This article offers mindfulness techniques for teens in an understanding manner that can be practiced by families or even friends. Eliciting the state of mindfulness works best in improving the mental health of teenagers and making them feel calm in the process. Sometimes, finding activities that suits a teen can however be difficult. Mindfulness Activities for teens helps the teens to practice being mindful when they are going about their day to day tasks. Mindfulness practice may also be undertaken in a group or with a facilitator. More chances of improved mental health, less worry and increased awareness of one’s environment is accrued from the few benefits that mindfulness has.
Mindfulness Activities For Teens Can Now Reduce Stress!
As a teenager, there are school activities, other social responsibilities including going through social media, and unbearable peer influence, which can potentially cause stress – and more often than not, this stress is not far off because of overworking oneself. There are times indeed when one would feel like it is too much pressure and this is understandable. There, however, exist a few straightforward techniques that can incorporate a relaxation routine that tends to the teeming society of teenagers experiencing stress.
One of the activities of mindfulness that is quite good for adolescents is called “body scanning,”. This includes concentrating on each part of the body and observing what feelings or sensations exist in them. People can either be on their backs or sit upright rather straight. When a person is sitting straight, their attention can also be on their breathing which involves in and out breathing. Another much effective mindfulness for the adolescent’s teenage is ‘mindful walking.
This only means that you have to observe the environment while walking. This method really helps in disconnecting with the pressures of life and focusing on what it is that one loves.
It is crucial bearing in mind that not all the Mindfulness Activities for Teens presented in this article will probably be effective with every person because people are different and respond differently. Hence, after doing activity of looking at all the Mindfulness Activities for Teens, take yours!
Mindfulness Activities For Teens To Reduce Stress
Stress is a factor in the life of everyone including the teens which is where most people are in their adolescence. A lot of things cause excessive worry – school, peers, family, and plans. One might find it quite stressful and one becomes so stressed it is hard to find rest. However, do not fret, there is ample stress relief. One of those is mindfulness acceptance.
Mindfulness is simply being conscious of one’s internal dialogue at a given point in time. When you are being mindful you are engaged in the now where you do everything here and now without thinking about what happened before or what comes next. This often convinces you and makes you feel relaxed.
Mindful Breathing Activity For Teens
Your breath may become fast and shallow when you’re tense, making it difficult to suffuse enough oxygen into your blood. You might even feel like you have to swiftly catch your breath at times. The reason here is that the body, especially the brain, does not have an understanding of whether you need to inhale or exhale.
Even though it is hard to calm down, perhaps, the reason why you feel short of breath as a result of stress is because, in all honesty, your brain is working extra hard to provide just enough oxygen for you to last your way through the day. This means that most likely, when you do catch your breath, your body feels like it would take a second or two for the body to engineer out that extra burden.
The good news is that you don’t have to do anything to ‘catch your breath’ because you do not have to do anything as your body already knows how to ‘catch your breath’. The key here is to understand what is happening and consciously try to control it.
Mindful Eating Activity For Teens
Stress makes most people eat more than what they would normally do. Usually reaching out for a whole bag of chips or any other food is not advisable, rather put your hand in and take a very few number of chips, taste a few and try the next thing. You should chew your food very well. This helps in preventing you from inhaling food and makes the food more palatable. This allows you to quickly feel satiated and aids the body in digestion.
Mindful Walking Activity For Teens
When dealing with stress, it is easy to encourage ourselves to walk faster or even briskly than we usually do. If you do this, you may incur shin splints or some form of overuse injuries to your legs and feet. Maintaining an awareness of ones movement, walking neither fast paced nor slow should be preferred. One should allow one’s pace or speed to be tempered. If it is extended towards a medium pace of walking then a slower pace should be maintained. If some force is making me halt, I should first do that fluidly and then completely.
“The calmer you are, the more mindful you can be.” – Dr. Madhu Kotiya
5 Mindfulness Activities for Teenagers to Engage on to Calm and Cheer the Mind
Teenagers today seem to be under more stress than before. With school on one end, preparations for some activities and social obligations on the other end, they are often left feeling stressed. Mindfulness activities for teenagers help them relax as well as concentrate. Here are 5 fun and easy ideas for mindfulness activities for teens, mindful activities for students, or mindfulness activities for middle school grade students:
Gratitude Listing: A Focused Mindfulness Activity for Teens
One basic activity that is helpful to adolescents is engaging in gratitude listing. This focuses their attention over the fairly negative aspects of life and stress levels decrease. Write such things as health, family love and anything else that is positive about a person and goes over these points in their mind. This exercise aids in moving the attention of the individual from the stressful aspects to the expansion aspects of life, the appreciation of life.
