What is Mindfulness for Children with Eline Snel Method? What are achievements?
The content of the programs consisting 8 weeks meetings, consists of following main titles:
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1.lesson: Observation and Focusing, meeting with breath
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2.lesson: Listening to your body .Body awareness
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3.lesson: Tasting, smelling, hearing, seeing and feeling
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4.lesson: Patience, faith and letting go
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5.lesson: You can feel feelings
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6.lesson: The wondrous world of thoughts
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7.lesson: it’s fun to be kind
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8.lesson:The Secret of happiness
“Mindfulness Education for Children” that was developed by Eline Snel who is a therapist and educator and writer of the book named “Sitting still like a Frog”, is based on MBSR Program that was developed by John Kabat Zinn.
Eline Snel established an academy to provide conscious awareness education for children. Her method was found very successful and taken into curriculum by Ministry of National Education in Netherlands. After Netherlands, this method started to attract attention in Belgium, France, Germany, England, Spain, Switzerland, Argentine and Hong-Kong and there are common practices in these countries. During 8 weeks, breath exercises where we learn to direct our attention to our breath with children, meditations prepared for children, movement exercises, storytelling that support program subjects are performed.
How awareness is improved at children step by step by given educations?
Mindfulness is to stop at the moment, is to kindly accept what is inside and outside without judging by observing what is inside and the environment with a clear attention, by demonstrating compassion for ourselves. Instead of living in automated pilot and reacting, it is not to live at automated pilot by increasing awareness in the moment and it is to select reaction that you will give. Alright, how do we do that? Firstly, it is not easy to stay at the moment since our brains works as a thought factory and as a linking machine and this factory is never closed, it consistently produces thought. A human thinks 50.000 things daily in average. On the other hand, our mind jumps backwards and forwards in a moment and we see that we found ourselves thinking about a work that we will do in evening or something that has happened a short time ago while we were here and now. Our thoughts jump backwards and forwards as a frog. Without recognizing ourselves, we found ourselves living in automated pilot away from the moment we live in.
In the moment when we recognize that our thoughts jump backwards and forwards, we kindly turn back to the moment we live again by working with children, we do various exercises and meditations with children where we demonstrate observing breath. A child recognizing that her/his attention moves away from that moment, comes to that moment by observing her/his breath. That child can look at awareness again by exiting from automated pilot and can look at feelings inside and environment.
Even if mind jumps can arise after these comebacks can be done with exercises that we do, we accomplish to remain in the moment by coming back every time, and this time, we do exercises to accept what happens in there without prejudice, kindly and with compassion when we observe our inner world. We do “Personal Weather Report Study” that Eline Snel fictionalized to recognize and accept our feelings and to pass through feelings. As Eline indicated in preface of her book named “Be calm and attentive as a frog”, this study is one of the most loved exercises of John Kabat Zinn. It is a prefect exercise for me where I observe its miracle at children and where I experience myself firstly.
When we observe our inner world, there might be unpleasant feelings and thoughts in there and it is hard to accept unpleasant feelings. We are working with children on description and acceptance unpleasant feelings that they feel, since it is very important how you describe these unpleasant feelings in acceptance stage:
The difference between I feel myself angry now” and “I am an angry person”, is very determinant.
The difference between “I feel myself unhappy” and “I am an unhappy person”, is very important.
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When you exist in that moment with a clear attention and when you approach what is inside without judging yourself mercilessly as I mentioned above, and by demonstrating compassion to yourself, you find courage inside to dare passing through all your feelings. When I say accepting your feelings, thoughts, what is in us at that moment, without judgment and gently, I talk about this.
A child who can describe her/his feeling that she/he can say that she/he is angry at the moment in this way begins to show compassion to herself/himself, she/he knows that she/he can be happy, smart, calm as well as angry, she/he admits that she/he is angry, anyway, as soon as you accept something, you become ready to quit. She/he lives that moment as much as it is, without putting concerns of the past and the future on her/his present feelings, and it becomes easy to let it go when her/his emotion passes.
About the things happening outside, when you complete what you live and let it happen as much as you see, hear, perceive, all of a sudden, a possible reaction from you is prevented. Most importantly, you obtain an area where you can choose how to behave at that moment.
When a child experiences observing without prejudice by focusing on the five senses with “Dry grape” exercise, she/he can stay in the moment with feelings that she/he feels via sense organs. A child enjoys exploration with a clear perception away from prejudices. A child recognizes things that she/he have never recognized before.
