Meditation in the Classroom

I have been practicing meditation since I was a teenager. I was first introduced to it while I studied Jiujitsu, a Japanese style martial art, for many years back in my hometown of Ypsilanti. At the time, I did not comprehend what my instructors were trying to convey to me or the purpose of the meditative postures and breath work I was being taught. However, I would always gravitate to some sort of meditative practice, whether that consisted of just being still physically, being mindful of my thoughts and actions, or assuming some type of yoga posture and observing my breathing. I did this because it relaxed me and it felt good.

While I owned my art school, Lascaux Academy, I even even experimented teaching meditation to some of our students. I gathered a group of 7 and 8 year olds during their break time from one of our summer camp sessions and asked them to watch their belly as they breathed. It didn’t go well though, because they either broke out in laughter and couldn’t concentrate or they got bored and walked away. This was an eye-opening experience for me. Teaching children the value of meditation and mindfulness is not easy.

But I did not give up as I tried meditating together with my staff members, or encourage my staff to practice sitting still with their students during breaks from their art projects. We even taught camps that incorporated yoga postures or exercises from Thich Nhat Hanhs’s book, Planting Seeds: Practicing Mindfulness with Children.

Meditation in the Classroom