Take a Breath of Fresh Air: Nature Walk as a Grown Up Relaxation Technique
As we have established above, interaction with nature brings about relief. One finds mountains and the sea while others find hiking and camping or fishing soothing. Activities like those mentioned above relieve your stress and calm your mind, and allow future concentration. It is about looking at it in ways that encourage people to do more of observing and participating in nature.
Expressive Art: Draw or Paint Your Current Emotions
Art is one of the most effective tools for self expression and emotion management for the adolescents. Teenage youth on the other hand however have the opportunity to take part in this activity, be it a poem, a drawing or even haiku, which requires them to, in this case, express and understand their emotions in a creative way.
Soothing Sounds: Incorporating Music and Audiobooks into Mindfulness
Teens can very well use this approach for light relaxation by listening to soft music or audiobooks and entering a tranquil state of mind. This can include:
Nature Sounds
Nature sounds are conducive for sleep and relaxation. They serve well when placed at night and during the day to bring calmness.
Sleep Music
They are sleep music composed for the purpose of time for unwinding and as an aid in getting rest, a mind that is troubled may wish to sleep like this or when stressed.
Instrumental Music
In the case of property, instrumental helps turn and/or wander the minds; this may provide useful background support for rest or creative thinking processes.
Journaling: Reflective Writing as a Mindfulness Exercise
A diary or journal may be quite beneficial to adolescent members when it comes to practicing mindfulness in this case. It provides an outlet to process feelings, organize, and rationalize experiences and things such as thankfulness. Practicing self reflection regularly can help see the good parts even when one is dealing with negative situations.
Teen Mindfulness Activities for Students
Regardless of the age of students, being mindful is a very important life skill that everyone should work on in this day and age. For this reason, participation in mindfulness exercises for interior teens is vital as they help one center oneself. There are five such activities which have been devised especially for those students who would like to de-stress.
Mindful Coloring
Coloring can also be termed as an art activity but it is actually one of the best mindfulness based task for teenagers. It makes you stay in the present and is a great creative way to express oneself, it also relieves stress. Search for different types of color books that will captivate and calm the mind.
Gardening: A Grounding Activity
This is one of the best mindfulness based activities for teenagers, as it allows them to be in the moment as it helps them feel more centered with the nature and the now. It’s a beautiful getaway, which can assist the students in soothing their frayed nerves and feeling more present. Call some friends over to make it even more fun and therapeutic.
Meditation Practices
As it does for students of any level or age range, meditation is one of the initial mindfulness skills taught to teenagers to relieve stress and help them feel more connected. Regardless if it is done privately or in a group, meditation is considered to be greatly beneficial in improving one’s concentration and peace of mind. Look for offline or online meditation meets for students in your area or on other out reaches.
Sports and Physical Activities
Involvement in physical activities, for young adults especially, can also be deemed as an effective means of practicing mindfulness because it serves as a healthy way of relieving stress whilst keeping one in the here and now. Be it sports or a workout, such activities will give one a way of letting go of the stress and living in the moment.
Yoga for Mindfulness
Yoga is more than asana practice, it’s a more interactive form of body movement that incorporates technique and is suitable for teens. It assists in self regulation, breath, flexibility as well as preparation for meditative practices. Check how yoga can help in keeping the right mental composure at school regardless of the hectic nature of the student’s life.
Mindfulness Activities for Adolescent Groups
You’re all very welcome to this workshop that seeks to introduce the participants to the practice of mindfulness, which literally means paying attention to the present moment, to our thoughts, behaviours, feelings and sensations that are happening here and now. The advantage of practicing mindfulness is that we can be able to gain an improved and enhanced level of calmness, concentration and general wellbeing.
We have a number of exercises; mindfulness games, that will space or time in which we will be able to practice the focus of being mindful, as a group. And remember, there is no right way or wrong way of performing these exercises. The focus is on learning and finding out what suits you best. Alright then, lets get ready to begin with the practice of mindfulness.
Mindful Breathing
Let’s start our session with a mindfulness practice – Mindful Breathing. Sit somewhere cozy, or close your eyes or rest them gently at a point closer to the ground. Inhale deeply and through the nose so as to fill the entire lung capacity and then exhale through the mouth. Concentrate on how your breath goes into the body and comes out. Feel how the belly extends with every breath and collapses once the air is out. However, if your attention drifts away, return it back to breathing. Do this for a couple of minutes.
