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Little is done within formal education to help them learn
to understand themselves, to control their anxieties and to
discover harmony and balance within themselves. Little is
done to help them manage their own inner lives, to use their
mental energy productively instead of dissipating it in worries
and random thinking, and to access the creative levels of
their own minds.
Meditation
is one of the most important ways in which we can help young
children cope better with their lives at both the personal
and academic level. Meditation gives even very young children
power over their thinking and emotions, not by controlling
or suppressing them, but by self-acceptance
and self-understanding.
Children
are impressionable and very open to being influenced by adults.
Thus any attempt to introduce them to meditation must be done
sensitively and wisely and must empower them not only to meditate
but also to judge its usefulness for themselves. Of all activities
meditation is perhaps the one where success depends upon voluntary
participation. In addition as meditation involves working
upon one’s own mind, children should be given the right
to accept or reject it, as they think fit.
The success of meditation also depends on how enjoyable you
the teacher find teaching meditation to children. If you enjoy
teaching it, there is every chance that your children will
enjoy learning it.
Modified
and Excerpted from Teaching Meditation to Children by David
Fontana and Ingrid Slack.
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