Parents and children must practise:

Mindfulness meditation

By Lionel Wijesiri

Most literature on mindfulness focuses on adults. Very little research and writing has been done on the use of mindfulness with children. However, experts who have studied child behaviour believe that work with children would appear to be a natural application because they are often much closer to experiences of mindfulness than adults. They react emotionally in response to an immediate circumstance, and then they just as quickly let it go and move on to the next experience.

In Western countries, families practise mindfulness meditation to ease the stress and tension in their lives

We have observed this in a child crying, perhaps even throwing a tantrum, and then simply ceasing, standing up, and moving to engage in play with a toy. It is easier for children to let go of the past. You might notice this in the way a young child falls quickly into a deep sleep without thinking about the day’s activities or other worries.

It is the experts’ experience that children are born knowing only the moment. There is no need for them to fret about yesterday or tomorrow. It’s all about what is in front of them at that point in time. It is only when the influence of others - parents, teachers, caregivers, television characters - begins to play a more prominent role in their thinking and being that the joys of the moment slowly slip away. Children learn to be concerned about this or that by mimicking the behaviour they see in front of them. It is one of those elements of childhood innocence that so quickly falls victim to the woes and worries of modern adulthood.

Mindful meditation

In Buddhism, mindfulness (Sati) is a spiritual or psychological faculty (Indriya). According to the teaching of the Buddha, it is of great importance in the path to Enlightenment. Right mindfulness (Samma Sati) is the seventh element of the noble eightfold path. However, mindfulness meditation can also be traced back to the earlier Upanishads, part of Hindu scripture.

The “four foundations of mindfulness” (Cattaro satipatthana) are canonically described bases for maintaining moment-by-moment mindfulness and for developing mindfulness through meditation. The four foundations of mindfulness are mindfulness of the body (Kaya-sati), mindfulness of feelings or sensations (Vedana-sati), mindfulness of mind or consciousness (Citta-sati) and mindfulness of mental phenomena or mental objects (Dhamma-sati).

The Buddha advocated that one should establish mindfulness in one’s day-to-day life, maintaining as much as possible a calm awareness of one’s body, feelings, mind and dhammas. The practice of mindfulness supports analysis, resulting in the arising of wisdom (panna).

Mindfulness meditation is being employed in modern psychology to alleviate a variety of mental and physical conditions, including obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, and in the prevention of relapses in depression and drug addiction.

Susan Kaiser Greenland, author of The Mindful Child, says mindfulness meditation programs can aid children in developing good habits that will help make them happier and more compassionate. “Mindfulness meditation is a refined process of attention that allows children to see the world through a lens of attention, balance and compassion,” Kaiser Greenland wrote in 2012. “When children learn to look at the world with attention, balance and compassion, they soon learn to be in the world with attention, balance and compassion.”

Personal experience

A senior manager of a big business organisation, Sirimevan Salgado agrees with Kaiser Greenland. He practises mindfulness meditation with his 10-year-old son and eight-year-old daughter every night. “The magic moment where they understand mindfulness is when they can catch themselves not paying attention. That’s their chance to control their impulsiveness,” Sirimevan says.

Each night, just before retiring for the day, all family members meet in the parents’ room and sit on the floor, cross-legged. They close their eyes and keep their left hands with palms facing up on their laps and their right hands, palms up on top of the left palm. Together, they bring their attention to their breathing, counting one and one while breathing in, two and two while breathing out, until 10 and 10 and start again. If the children are too overwhelmed, they are trained to take 10 deep breaths (conscious breathing) to calm their minds and bring their awareness back to the breathing sequence.

The exercise will last around 10 minutes. They have set an alarm clock to let them know when the meditation is over. Sirimevan has noticed that as the children meditate regularly and maintain the mindfulness of breathing, their breathing becomes more subtle and tranquil. Their bodies become calm and relaxed. They sleep peacefully, undisturbed and wake up fresh, eager to go to school. Sirimevan believes that mindfulness meditation improves focus and increases test scores. He has seen this happen with his children. One year after he started the family meditation sessions, he has witnessed heightened working memory and improved reading-comprehension scores on his son and daughter.

Mindfulness meditation programs can aid children to develop good habits

Child experts believe that children, like adults, will prefer learning to be mindful, and will benefit from it as well. They believe that in applying mindfulness meditation techniques to children, they will benefit in ways similar to adults. In addition to stress, anxiety and depression, eating disorders have a high prevalence in children and adolescents, and mindfulness meditation techniques, adapted for children with these symptoms, seem to work on these populations.

Potential benefits

There are additional specific potential benefits relevant to children. First, mindfulness meditation may improve memory. Children often forget things simply because they are not paying attention. Children will remember things better if they are aware of them, attending to them, and focused, which may help with both learning and sports. It may be useful for children with concentration problems to use mindfulness meditation as a practice to improve their attention and focus.

Mindfulness meditation may also be useful for children who are aggressive, as it promotes self-control and self-management. Children, by becoming more self-aware and by focusing on themselves, will learn how their mind works and about their thinking process, promoting greater self-understanding of their own experiences of the world, which they do not typically experience.

However, there is one essential necessity. Teach by example. Only when parents practise mindfulness, they can point it out to their children as such. Again, children will mirror what they see in front of them. For example, if they begin a task, they must see it through to the end. They must enjoy the only thing they are doing at that moment. Even when they are upset about something, maintaining a level head and cool demeanour can be used as an example later when their child is going through a similar situation.

It takes time. Children will not master mindfulness meditation overnight (and neither will adults!). It is a practice that takes time, patience and commitment.

As the wave of change continues to make its way through society, teaching our children mindfulness meditation from an early age can keep the momentum moving forward.

The thought of how different the world might be if future generations understood and embraced this important practice is powerful motivation. Parents can help manifest this future by taking time to not only learn mindfulness meditation themselves, but to pass it on to their children in loving and nurturing ways.