Teach Kids To Breathe While Meditating

Video Transcript

"Hi, welcome to Expert Village. I am Sharon Tessandori thanks for being here. So once you have assumed your position for your seated meditation, there's a couple of things that you can do with your hands. One being that you can have your palms resting faced down on top of your knees. This is typically a position which is a little bit more grounding and centering for your body and your mind. Or you can have palms facing up which is typically a position which it allows our body and our mind to be more open and receptive to things. Either position your hands will feel relaxed, the fingertips may curl up. So just decide if you want palms down or palms up. Close your eyes sit up tall and we'll begin by really concentrating on the breathing. So with meditation there might be those moments that are few and far between in which we experience a true mediative state. So until then we use a technique or a tool that we can concentrate and focus on and we'll begin by using the breath. So you're going to inhale and exhale and if it feels okay take the breath through the nostrils. If you're used to practicing yoga this should feel very comfortable to you. Then once you tune into your breath there are a couple of things that you can do as far as staying with the breathing. You could just focus on the sensations and the quality of your breath, what it feels like, how it effects your body or you could silently count to yourself. Depending on the capacity of your lungs anywhere from a count of maybe 3 to 6 with both the inhales and the exhales just letting the breath rise and fall come and go. And then another technique that you can explore is a mantra meditation. So a mantra is a word, a thought, a phrase, a prayer, it could be numerous things that you can stay with while you're in your seated mediation practice and you'll continue to use the breath in that. You're inhaling and exhaling and coordinating the word or words with the breaths. Now one traditional mantra technique is the so-hum breath, which means I am that. So with your inhales you're silently saying so and with your exhales you're silently saying hum, just continuing to inhale and exhale and repeat."