How to Get Your Young Children Started with Meditation

Don’t we all wish we’d learned how to meditate when we were young? All adult meditators would agree that it would have given them a huge jump start on learning how to calm their minds, reduce stress and develop better focus. And yet how many meditating parents still haven’t found the time or a way to start with their young children. And what is the right age to start anyway?

What is the Right Age to Get Children Started?

There are parents who are staring their children as young as two. Personally, I think that’s pushing it. The meditation I’ll be sharing is appropriate for 3–5-year-olds. This age group can learn simple breathing exercises when combined with easy visualizations that allow them to feel a change in their bodies. Because they can still get easily distracted, it’s best for you to join in with them so you can guide the process.

The Secret to Success: Keep it Short. Keep it Simple. Keep it Fun.

Following is a simple and easy way to get started. But first, a few tips. Keep the language and imagery simple. Stay away from loaded words. Keep the meditation times short. You should participate in doing this exercise with your child. If there are others around who know how to meditate that the child likes, try to include them as well.

For example, while recently teaching a 3 and 5-year-old how to start meditating, I enlisted the help of two teenagers, whom both children adore. The older kids are both meditators and could act as visual anchors for the younger children to mimic, as well as to affirm that, yes indeed, this is something cool to do.

For parents, this is a guided visualization meditation that will show your child how to do a very simple deep breathing exercise. The great thing about it is that it can be done standing, seated, or laying down. It’s perfect for kids who need to be on the move and even better when practiced right before bedtime.

Start by Explaining What Your Child Can Expect

For example, with the following Balloon meditation, I explained that “We’re going to learn how to do a fun Quiet Time exercise that will help us relax and feel good.” Keep it that simple.

Keep Instructions Brief

When giving instructions, use as few words as needed and no more. Don’t get into explaining or using technical jargon. Monkey-See-Monkey-Do is what we’re going for here.

How Long Should the Meditation Exercise last?

For the first time, keep the meditation exercise short. You can increase the duration as they get more accustomed. As they get more skilled, you can blow up several balloons. If this is done at bedtime, they can choose to tie the balloons to their bed, or you can have them make a wish on each balloon and release it. You can also have them put something into the balloon that they don’t want anymore and send it away, i.e. nervousness, a problem, etc.

Eventually, you can work up to your child doing this twice a day for 5 minutes at a time.

Blow Up the Balloon Meditation

1. First, let’s shake all our sillies out. (Jump up and down and shake limbs.)
2. Let’s tense up all muscles in our body as tight tight tight as we can. (Trying to isolate body parts to tense and release at this stage is too much.)
3. Ok, on the count of three we’re going to release all that tightness. 1–2–3 Release! (Do twice.)
4. Now we’re going to relax our bodies by taking in deep breaths through the nose and slowly breathing out through the mouth. (Do 3 Xs.)
5. What’s your favorite color? (Ask everyone present and share your favorite color too.)
6. Let’s all think of our favorite color and picture a giant balloon with that color in your mind.
7. We’re going to start to take a slow, deep breath in through the nose to fill your belly up with as much air as you can. Expand your tummy as much as you can so we have lots of air to blow up our big balloon in our favorite color.
8. Now we’re going to slowly blow all of that air into the balloon by blowing out through the mouth to release all of the breath from your belly into the balloon. (You can have them hold their hands up to their mouth in cupped shape like they’re holding a balloon to their mouth.)
9. Ok, we need to add a few more breaths to get the balloon full, so we need to inhale and blow 5 more times. (Count as they make one inhale/exhale.)
10. Mention how you can see all the balloons getting bigger and bigger with each breath.
11. Now our balloons are full. Let’s tie them off (making a tying-off motion) and make a wish. Has everyone made their wish? Yes, okay, let’s let them go on the count of 3. 1–2–3 Go! (making a motion of letting go of the balloon.)

How to Modify for Bedtime

I recommend starting with this meditation outside first and then moving indoors. We did this meditation outside in a standing position and included their parents as well as the teenagers. The more children can see other people do this, the more they are willing to follow along. (This also gave me a chance to instruct the parents on how to do this going forward.)

After they get the hang of it, you can move them indoors into a seated position.

For bedtime, I recommend doing this after they are in bed and use this as a wonderful transition into sleep. Instead of physically using movements, you would have them visualize each step.

Because routine works well for this age, picking the same time and place to do this will help them establish the habit.

Before you know it, they’ll have acquired a skill that will benefit them for the rest of their lives!

Karen Shanley has been teaching seminars on spiritual development and providing personal training for more than two decades. She currently specializes in How to Find Tour Inner Teacher.

Originally published at https://medium.com on July 26, 2021.