We all want our children to grow up healthy and happy. Children learning to meditate have many benefits for their physical and mental development. Children today have higher levels of stress and anxiety than in the past. So children in some areas also began to participate in meditation practice. According to statistics, 1.6% of children in the United States are practicing meditation. Some studies show that children who practice meditation develop more positive qualities. Such as self-control, learning to focus, respect, and empathy for others. Also, meditation can help children cope with challenging situations such as stress, frustration, ADHD, etc. Here in this article, we will discuss the benefits of meditation for students which can change their present and future.
Meditation Begins in Schools
In a city called Baltimore in Maryland, USA, there is a primary school called Baltimore Elementary School, which is hailed as the best elementary school in the city by the locals. One feature of this school is that students who make mistakes do not need to be detained in the classroom, they only need to practice “practice” of meditation.
The school introduced meditation in 2010. Principal Carian Thompson believes that this method can relieve students’ negative emotions, help children eliminate fatigue, discover themselves, and help children learn to control their emotions.
In addition to the usual benefits of meditation for students, the school sends some students with tough problems to the Mindful Moment Room. The Mindfulness Room is where the school’s students do deep breathing exercises to unwind their minds, where they learn how to better cope with some situations and how to calm themselves down.
Baltimore Elementary isn’t the only U.S. school to add meditation; schools in other cities have adopted the approach.
Access Valley Middle School, which is located in one of San Francisco’s poorest districts, also opened a meditation class in 2016, according to ABC. This school has a fixed meditation time. Every day when the meditation time arrives, the whole school will have 15 minutes of transcendental meditation. It is a process of eliminating superfluous thoughts in order to achieve calm.
This school used to have three of the most mischievous children, but since joining the meditation class, it has become much quieter. When I returned to the classroom, I no longer bullied female classmates, and consciously written homework.
A girl from a single-parent family, paranoid, irritable, and sensitive, meditated several times and began to try to tell her mother what she thought about her father, and her personality became much quieter.
Sun Ruixue mentioned in the book “Love and Freedom“
“We take the children to meditate for 10 minutes before class every day, which is also the practice of some international kindergartens. Because we find that meditation is very good for children’s concentration.”
Benefits of Meditation for Students
An NMR study conducted by Harvard University created a huge sensation in the scientific community:
Meditation can essentially rebuild your brain. Once you master the skills of meditation, this training will clear enough space for your brain to resist dependence on technology products and avoid being held by restless emotions. Walk the nose, focus more on work and study, enhance creativity and innovation awareness, gain harmonious interpersonal relationships, inner peace and harmony, become a better leader, and feel the beauty and abundance of life.
the specific benefits of meditation for students are as follows:
1. Improve concentration and memory of students
The act of meditation is the training process of focusing and feeling the flow of our own attention, which ultimately leads to improved focus in our daily lives, which is a long-term benefit of regular meditation.
Meditation is also associated with rapid memory recall. Catherine Kerr of the Osher Center and Martino Center for Bioimaging Research found that those who practiced mindfulness meditation were able to adjust their brains more quickly when they were disturbed by anxiety, distractions, etc. wave to improve performance. She claims that this ability to quickly adjust to distractions explains the meditators’ remarkable ability to remember quickly and integrate cognitively.
The University of Sydney conducted an experiment for children, asking them to meditate in the morning, noon, and evening hours. The feedback from the children was very positive. Students who meditate regularly have better grades, better focus, and more energy.
2. Improve creativity in students
Researchers at Leiden University in the Netherlands found people who practice meditation regularly and found that they performed better on innovative tasks.
Scientific experiments have also proved that when a person enters a state of meditation, the activity of the brain will show regular a-brain waves. a brain wave is one of the four basic brain waves. It is always the easiest to generate when people are most relaxed and comfortable, and this is the time when the potential is the most active, so the brain wave has the possibility to stimulate infinite potential.
When the brain waves are shown as brain waves, imagination, creativity, and inspiration will flow out continuously. In addition, the judgment and understanding of things will be greatly improved. At the same time, the body and mind will appear stable, happy, and relaxed.
3. Contribute to the physical and mental health of students
Meditation can reduce anxiety. We have an area of the brain called the “egocentric“, which is responsible for processing the parts of “me” and personal experience. Normally, the nerves of the body’s awareness and fear centers are strongly connected to this “egocentric” brain region.
Through meditation, this neural connection is weakened. As the “egocentric” response weakens, the connection between our body’s awareness and fear centers strengthens. When we experience terrible things again or are upset, we are able to deal with them more rationally. As we practice meditation, our anxiety gradually diminishes.