Body Scan
Let’s proceed to the Body Scan exercise. Get into a comfortable position by either lying down or sitting. With your eyelids closed, focus your attention on any part of the body. We will gradually move our attention to the various body sections starting from our toes and moving upwards. If there are certain parts of the body being examined, see what feels good, what is tense, or what is relaxed. There is no right or wrong approach; just observe everything as it is. When we are done, come back to the room gently.
Five Senses Mindfulness
Here comes the Five Senses Mindfulness activity. Get in a comfortable position and close your eyes. We will be looking at each of our five senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch separately. What can you see or hear or smell or taste or feel around you? Make sure you take your time and indulge every sense. Try to be as purely observatory as you can, without judgment, without trying to think of why any one thing is there. In a few minutes open your eyes slowly.
Gratitude Journaling
Let us Try Gratitude Journaling. You will distribute journals or notebooks and writing devices for everyone. Gratitude means the appreciation of the good things of life. Every day write three things you are grateful for. Think of all that you can and include both the most obvious and those that are less apparent in their larger perspective. Especially what are the positive things and how do these aspects make you feel as a person. It is also possible to use a journal in this way by looking for any change in thoughts or attitude.—sustained change over time.
Mindful Walking
Finally, there is the last one we call Mindful Walking. So, let’s go outside in a quiet and safe space. Notice how you walk – go slowly and concentrate on every step you take. Touch the earth with your feet and move your legs while feeling that sensation. Pay attention to the environment – the sounds, images and smells. Maintain a casual position and pay attention to each moment.
As a way of expounding on the concepts of this argument, let it be noted that mindfulness is an ability that improves over time so I would suggest that you still make it part of your life. It helps one deal with stress better, awake self-awareness and have inner peace and greater wellness. These techniques of mindfulness help too, and also when you need to around and come back to this very minute.
Fun Mindfulness Activities for Teens
Teens are constantly looking for ways to be in the moment and that has made mindfulness trendy among them. Because of the focus on the present now, mindfulness can also help to break the monotony that is also very intrusive. And both the children and the adults are right – it’s not only adults who benefit from mindfulness practice: Young people can also have peace of mind and better concentration while doing their activities through practicing mindfulness.
If you are looking for some fun ways to motivate mindfulness activities for teens, check out these five games:
The Mindful Jar
Have your teen document a list of all sources of stress they are facing on little pieces of paper. These ‘stresses’ are put into a jar and your teen is also asked to put their hand into the jar and blindly draw one piece of paper. They will then have to think about the situation or idea written on that piece of paper for a few minutes and come up with how they would deal with the problem.
Mindful Breathing
Encourage them to practice deep breathing exercises with the use of a hand gesture so that your teen inhales though the nose and exhales through the mouth a couple of times. It will help them concentrate on their breath as well as on the process of breathing.
Mindful Movement
In this case, practicing mindful movement will allow your teen to see and feel the movements of their body and the spaces that their body occupies. For instance, if your teen is constantly seated in front of the computer or desk encourage them to get up for at least five minutes every hour of the day.
Mindful Yoga (Savasana)
Mindfulness can be described as an admirable human quality which any of the yoga postures can have but the one most adolescents revel especially in is savasana. This position requires a person to lie supine with arms at the side, the eyes shut, and deeply inhaling and exhaling as well.
Mindful Writing
This exercise has your teen write down a list of all the things that are stressing them out. Get around and instruct them to read every stressor while they ignore those stressors. This is an effective way to understand their current status and how they feel. This is a necessary part of recovery. This gives them the voice to vocalize their feelings and emotions, thoughts, as well as fears and worries regarding the status quo.
Final Thoughts on Mindfulness Activities for Teens
Now utilizing Headspace, let us do the exercise of residing within the present moment. Headspace has self-care habits in the form of meditation and wide exercising fit for adolescents. The application is free to use but there are some sessions as well that are given free of charge. If you are on the lookout for a simple effective method of introducing mindfulness to your teenager, this particular YouTube channel will be quite useful. How many of different forms can be accepted in the introduction of mindfulness activities for adolescents?
One method of achieving this is through the usage of a mindfulness adolescent worksheet as the one above, which can be found at The Greater Good Science Center of UC Berkley. It assists youngsters in understanding their thoughts and emotions better and also assists the skill of remaining in the ‘now’. Mindfulness exercises are additionally available for teenagers, as well as mindful exercises composed in pdf for students from high school, and more than two hundred and ninety scripts from meditation.
To sum up, teenagers can focus and relate to themselves through mindfulness activities for teens. With the help of mindfulness, adolescents can acquire abilities that are beneficial in every area of their lives. If you are a teen and would like to know more about mindfulness activities for teens or any other teens and their parents think such activities would be beneficial please continue reading and try some of the ideas in this article.
