Meditation – what, why, when, and how to facilitate it in schools

As any health expert would tell you, the key to optimal health is by adopting small daily habits, and this includes practices for your mental and emotional health too. Practicing meditation, even for just a couple of minutes at a time, can have a profound impact on your mood, energy, and how you show up each day. The recent changes in schooling and the impact of Covid – 19 means that there is a need for regular meditation and mindfulness in the classroom. Here’s everything you need to know to begin today.

What is Meditation

If you would like to begin offering meditation to your students, you may find it helpful to understand some of the different forms of meditation, especially the ones which are suitable for you and your young learners. Below are four popular forms that can easily fit into your school day.

Mindfulness meditation

Mindfulness meditation is a calming practice, which simply teaches us to be aware of our thoughts. Even as adults we can be consumed by our thoughts, and so it is nice to experience a space where we observe our thoughts, as opposed to identifying with them. In meditation we observe our thoughts just as simply thoughts, almost like clouds in the sky. Here one minute and gone the next. Mindfulness meditation can be practiced in silence, or with soft music in the background. If you are guiding this practice, just simply direct your students to be aware of their thoughts, and to return to their breath as soon as they notice their thoughts wandering. The true beauty of this practice is that it can be done at any time of the school day. 5 minutes of mindfulness meditation can help both the teacher and students to ground themselves, reduce high anxious energies, and bring the state of the class to a more neutral level. I am sure you are already thinking of several opportunities when you could offer this to your students (there’s so many).

Progressive relaxation

This is a wonderful practice which does exactly what it’s called. It makes you feel relaxed. This form of meditation take students on a journey of relaxation and calm. This is often done with a combination of slow and deep breath work, aligned with muscle and tension release. This practice leaves both the body and mind feeling calm. This can be done to lower energy levels after break time or PE, or, towards the end of the school day.

Loving – kindness meditation

This practice is one of my favorites and can often be recognized as gratitude practice. Research has proven a strong relationship between regular gratitude and feeling more positive, and who wouldn’t want to feel more positive? Not only that, but this type of meditation practice also heightens our ability to recognize the joy in simple things, it helps us to deal with adversity and, builds strong relationships. This guided practice allows students to think of things that they are grateful for and guides them to create the positive feelings that are associated with it. This practice literally recreates positives emotions in the body. It’s also recommended to ask students to share afterwards or invite them to journal their thoughts in a gratitude diary.

Visualization meditation

Adults call this type of practice visualization, while children call it imagination. This practice trains us to strengthen the power of our minds and the ability this can have on our day ahead. This practice mentally prepares students for a productive day, allowing them to see in their mind what they want to achieve, and, how they want to achieve it. It’s a powerful technique and is frequently used by lots of high-performance professionals, including singers and sports athletes. For this practice simply ask your students to imagine what they want to achieve today, and how they want to achieve it. Take them on a journey and allow them to feel all the emotions associated with achievement and accomplishment.