"Sport is one of the most mindful activities anyone can undertake. When a person is playing sport, they are in the moment. Being competitive is part of our nature and can be seen as positive if viewed through the eyes of interconnectedness. Children want to work hard and play well for each other. Working hard shows how using right effort, loving-speech, and right action can help us reach our full potential. Playing for a team and showing effort is what should bring us pleasure as much as winning...
Losing provides us with valuable lessons in accepting the suffering which can come with this. How best to deal with those feelings is an important part of why we continue to take part in competitive sport with children. We should give children the skills on how to deal with this using mindfulness practises." - @mindfulpedagogy When students come to my class, they know that before we even warm up, we have a daily mindful practice. As a school that practises mindfulness daily, I believe that it is imperative for them to have fluidity and repetition in this area throughout the curriculum and school day. After the students line up and prepare themselves to come into the gymnasium, they are given a set of instructions to follow for our mindful activity. In my class, we use many different mindful practises that range from a 3-5 minute "starfish" (pictured towards the bottom of the page), to something as simple as doing our five mindful breaths of choice.
This practise is a great way to start a lesson even before physical activity as it focuses the students right away. Usually, students are quite excited to get to class and get started immediately, which can affect their awareness. By beginning class with a mindful exercise, it gives the students a chance to focus their energy, concentrate on the present, while acknowledging their current mood, thoughts, and feelings in order to better prepare them for our activities and the rest of the day. If need be, I will get the students moving right away if they are "overexcited," and then bring them in to do some mindfulness practise after they have expended some extra energy.
Finger breathing is the act of coordinating your mindful breathing with your hands and fingers. Students inhale slowly and deeply while running their pointer finger of one hand up their thumb on the other hand. Once they get to the top of the thumb with the pointer finger, they should be done with their inhalation. They then run the pointer finger down the other side of the thumb while they exhale. They continue this for all five fingers, completing five breaths at their own pace. I generally ask my students to either close their eyes or turn their gaze down for the activity.
A Starfish is whenthe students enter the gymnasium in silence, get a "poke ball" or "koosh ball," and find their own space anywhere they want. They then perform a "starfish," lying on their back. Once they are in this position, they close their eyes and/or focus on the "koosh ball" rising and falling with each breath. Some students keep their eyes open and focus on the "koosh ball" if they wish. This usually lasts the length of the calming song that is playing for the exercise.
Another exercise that I like to do is called circle breathing. The students enter the gymnasium quietly, forming a circle in the middle so everyone has enough personal space. I then let the students choose from a few different types of breathing that they know of (finger breathing, petal breathing, dolphin breathing, etc.). Sometimes, I even let the students come up with a new style of breathing to add to our repertoire. One example of this is "crab breathing." The students came up with the idea of resting their hands on their knees or keeping them in the air to do their breaths while using "crab claw" movements as they inhale and exhale.