5 Unique Initiatives Teaching Mindfulness to Kids
WYMBIN YOGA , WWW.WYMBINYOGA.COM
As supporters and promoters of mindfulness for kids, at home and at school, and the role that passing on a mindful approach to life can have on children, we’re always on the lookout for others around the world that share our enthusiasm and beliefs.
We’ve collected up our some of our favourite organisations and initiatives we’ve come across on Instagram and the internet to inspire you and share examples of people creating change in their communities by teaching kids a more mindful way of living.
Here are five of our favourites:
1. Whole Beings Holistic education centre for kids
Burleigh, Gold Coast, Australia
Whole Beings was founded by two teachers who also happen to be sisters, who believe that the mind, body, and spirit of a child should be nurtured holistically to help them grow into all that they can be. Peace, compassion and gratitude, a connection to the natural world and the community are all part of their belief system they pass on to the children they teach.
A holistic non-standard approach to educating each individual learner for who they are is employed here with all their students. Whole Beings have offerings for young children to play, learn and create as well as after-school programs for school-aged children and teens to nurture each child's spiritual growth, guide them to use kindness, positive affirmations, and EFT as a mindfulness tool. Whole Beings’ revolutionary approach to education makes us excited for the future of education systems and all the possibilities we have available to us if we dare to think outside the box!
We connect very strongly with Wymbin Yoga’s reason for being, based on ‘a deep belief that by starting with today's youth, we can start to change the world.’ We started Making Mindful Magic because of an awakening in our own lives of the powers of mindful living and everything that comes with it but realised that the place to start was with our children.
Wymbin is a children and youth yoga studio that focuses on providing families with wellness education, movement-based classes, and an inclusive community environment in Calgary, Alberta in Canada. They believe that through all these initiatives they can help kids flourish and grow!
Wymbin Yoga offers a variety of classes for kids including different variations & styles of yoga, dance, movement, meditation, and mindfulness including some very cool sounding parent and child classes families can do together.
3. Holistic Life Foundation
Implementing daily meditation and movement practices in schools and providing high-quality yoga and mindfulness education to individuals and communities.
Baltimore, USA
The Holistic Life Foundation is a Baltimore-based non-profit organization committed to nurturing the wellness of children and adults in underserved communities. Through a holistic approach helping children to develop their inner lives through yoga, mindfulness, and self-care, they’ve served 14 different schools in the Baltimore area.
The Holistic Life Foundation come in and train the students over a short period of time to lead their own classmates in stretches, breathing exercises, centering exercises and meditation. Students continue to lead their classes through these exercises regularly once the foundation has done their job, meaning these practices are sustained over long periods of time leading to happy, healthy, stress-free, relaxed, and peaceful students.
We found this incredible organisation through a great article on CNN talking about how The Holistic Life Foundation helped a school replace detention with a Mindful Moment Room to help kids re-centre and think about what they’d done instead of being punished.
Choir for children of displaced populations living in a refugee camp
Berlin, Germany
In 2016, The Hutto Project came into an emergency refugee camp outside Berlin with the objective of creating a creative music and performance program for the asylum-seeking children living in the camp. For the duration of the project, which has now ended as the camp is no longer in operation, they provided space, time, and musical instruction — 90 minutes, three times a week — for children ages three to fourteen from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Moldova, and Vietnam. Together, they explored music theory and performance, created original choral music and movement pieces, and collaborated with artists of all disciplines and ages.
The objective of the initiative which we wholeheartedly applaud and agree with, was about providing consistency to these children, displaced from their homes, countries and everything they knew, fostering self-expression, and building bridges between the many cultures living in the small community.
They found that structure also had a big impact on the kids, whose days were otherwise free-form, chaotic, and random in the absence of a formal schooling program in the camp. We believe strongly in the power of music and creative expression as important parts of mindful living for kids, music can even act as meditation as we wrote about recently in our post on 5 Easy Ways to use Music as a Mindfulness and Meditation Tool for Kids.
5. Jamie’s Food Revolution Mindful eating, healthy food and food education for kids
UK, USA and Australia
Access to good, fresh, real food and the basic skills to cook it has the power to transform kids’ lives, and that’s what the Jamie Oliver Food Foundation is all about. Jamie’s Food Revolution aims to improve the health and happiness of future generations, through the food they eat. From their food education programmes to their national and international campaigns that influence policy on key issues, they aim to revolutionise the way people feed themselves and their families.
Two of Jamie’s projects we love are; the Kitchen Garden Project, empowering primary school teachers to integrate growing and cooking into the school day, and the Ministry of Foods practical and hands-on community-based cooking programme that teaches people of all ages how to cook. Food is the only fuel we give our bodies, and part of a mindful approach to life is being mindful of the food we eat and how we eat it, looking after our bodies, minds and spirits and giving us and our kids the best chance to thrive and grow.
