Have you noticed your class drifting off, especially when learning a new topic or skill that is more difficult? Their eyes glaze over, they become more fidgety, shout-out, work avoidance and more.
Professor Mark Williams, former director of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre, says that mindfulness means knowing directly what is going on inside and outside ourselves, moment by moment. He goes on to say, “It’s easy to stop noticing the world around us. It’s also easy to lose touch with the way our bodies are feeling and to end up living ‘in our heads’ – caught up in our thoughts without stopping.
Refocusing without judgement is a positive mindful activity that allows children to take a breather, allow a moment to step back from the work and then continue in a mindful way that allows for maximum progress.
One way to help children to remain focused in class is to use Colour Meditation.
“When you breathe in, you inspire; when you don’t breathe, you expire.” (Apocryphal answer to a biology exam question).
Breathing is natural, right? Our body does it largely without our conscious awareness. We become aware of it during some situations. I often find myself non-consciously holding my breath during underwater scenes in movies; I nearly died during ‘Finding Dory’!
Moreover, inhabiting perception and being able to recognise our bodily sensations are a first base for the physicality of emotional regulation. It is even more important to teach this when we are working with traumatised children who may, of necessity, have had to de-sensitise themselves from feelings due to toxic stress. They may be less sensitive to the social engagement of others and less able to tolerate and integrate strong feelings such as fear.
We would conceptualise fear as an instinctive response to threats to survival. For mammals, this includes separation from a care-giver as our survival depends on the Adult–Child relationship. Our senses pick up sensory cues, then our amygdala scans the incoming sensory information and, if we have come to associate those cues with threat, the amygdala triggers the fight/flight or freeze responses. In the hyper-aroused flight response, we experience a racing heart, sweating, sick feeling, deeper breathing. This is mediated by the activation of the sympathetic nervous system and the release of adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol. In the hypo-aroused freeze response, we experienced foggy thinking or confusion, numbness, dissociation, shallow breathing, slow heart-beat. This is mediated by the parasympathetic nervous system. It involves the release of opioids and acetyl-choline.
We cannot underestimate the importance of breathing – particularly a long out-breath – for calming and regulating these systems. This is because the Vagus nerve acts like a brake on the heart every time we breath out. This means that the longer the out-breath, the more active the brake and the slower our heart-beat. Controlled breathing can override the fight, flight, or freeze response set off by the amygdala and enable mindful behaviour.
Breathing Buddies (aka Teddy Bear Belly Breathing) can help small people calm their nervous system and have giggles with a Transition Object in school, or it is even a great way of calming before reading a story at bedtime.
Once regulated, the teddies may accompany the children to class or even stay around a special teddy bears’ tea party table to keep them safe, though as Transition Objects, the child needs easy access. Breathing Buddies can be repeated for any transition and before home time too. Many children are not too sure of time and building this into routines can provide very clear signposts to the passage of the day.
Other types of regulated breathing could be introduced by blowing bubbles or by blowing on cuts and grazes, all the while fostering a longer out-breath to act as a regulator and slow the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems.
Ultimately, if the children are used to doing mindful breathing as part of their daily routine, they can be prompted to use it during a crisis as part of self-regulation. Breathing “…as if they were giving teddy a ride…” is great for steadying and grounding the alarmed mind. Of course, mindful strategies must be held within a safe and responsive relationship to be truly successful, so enjoy those relationships with the small people and their Breathing Buddies.
Find out about other breathing strategies at Mindfulness in the Classroom- Breathing or in Part 1 of the book on Breathing by Tammie Prince, 100 Ideas for Primary Teachers: Mindfulness in the Classroom published by Bloomsbury.