Concentration / Focusing
You tell a child that she/he cannot concentrate, cannot pay attention, but that means nothing to that child. You must first describe the moment when a child cannot concentrate. If a child knows how to observe herself/himself when she/he is unable to concentrate, she/he begins to understand what is inability to concentrate. You cannot change anything without understanding it.
The specially prepared snow globe, including the frog, which Snel uses as a metaphor, is very useful at this point. The snow globe represents children's hearts and minds overflowing with thoughts and feelings. When she/he is in action as the snow globe, thoughts fly in the air. This frog, who has no vision with its thoughts, cannot concentrate. The frog, which cannot even see its front, goes in a completely chaotic state. But when we stop it, its vision is lighted gradually, thoughts are started to get calm and grown. Thus, a child looks at the status of that frog and understands what it means.
Everything starts with stopping in this sense, being able to stop and it is not easy to stop. We talked about standing mentally, standing physically is also important.
Body awareness is very important to be able to stop. We feel everything with our body. Our body has a perception as a whole, it has a sense as if it is a sense organ. All emotions and thoughts have a corresponding in our body. Our body cannot always keep up with what we want to do. The things that we want to do, might never end, we might want to run for hours, we might want to walk around with an undershirt in a cold weather, we might want to wake up early in the morning and we might not want to sleep even though we will wake up early again, we might want to play games on a mobile phone for hours but there is a limit what our body can do and can hold. In fact, our body gives us a “Stop” signal, a signal sating that something is not right. Our body has a limit, and it is very important to feel this limit and not to push yourself.
A child finds the answer of the question that how much of exercises we do, are sufficient for your body, by exploring limits of her/his body. The word sufficient is very important here, she/he has to discover her/his own sufficient. When children experience this, they grasp it immediately and masterfully describe what they feel in their bodies.
Stop
Observe
Relax
Make a Choice
Stop, instead of living in automated pilot and reacting. Observe with a clear attention what is happening inside and in environment, stay in the moment by focusing on your breath and relax by focusing on your breath, select your reaction.
Children have a judgmental mind, and if a friend does not care about her/him in that day as much as they imagined, they immediately start writing a bad scenario. This is also the case in adults, for example, think about it, you start to ask “What did happen, what did I do?” when a friend behaves you out of your expectation and mostly, you learn that she/he behaved you in that way due to a reason out of you. It is very good for children to learn to look at these moments without prejudice and to be able to perceive what is happening.
I received this education, but children taught me Mindfulness. Actually, I always existed as myself in the exercises I did with the children. The more you can practice and feel all these exercises as educator, the more you guide. I have always practiced this in my 20 years of teaching life. This was also something Eline Snel told us in the education.
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As a teacher, I can say that it is very important to learn something by experiencing it to realize internalization in a subject. I think this is one of the secrets of success of this method. A child experiences everything and makes an inference from her/his own experience.
Awareness Education is not a problem solver. The way you meet a problem changes your perception.
Inquiry
Deep dialog is made after exercises and meditations that are made in the education. After performed exercises and meditations, a child speaks as she/he wants if she/he wants about her/his feelings and thoughts. When it is considered how much speaking is important in terms of therapeutic improvement and feeling regulation, this part is a very important part of education.
Observed effects of Mindfulness Education:
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Increase in attention and concentration
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Decrease in impulsive behavior
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Decrease in negative thoughts and concern
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Decrease in fear and depression
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Ability to approach with a calmer mind for events and situations
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Decrease in reactional behaviors against stress and others’ behaviors
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Being kind and respecting firstly to themselves and then others
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Ability to be an individual who is more harmonized with her/his friends, family and environment
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Ability to reach to maximum point of personal academic capacities
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Getting better in sleeping quality
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Decrease in peer bullying
According to Dr. Dan Siegel who is a psychiatry professor in UCLA Medical Faculty, performing his studies in Mindful Awareness Research Center in UCLA and Mindsight Institute, children who had Mindful education, deal with stress conditions in different ways and can establish a better empathy with others and make different choices in conflict situations. They demonstrate a more conscious and peaceful attitude than a reactional movement. Attention is good for brains of all developing children.
Mindfulness exercises are like tempering a musical instrument before playing it. So why don’t we temper our learning tools before using them? In today's world, an increasing number of schools have started to give a permanent place for awareness in their curriculum. Because by doing this, you do not only encourage learning, but also encourage self-confidence, focus, creativity and compassion. Thus, the brain relaxes, impulsive behavior and stress-related reactions are reduced. Calmness and focused attention are the right of every child.