It is day five of our 5 Days of Mindfulness series with Dr. Hilary Mead, but remember, you can re-listen to any of these guided practices as many times as you need. Mindfulness is a great technique that can enhance how you, your children and teens cope with pain-related conditions or emotional, behavioral or mental conditions. By teaching them to observe their feelings and thoughts, mindfulness practices can help them slow down their feelings by observing their urges and thinking about them instead of immediately acting on them.
To finish off the week I’m sharing three new guided practices. As with the others, I invite you to do these with your family to help incorporate mindfulness into your everyday routine.
- Guided Imagery: Be a Jellyfish – Breathe similar to how a jellyfish swims. Dr. Mead shares this patient-developed guided imagery to help you focus on your breath.
- Mindfulness: Water Slide in the Middle of the Jungle – You go to the middle of the jungle to go down a water slide (I personally LOVE this one). This was created by Julie Campilio of Radiant Beginnings Yoga. It’s a fun exercise to seriously escape!
- Five Senses Guided Meditation – You’re led through a meditation of your five senses, which are great anchor points to the current moment and being mindful.
You can listen to all seven guided practices here:
I hope you enjoyed this series as much as I did. I would love to hear what you thought, what images came to mind while doing these practices and how you felt after completing them. Please, please, please share in the comments below!
If/when you do re-listen to these I recommend doing so with a “beginners mind.” This is when you come to the meditation or imagery new and open to seeing what else is there. I’ve done it and every time it leaves me with a different feeling and images.
I want to also give a HUGE thank you to Dr. Mead for sharing her wisdom and leading these. You can read all about mindfulness here on the blog.
Apps to try (not all are free): Headspace, Insight Timer (the water slide guided imagery was found on this app by searching for child meditations) or ZenFriend.
Paul Richard says
I have enjoyed this series so much. Nice & informative blogging.
Allison Raduziner says
I love that you did this! I will use it with my clients too – thank you for giving credibility to meditation, and helping us understand how it helps.
Wendy Sue Swanson, MD, MBE says
Thank you! Great