Meditation

[mathsparks]

If you're feeling stressed up over your parents' health, your kids' education, or even your work/financial worries, why not give meditation a try.


I picked up meditation a couple of years ago while going thru' a very stressful period. It helped me cope with anxiety, to forgive and be grateful for what I have.

The recent months have been even more trying than ever, and the recent LKY interview prompted me to pick it up again. Checkout the article Balm for the Mind in Sunday's Lifestyle today.

A good resource for those who wants to give meditation a try is the free podcasts provided by the meditation society of Australia.

http://meditation.org.au/podcast_description.asp?feed=http://meditation.org.au/learntomeditate.xml&xtitle=Learn

Download them and soon you'll be immersed in the messages they share..postitive messages like the meaning of life, offering and receiving love, humility, and letting go.

Hope meditation helps you as much as it's helped me.

[Faun]

[Moderator's note: Article edited & selected for http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/content/teaching-kids-relax-through-meditation]


Just to share my experience.


I teach my children meditation. We have a meditation corner at home where they can go for quiet sit-down sessions. When they were younger, I sat down with them a couple of times a day. Each time just 10 minutes just to quieten their mind.

It's a wonderful gift to teach our kids meditation. Life will be stressful for them as the workload increase. It's important to teach them how to relax. There's No need to go into any difficult methods or anything religion based. Just sit down with them and tell them to focus on their breathe. Tell them the busy mind will have a lot of images and feelings coming in, just let them go and focus back on breathe. That simple.

The trick is not to meditate too long, they're still too young to sit for long time. Even 5 minutes is good. It's the frequency of the practice, not the intensity, that counts.

They usually get pretty frustrated and frown 1st 5 minutes feeling restless but subsequently, they'll relax and enjoy the clarity in the mind.

I buy them each their personal meditation cushion. It's buckwheat husk inside and very nice to use. I even use one as my pillow.

[autumnbronze]

Thanks for sharing mathsparks and Faun.


Faun, how old are your kids?? When did you start them on meditation??

[schweppes]

This is very useful. Thanks for sharing, mathsparks and faun.


Kids getting stressed as exams around the corner. Actually, their mommy also getting stressed too from all the juggling I have to do...

I find it very hard to quiet my unstill mind. Do I just let the images or thoughts come and go? I find the harder I \"fight\" to control my thoughts, the more fidgety I get.

But I like what you say about starting off with 5mins first.

Ommmm...

[dunnoleh]

Thanks Faun for the sharing, here’s mine….


My children watched me go through my daily yoga routine before they could walk. They’ll get bored at the point when I sat still to do the breathing exercises, and leave me alone.

As they grew older, they started to imitate me, surprising me with their physical flexibility.

They started sitting with me through the breathing part when they were about 9 or 10.

Today, both of them are able to focus better than many adults, at will.
This ability serve as their “re-charge” whenever needed. It is a skill to “return” to themselves, a place away from the insanity of the outside world.

I believe this is not only beneficial to health, but is also a place where values such as kindness and compassion is internalised and anchored deeply within the individual.

[Faun]

I'm so happy to see so many of you also interested in helping yourself and family to have calm and clear mind.


I started my kids at around P1. I must say it takes discipline even though it's 5 mins. As parent, I have to say, \"let's do it\". Good to set routine, say before meal times.

Meditation is a life long practice. So please don't be so hard on yourself. There'll be periods of time when you stop. What matter is that you go back to it knowing that there is a way to help yourself get peace.

About the practice. sometimes, my mind get really noisy, chattery and restless. The best thing to get calm back is to just sit and meditate. Believe me, just 15 minutes and you'll feel better. You'll be fighting to settle down at first, all kinds of images, thoughts and feelings come in. Just
let them go and return to focusing on your breathe.

Basically, what we're trying to do is to get our mind to be present. For example, if you hear a loud crash from the road outside, you tell yourself that was a sound. What usually happens is that we'll start to think, hmm... could it be a lorry and a car? could it be a Toyota car, such a loud crash, someone must be badly injured, etc... This is why we need to go back to our breather to bring our mind back to present as those thoughts are of no use. With constant practice, we find that we'll be able to focus on the present better as we go through our daily activities.

Please understand I'm not qualified to teach meditation, but I do experience the benefits from it and hope you will too.


If you really want to learn, you can try the Vipassana Meditation. They say it's non religious but they do talk a bit about the Budddhist philosophy. Otherwise, the Yoga version is good too. Mathsparks recommended one too.

We care so much about our physical body. Must take care of mind too. It really takes so little effort. The point is, don't give up. Keep it simple to start with. It's not the intensity that counts, it's the frequency. It's at least so for me, still very much a beginner.

