Category: Helping Children

Mindfulness in school - should it really be used to demand a certain behaviour?

26/2/2017

Mindfulness continues to be of growing interest, and more and more people from all walks of life are beginning to recognise just how important this form of mental keep fit / first aid is. And one place where mindfulness is a growing industry is in education.

There’s recently been a clip, I think from Radio 4, posted around Facebook of children (6 and 7 year olds) trying to describe what mindfulness is all about when they have been taught it in school. However, it appears from this clip that these young children were being taught mindfulness largely as a tool enabling them to work better, although the words ‘relaxed’ and ‘calm’ were mentioned too. I personally think this is a very precarious school of thought, after all the essence of mindfulness involves no aims or goals.
I know that some people are wary of mindfulness because they have deduced (wrongly) that it disempowers people (employees especially), that it’s almost a form of subtle mind control – they might think that the attitude of acceptance means resignation; they might imagine that the attitude of trust means blind faith; they might think that the attitude of non-judgement means that they have to be completely passive when things are not going well. But again this is all very far from what mindfulness is all about. And I think it’s worrying that this seems to be running alongside the notion outlined above that mindfulness can be used in order to get children to work.
There is a great quote that I often regurgitate in my training session on working with children. It’s from www.thegreatergood.berkeley.edu:

“Although it may be tempting to use mindfulness as a disciplinary tool, it should not be used to demand a certain behaviour. It inherently includes the quality of acceptance.”

In other words, mindfulness should not be used as a way to get children to be quiet and get on with their work (especially when they’re perhaps still very young as the children in the video clip were). Instead, it accepts where the child is, in their own experience, right now, with all that that entails. And sometimes that’s not easy to deal with. They might be feeling upset, bewildered, frightened or conversely excited, full of energy, even hyperactive.

There have also been articles and video clips of schools in America using mindfulness sessions as an alternative to detentions. This again, I believe, is approaching things from completely the wrong angle. Mindfulness should ideally be taught when things are going right, not when things go wrong.

Yes, of course, I believe mindfulness should be an essential part of school life and it could be a game changer in allowing children to understand how their minds work, observing their thought processes and their reactions to situations. It also enables them to be more creative, observant, compassionate and resilient. But this all comes as a natural by-product, as does the ability to concentrate more successfully on the work they are expected to complete. As such, of course it should be an integral part of school life. But it should not, in my opinion, be utilised as that disciplinary tool. Mindfulness is so much more than that.

As a tutor for Mindfulness Now, Rachel shares a range of different techniques for teaching mindfulness to children and teenagers. For more information please visit the Mindfulness Now website
She also uses mindfulness strategies, along with hypnotherapy and coaching, with children and teenagers and their families, as well as adults in a private clinical therapy setting. For more information, please get in touch:
[email protected]
07733 839 591 – Rachel’s mobile
0121 444 1110 - Central England Therapy Centre, Kings Heath

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5 things to remember when introducing children (and adults) to mindfulness.

31/1/2017

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During this last week I was asked why anyone should do mindfulness with children.
Earlier that same day, there had been a news report which stated that 50% of all mental health problems are established by the age of 14 (www.mentalhealth.org.uk). Question answered I think.

Mindfulness is an effective way of helping anyone be more emotionally resilient. But it’s not all about sitting down with our eyes closed – in fact, children often respond in a far better way if this is not part of the plan, at least in the early days of their mindfulness experience.
Here are five very quick tips that you might like to remember in order for any mindfulness teaching of youngsters to be effective and enable them to become more emotionally resilient:

1. The most important! As with any teaching, it has to be FUN, otherwise what’s the point?! We all know that we learn best when we’re fully engaged, when we find something interesting, when it makes us smile. Mindfulness should not be a dry, dull subject – for anyone! Employing different ways of stimulating their interest, will enable children to make the most of their mindful experience. So utilise their own interests, sing the song, paint the picture, imagine the story and bring laughter into the equation too.

2. Remember that young children won’t necessarily have the vocabulary to describe how they might be feeling. Using words like ‘relaxed’, ‘stressed’, ‘calm’, and ‘tense’ are second nature to adults, but perhaps not so much for children. It’s therefore perhaps a good idea to have props available in order to help. I love the analogy of uncooked spaghetti for feeling tense, and cooked spaghetti for feeling relaxed.

3. To some degree or another, children are used to listening to stories, so make use of this skill by employing metaphors and imagination. It’s a proven way to tap into a deeper level of consciousness. A point can be made much more easily, and much memorably too, if it’s put across in the form of a short story. Children (and adults) will automatically make the story fit to the way they see the world, and it will therefore be much more effective. Visual metaphors are great – I often use a jar full of glittery water to explain how mindfulness works.

