Mindfulness of the body: Movement, stretching and balance!
Let’s continue our series exploring the current Stix mindfulness programme. Our four categories of activities teach the basics of mindfulness, with each section covering a fundamental skill to help introduce wellbeing techniques to children. The Stix Remotes use audio, lights, and vibrations to bring mindfulness activities to life, making it tangible and enjoyable for young minds.
Mindfulness of the body explained
Mindfulness of the body helps cultivate deeper awareness of the sensations and movements within your body. It involves paying attention to bodily experiences in a non-judgemental and focussed way. This means acknowledging sensations such as tension, warmth, tingling, or pain without labelling as good or bad and allowing them to exist without impulse to change or resist. Grounding senses in your body is key to mindfulness.
Feeling your body in space
You could start by feeling your body’s contact with the external world. The sensation of your back on the ground, your feet on the ground whilst walking, your legs on the chair. This will draw your focus away from the mind and into the body. Movement whilst practicing mindfulness is a good method to increase focus on the body and foster a deeper mind-body connection.
Listening to your body
The next part of mindfulness of the body includes thinking about what internal sensations you are observing. For instance, the heart racing or a tingling sensation in the fingers. These sensations can be brought on by stress, or an overactive Amygdala that signals danger at an everyday situation. Bringing awareness to these sensations helps understanding and allows you to address these feelings. Being present to these sensations allows you to consider if you are having an emotional reaction that can be embraced and confronted in a non-judgemental manner.
Awareness means you can release
By recognising sensations of tension or anxiety you can focus on breathing, helping to release tension in the body and allow sensations to soften. The mind and body are linked, and stress can remain in the body long after the event causing it has finished. If you reach a point of calm in your physical state, the mental state can easily follow.
Stix activities for mindfulness of the body
Combined with Mindfulness of the Breath, these activities build awareness of bodily feelings, helping children understand the ways their body connects with how they are feeling. If you want to hear how the activities sound, head here.
1. Balance
This activity guides children through three rounds of balancing as they learn skills to improve their focus and body awareness. Using accelerometers, the Stix remotes detect movement whilst balancing, changing the lights from green to red to indicate fidgeting. This activity tests children on their ability to focus on maintaining balance whilst building a deeper connection between mind and body.
Energy Shake out: …Before we start the balance activity, be as silly as you like as you shake out your energy…Imagine that the energy comes out of your body through your hands and feet and releases into the air…
Balancing rounds explained: …We will have several rounds of balancing, where you must freeze like a statue and stay as still as possible. If you move or start wobbling, the lights will switch from green to red…
Freeze and balance: …Put your arms out in front of you and freeze!…Now feel free to move about, shake your arms, feel the energy moving around your body…This time, put your arms out to the side and freeze!...
In between each round of balancing, kids are instructed to shake out all their excess energy, helping them to understand what it feels like to be restless, before then regaining focus and beginning the next round of balancing.
2. Big stretch
In the big stretch activity, children are instructed to breath in and out deeply as they stretch their bodies. They reach up as high as they can and then stretch down to touch their toes. Whilst stretching, children become aware of muscle tension, breathing patterns, and areas of stiffness. This also improves flexibility and circulation, contributing to overall physical well-being. Introducing daily mindful stretching into your children’s life will help achieve a balance between their mind and body.
Touch the sky: …First, we are going to touch the sky…Breath in and slowly raise your arms up by your sides until you can touch the sky…Feel the stretch for a few seconds…
Touch the Earth: we are going to touch the earth…Imagine you’re a piece of paper that is being folded in half…As you breathe in, reach down with the Stix to the floor and feel into the stretch…Let your back relax, letting your spine to hang down from your waist…
3. Snow Angel
This activity uses the concept of body scanning to help identify each part of your body, whilst forming snow angles in the imaginary snow. Body scanning involves scanning your body from head to toe, noticing sensations and building a deeper understanding of bodily experiences and how your emotional states effect it.
By illustrating the body scanning principle as snow angels, children understand the movement behind the activity from a physical perspective, scanning the body physically with their arms. The voice of Stix then slowly encourages children to move to a body scan using their mind instead of their arms.
Breathing and Stretching: Take a deep breath in through your nose…and out through your mouth… whilst slowly bringing the sticks by your sides above your head as if you were making a snow angel, have a big stretch…
Body scanning: …Let’s draw another snow angel, feel into the stretch, and slowly bring the arms down by your sides…engage with the movement of your body……feel the sensations in your body, as the Stix scan through your body, top of your head… your face… your neck… your chest… your tummy… your legs… your feet… your toes…
Relax and reflect: …Now relax your arms by your side, keep as still as you can and only use your mind to scan through your whole body from the tip of your toes all the way to the top of your head…Notice the sensations throughout your body as you are breathing and scanning, whatever they are, we are not looking for anything in particular…How did that feel? Did that calm your mind a bit?
Mindfulness for children
Mindfulness is an incredibly beneficial exercise to introduce into the daily routines of children, and by making it fun, interactive and movement-focussed, kids can get onboard with the practice at an earlier age in life.
By teaching children these mindful practices, the Stix programme aims to create a new generation of children who are attuned to their bodies, emotions and have the skills to navigate life’s challenges with greater ease and awareness. Stay tuned for next week’s blog which will explore our mindfulness of thoughts and feelings activities, teaching children how to understand and manage their thoughts and emotions.