BTW, if you are wondering how to tell the time eg 5 minutes. I bought the
kids a kitchen timer for that.

By the way, other ways we can teach kids to relax is to get them to exercise, take walks in the parks or go to the beach for some salty air.
we do these with our kids and as they feel the relaxation from such activites, I believe, they'll turn to them when they are stressed later on in their lives, instead of smoking, drinking, etc.


:celebrate:

[autumnbronze]

:goodpost: Faun.


Thanks for sharing.

My DS already tries to imitate me when I do my yoga for instance tailor, tree and cat poses :lol:

I may just try meditation with him for the fun of it, since he is still young

[schweppes]

Faun:

I'm so happy to see so many of you also interested in helping yourself and family to have calm and clear mind.


....

By the way, other ways we can teach kids to relax is to get them to exercise, take walks in the parks or go to the beach for some salty air.
we do these with our kids and as they feel the relaxation from such activites, I believe, they'll turn to them when they are stressed later on in their lives, instead of smoking, drinking, etc.

:celebrate:

:goodpost: Faun

Thanks for sharing. Very useful info

[Sun_2010]

I am no expert or even in this field - a few things life has taught me and some I learnt from my Yoga teachers and I fused those together. Here is what I know


There are many methods of meditation, i think over 200. Start with one - any one. You will find improvements. If needed try some others - and settle into one that is seems most natural to you.

All I have learnt are yoga-based. Many think that yoga is synonymous to exercise or asanas , but just to calrify, yoga is classified into 8 parts. Of which Hatha yoga ie. asanas is one part only.

Meditation is the art of doing nothing. And that is not easy. They say thoughts are like waves. They are relentless, not for a minute they stop. Good one , scary ones, inane ones , all kinds. One after another they come. Meditation is not about concentrating on one thought or word . It is about not getting involved in your thoughts. Let them come and go – don’t stop them. For when you try to stop them you are getting involved with them. Let go. Ignore. Even when important thought comes to you - tell yourself not now, later.

That brings us to "mantra". Why do we say a mantra. A mantra is a vehicle that takes you to inner depths of your mind. It helps the ever distracting thoughts from disturbing this journey. Chanting falls into the same category

Normally a word has a meaning , so when you say dog, my mind visualizes a dog - in the colour and type I am familiar with. But a mantra is an unattached word, it has little meaning. It is just a positive sound/vibration that does not give you any images or feelings. It is after all a vehicle. So what it does is it helps you reach you destination. The real moments your mind transcends is when your mantra fades away. This happens only for a few moments, but those moments are enough to calm you and give you a self awareness. With regular practise the mantra becomes a trigger - when you start saying it, your mind and body have been "trained’ to know that "hey its time for mediation, get ready".

Often the 20 minutes goes in this struggle between our clambering thoughts and mind. So what we need to do is get in the right frame of mind. And how to do that?

Mind and body are connected. The connection is the breathe. Check, every time the mind is agitated, the breathing is affected. And once the breathe is affected body reacts. So to clam the mind your breathing should be relaxed and uniform. So a 5 min breathing exercise greatly helps meditation. Within a couple of minutes of meditation we can enter a meditative state. Thus the meditation is more effective.
And to do effective breathing, body should be ready. And this is where asanas play their role - in getting your body ready. So an ideal cycle would be asanas, breathing, then mediation. The main thing of course is the mediation.

For proper breathing exercises it is best to go to an experienced teacher as incorrect breathing can cause negative effects. Ideally join a class you are comfortable with and with a teacher who vibes well with you.

The most difficult part is doing it everyday. If you have the discipline to do it, the rewards are tremendous.

I want to stress that I am just a novice, and this is a totally on the spot write up of my understandings. My husband has immensely benefited from meditation; he does it twice every day. It has helped my migraines; though I struggle to make meditation a daily routine. So i wanted to share it here.

[dunnoleh]

autumnbronze:

:goodpost: Faun.


Thanks for sharing.

My DS already tries to imitate me when I do my yoga for instance tailor, tree and cat poses :lol:

I may just try meditation with him for the fun of it, since he is still young

great idea! have fun! :celebrate:
and keep it that way.

have seen many students come and go in the 30+ years with my teacher.
One thing in common among those who stayed is in keeping expectations out of the way.
It's not easy, no kidding.

The worst possible thing to do is to start off with high expectations.
It could be more than a hindrance, even harmful in some cases.
Depending on individual, there is no telling what will spill out as the inner layers unfold.
It is not my intention to discourage anyone from learning yoga/meditation.
In fact, I hope more people could learn and benefit from it.
But I also hope that people do not start off on the wrong footing.

one more thing... its a skill that takes time to acquire before the benefits appear, and should not be perceived as a remedy to a problem before the skill is acquired.