Mindfulness meditation has been shown to reduce stress. At the same time, it can also improve the child’s sleep and exercise the child’s cardiovascular ability. Persistent training will keep your child healthy physically and mentally.
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4. Develop compassion and self-esteem
Children sometimes feel that they are not good enough due to stressful and uncontrollable situations. Especially when they are being bullied or ridiculed by others. Many adults who are insecure can find the cause in childhood. The good news is that meditation strengthens children’s sense of security, empathy, perseverance, empathy, and self-esteem.
5. Enhance self-confidence
Meditation can help children gain self-confidence and become more aware. In meditation practice, children learn that they don’t have to react to all thoughts and emotions, they just choose to deal with the ones that matter most. As a result, they are not easily disturbed by bad emotions, and their self-confidence will naturally increase. Confident children are more likely to deal with new situations they encounter. Because of their resilience, they are better at problem-solving and have a deeper love for life.
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6. Caring about others and experiencing happiness
When you give more to others, you gain more. Meditation helps children learn how to share their love. They become more patient and empathetic, willing to listen to and understand others. A United States study of 400 low-income minority elementary school students found that after a five-week meditation session, teachers reported that students were more attentive, more willing to share, and more caring. It is clear that children who are mindful are more likely to experience happiness.
7. Control emotional responses
Controlling emotions is the key to dealing with many psychological problems. A 2013 study from the University of Zurich in Switzerland found that practicing mindfulness can help control emotions. In the study, 24 participants received short-duration meditation practice, and 22 did not. When presented with images and photos that elicited negative emotions, those who had practiced meditation had fewer emotional responses than those who had not practiced.
Further analysis with functional magnetic resonance imaging found that compared to the control group, meditation practitioners received fewer external stimuli in the parts of the brain that process emotion, resulting in lower emotional responses. This allows a student to remain calm or at least toned down in the face of negative situations, reduce stress levels, and lead to a healthier body.
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How to teach children to practice meditation?
If you want to try practicing meditation at home and want to see the benefits of meditation as a student then, here are some tips you need to keep in mind:
1. Don’t take meditation too sacred
People who don’t understand meditation will think that this is a very serious and profound study. Actually, not so. Behind the science, meditation can be very lifelike. Take your child to do meditation, don’t worry about the way it is, your body posture and so-called state, and so on. The most important thing is to keep breathing deeply, slowly, and evenly throughout the entire relaxation process, and to experience the movement of a warm current in your body as you imagine it.
Children are usually able to sit for the same amount of time as their age, such as 9 minutes at 9 years old and 7 minutes at 7 years old. Children younger than 5 years old can practice mindfulness or just simple breathing exercises.
2. Parents lead by example
Meditate with your child. If you already have the habit of meditating yourself, bring your child into it too. If you are just starting to meditate, you can try guided, quiet, or mandala meditation.
Finding a meditation practice that is easy for you and your child to practice on a daily basis just requires a little exploration, such as making meditation part of your bedtime routine.
3. With the help of necessary guidance or imagination
You can try to visualize some images to help meditation, for example: imagine a coin above your navel, rising and falling with your breath; imagine a buoy in the ocean, floating up and down with the waves of your breath; imagine a belly on the There is a lotus flower that opens its petals with every breath.
Also, it’s a good way to have your child meditate while holding a special crystal ball.
4. After the meditation, let the children talk about their feelings
When children start a meditation practice, they can feel a change in their body that attracts them to continue their meditation practice. Celebrate changes they notice, or tell them about changes you’ve noticed that they haven’t.
Finally, I recommend a simple and easy method of sitting meditation, which can be done at home.
1. Wear comfortable clothes and let yourself be relaxed. You can sit on the floor with your legs crossed, or you can lie down.
2. Close your eyes, inhale deeply through your nose, and exhale through your mouth. Do this action three times.
3. Continue to keep your eyes closed, inhale through your nose, hold your breath for 3 seconds, then exhale through your nose. Do this action three times.
4. Then take a deep breath through the nose, exhale through the mouth, and say slowly, “ha, ha, ha”.
5. Continue to close your eyes, imagine a cloud surrounding you, and enjoy the tranquility of the moment.
6. Finally, open your eyes, put your hands together, and experience tranquility.
Take 10 minutes a day to meditate and you will discover the amazing changes that meditation can bring to you as a student.
Conclusion
Meditation has great benefits for students’ present and future development. But you must not force your child to practice meditation, otherwise, just like you force your child to eat vegetables, they will have a huge resentment. Adults and children alike need gentle encouragement when it comes to meditation. I hope this post benefits of meditation for students will help you
