Updated: May 17
Being a kid in today’s world, pandemic aside, is hard!
Life has so many more complexities than I remember growing up. We have technology, screens, phones, social media and, honestly, far more activities to keep kids occupied. How do they balance it all? How do we, as parents, help them? How can we raise happy and healthy kids while integrating with the times? One solution that I keep coming back to is breathwork. Mindfulness doesn’t have to be boring! As Tara Brach, meditation teacher and psychologist, says, “everything works better once you’ve unplugged it for a while.” Just like that finicky internet router or that aggravating printer that just won't work, sometimes the fix is simply unplug it for a while to give it a hard reset.
How can we teach children to reset and calm a dysregulated or flooded nervous system, especially when emotionally overwhelmed or overstimulated? Where’s the human reset button? It turns out it’s in our diaphragm. If we breathe slowly and deeply, focusing on our exhale, we may be able to access it enough to press it and restart our nervous systems.
Breath. It’s absolutely necessary for our survival. It also says a lot about how we are doing. I bet as you are reading this, you are becoming more aware of your own breathing habits. I bet you can imagine a time when you were emotionally dysregulated and your breath was short and choppy.
These are times when we are flooded or stressed and our bodies are experiencing a fight-or-flight response.
While our m