Summer is here! This summer we are doing a Meditation program for Religious Education, which we started last Sunday. Here is the Taking It Home from the first class:
Taking it Home – Mindfulness
Mindfulness, which means an alert awareness of what is going on around one and inside one’s own head, is closely related to concentration. Exercises in either will help the other, and both will also help memory as children are much less likely to remember things to which they didn’t pay attention. Meditation, which refers to a variety of techniques to enhance mind control and awareness, can provide these exercises and in the process touch most aspects of human experience, making them all potentially richer, profounder, and more meaningful. For children today, little is done to help them understand themselves, control their anxieties and thought processes, or discover harmony, balance, and tranquility within themselves. For these, and many more reasons, we are practicing meditation in the religious education classes this summer.
This Sunday we did an exercise to meditate on a day we remember as being particularly fun or joyful, and to concentrate on the step-by-step progression of that day (what we wore, what we ate, who spoke to us and what they said, what the weather was like). We also did the memory game where you study a tray of objects and then try to list them after the tray is covered. To bring this mindfulness home, you can practice really noticing the world around you this week, and if you like you can do the meditation on a day in the evening and reflect back through the day you just had. Adults can try this too!