4. Whenever possible, bring into play all of the senses. Mindfulness is about bringing ourselves back to the present moment, time after time after time. And one of the easiest ways to do this is by focusing on our senses. Things like cooking, art and craft activities, or looking after a pet are all great ways of enabling us to experience life in the present moment.

5. And when you think the time is right, bring a focus to the child’s breathing, again remembering that suggestions we give might sound quite confusing to a young child. Here we can employ a myriad of techniques in order to help, for example, sitting their favourite teddy bear on their tummy when they’re lying down – if they’re breathing deeply teddy will rise into the air, but if they’re breathing from their chest teddy will stay put. Seaside windmills too are great for teaching the fact that they can have some degree of control over their own breathing in response to feeling anxious or upset.

If you’d like more information on using mindfulness with children then please get in touch.

As a tutor for Mindfulness Now, Rachel shares a range of different techniques for teaching mindfulness to children and teenagers. For more information please visit Mindfulness Now website
She also uses mindfulness strategies, along with hypnotherapy and coaching, with children and their families in a private clinical therapy setting. For more information, please get in touch:
[email protected]
07733 839 591 – Rachel’s mobile
0121 444 1110 - Central England Therapy Centre, Kings Heath

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5 steps to successful self-hypnosis

30/10/2016

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A brief outline of self-hypnosis for a more positive and calmer outlook

Many people like to use this technique to lift their mood if they’re feeling down. It’s also a great way to get a good night’s sleep!

For any self-hypnosis to be successful, it’s really important to:

1. Set aside time especially for you - even 5 minutes can work wonders but if you’ve got longer then great! If you’re pushed for time, ensure you’ll ‘awaken’ when you need to by using a timer app on your phone. Make sure you won’t be disturbed – turn the ringer on your landline down, switch notifications on your mobile to ‘off’, be prepared to ignore the doorbell. This is often the hardest thing to do – to become completely unconnected from the world. But once you’ve done it, you’ll feel the benefits.

2. Make yourself nice and comfy – lying down on the floor or your bed, or sitting in a favourite chair. Really tune in to how your body is feeling at that moment in time. Do a quick mental ‘body scan’ from the tips of your toes to the top of your head, noticing any areas of discomfort. Change position if you need to. Hypnosis isn’t about being perfectly still but once you’ve found a comfortable position you probably will be!

3. Allow your eyes to gently close – simple as that really. However if, for whatever reason, you’re not comfortable doing this just allow your eyes to gaze downwards towards the floor.

4. Focus on your breathing – just notice what’s going on with your breathing. Notice whether it feels deep, calm and relaxed or shallow, stressed and tense. You might like to make your breathing a little deeper, not forcing it but gently making each breath a little longer than the one before.

5. Imagine your favourite happy place – think of a favourite, happy place. Somewhere that is special for you, for whatever reason. It might be somewhere real that you’ve been to (a holiday destination, somewhere from your childhood or even the comfort of your own bed) or it could be somewhere completely made up like a fluffy cloud drifting through the sky, the middle of a rainbow, or the floor of the ocean. It really doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you imagine using all of your senses to make the experience feel real. What do you see? What can you hear? What tastes might there be? What sounds are you aware of? What is there that you can feel? And imagine all the good emotions that are associated with this happy place. Experience them as though they’re happening… because in your imagination, they are.

At the end of this self-hypnosis, give yourself a little time to bring yourself back to the ‘here and now’ and know that you can bring any positive feelings back with you to use in whatever you’ll be doing for the rest of your day.

Enjoy!

If you'd like someone to guide you into a hypnotic trance for relaxation or you would like to experience hypnosis for therapeutic reasons then do please get in touch:
Rachel's mobile: 07733 839 591
Central England Therapy Centre: 0121 444 1110
Email Rachel at [email protected]

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Using your imagination to change the world… or Why size really does matter!

