Raising Spiritual Children: Meditation

Meditation for kids seems to be a popular genre in recent years. I’ve read numerous articles describing the benefits of meditation in general and seen evidence of schools putting it into practice, with rows and rows of students, eyes closed, focusing on their breath.

Of course, I am all for this, seeing the benefits of meditation applying no matter the age, but there is a stress on mindfulness that may be misplaced. 

Mindfulness seems to be the new catchword for anything having to do with meditation. Mindfulness, in general, is the idea of focusing on the present moment and being aware of your thoughts. A great practice.

But…let’s be honest…how many times have you tried a mindfulness meditation, trying to keep your attention on your breath, and just become frustrated or given up after a few minutes? Mindfulness, while an amazing technique, is not an easy practice for most people, especially kids.

Mindfulness also is not the only version of meditation, or even perhaps, dare I say, the best form of meditation for kids. 

Personally, my favorite type of meditation for kids, and most adults as well, is some sort of visualization exercise. Giving the mind an image or scene to focus on is much easier than telling someone to “be aware of their breath”. 

It also sets the mind up perfectly for being receptive to symbolic information offered by the higher self or spirit guides. The spiritual world communicates in symbols, by training the mind to visualize and experience the internal world, you allow yourself (or children) to start to understand how the spirit world communicates.

With that in mind, I wanted to point out my favorite meditations that are available for children. I actually recommend these for both children and adults, even though they use imagery that children may respond to, they are great for adults as well.

In our household, we use the New Horizon Meditation and Sleep Stories available through youtube videos or on their app. These meditations give a great backdrop to any meditation practice. 

I specifically like how the narrator walks you into a scene, giving you both visual, sound, and touch prompts in the internal world that is created. After establishing the self in the scene for a few minutes, she usually will leave the individual in the presence of a wiser animal guide or being to ask questions to or just give a few minutes to enjoy and feel the sensation of the scene that you are in.

This page also has meditations for adults, but, truthfully, I have yet to use them so I can’t recommend them currently, but I will likely try them out at some point. There are also meditations designed to help a child get to sleep, but again, I have not used those either.

Generally, I like to scroll randomly throughout the page and just pick whichever meditations stick out to me or have an image that catches my eye (or is the length of time that we have available to commit to it). There are so many that I don’t repeat them often.

Have you tried any meditations from this page or do you have any favorites? 

Some of the favorites that we have used are: