous, anxious, or doesn’t sleep well, you could consider their diet as well.  Remove all refined sugars, which damage and severely affect the nervous system.  They could also have low levels of essential nutrients, in which case you would need to increase their consumption of whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, in recently made juices (not store bought), or salads.

Revised by: Dra. Loredana Lunadei on 09/17/2014

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