31/8/2016

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Our brains are inextricably linked with our bodies. Whatever our body experiences our brain responds; and whatever thoughts we have our body responds. Our brains constantly try to make sense of the world by thinking and doing and responding.
Very often, if we’re facing a particular problem, we try to think our way out of it. And often this works. However, what if it’s not that easy? Perhaps we’re suffering from chronic anxiety, pain or a specific phobia. Sometimes, it’s not always so easy to simply think our way out of it.
A technique often used by hypnotherapists is that of ‘changing the submodalities’. This is a very effective and powerful way of changing the experience of an experience.
Have you ever thought about how you experience pain, for example. Often we just say we’ve got a headache, or toothache or that we pulled a muscle. Sometimes we might add extra detail, and try to explain what that pain feels like – “My head feels like it’s in a vice,” “A sharp shooting pain in my tooth,” or the “searing heat” of a torn muscle.
Hypnotherapy uses our way of experiencing the world to help us make changes. We all use particular representational systems. These are, for example, based on our senses. We see things, hear things, taste things, smell things, and feel things. This is how we experience the world.
Changing the submodalities is simply changing the way we experience things using our senses in our imagination. For example, can we change what we see in our imagination from colour to black and white – if so we might just be able to change our experience of whatever it is.
Can we represent our experience of pain as something we can use in our imagination? For example, does it have a shape, or a colour, or a texture? How big does it seem to be in our experience? If we can imagine this, then we have the potential to change our experience of it by changing the size, colour, texture etc – changing the submodalities.
There are many different techniques in hypnotherapy that utilize changing the submodalities, ranging from those used for phobia release, through to weight management, smoking cessation and pain. And they all have the potential to change how we experience things.
If you’d like more information on how hypnotherapy might be able to help you then do please get in touch:

Central England Therapy Centre 0121 444 1110
Rachel’s mobile at RMB Hypnotherapy 07733 839 591
email - [email protected]

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Helping children - from mainstream to mindful teacher.

23/1/2015

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This article was originally published in 'Hypnoversity' Winter/Spring 2015.

I had used general relaxation techniques informally a few times during my time as a primary school teacher (especially when the children came in from a long, hot, sticky dinnertime with short fuses and 100 different stories relating to their social time outside). I found that a just a few minutes spent in this way was hugely beneficial and had a knock-on effect for the rest of the day.

So, with the intention of using it back in schools at some point, it was with much interest that I set about completing the Mindfulness Now course with Nick Cooke and Aston Colley in May 2014, learning more about various techniques and the 7 elements of mindfulness as outlined by western mindfulness guru Jon Kabat-Zinn:

non-striving
non-judgemental
acceptance
letting go
trust
patience
beginner’s mind

It was emphasised throughout the course that we, as prospective mindfulness practitioners, should also try to practise these elements in our everyday lives, both formally and informally. So far, so good.

It was during the first two sessions back in a mainstream primary school but working as a Teacher of Mindfulness with just six children (all of whom had been targeted specifically as needing mindfulness as a tool) that I realized it wasn’t going to be as simple as I had first envisaged. Their specific behavioural and social needs really tested number 5 on that list - my own trust in what I was doing!

I, personally, was in a transition phase between being a mainstream teacher and being a mindfulness practitioner, and having begun to practise the 7 attitudes in my own life, I was finding it increasingly difficult to enforce rules for behaviour that I had previously been so familiar with. I had read articles saying things along the lines of “Sometimes we have to let go and just allow the children’s energy to find their own balance” (www.mindbodygreen.com) and “Although it may be tempting to use mindfulness as a disciplinary tool, mindfulness should not be used to demand a certain behaviour. It inherently includes the quality of acceptance,” (www.greatergood.berkeley.edu).

What many of us may tend to forget is the fact that children are naturally mindful. They perhaps do not have to be still and quiet and calm in order to be practising mindfulness. Most children are naturally excited, inquisitive and on-the-go, experiencing all that life throws at them without too much worry. The children I was working alongside needed acceptance of who they are, what they do, why they behave in certain ways, how they do things and see things sometimes quite differently from the rest of us. Many children, because of their specific needs, find it incredibly difficult to sit still and to be quiet. So should we expect this from them?

Adults tend to conform. And if they do not like mindfulness or think it is not for them, then they have the choice as to whether they come back next time. These children did not have the choice. It was my job, therefore, to achieve a balance between ‘I know what I’m talking about and therefore you need to do it this way’ and ‘Let’s just see how you do this for yourselves because you might actually know better than I do’.

I’m still learning. And I hazard a guess I’ll still be learning in however many years down the line.

Two things seem to be for sure though: 1) The number of children who exhibit behavioural and social issues, and could benefit hugely from mindfulness, seems to continue to rise and 2) The number of teachers and support staff experiencing high levels of stress due to the inherent demands of the job, also continues to grow. As a result, I can see that mindfulness will continue to be an increasingly valuable tool for use in both primary and secondary schools.

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In2 minds

Mindfulness in school - should it really be used to demand a certain behaviour?

5 things to remember when introducing children (and adults) to mindfulness.

5 steps to successful self-hypnosis

Using your imagination to change the world… or Why size really does matter!

Helping children - from mainstream to mindful teacher.

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