Photo by Gustave Fring, Pexer
Promoting academic focus with mindfulness
Introducing your child, or student, with ADHD, to meditation and yoga can help them to strengthen their executive functions.
According to Daniel Siegel, MD, neurobiologist and author of "The Mindful Brain", mindfulness training like this can help them improve their emotional and social intelligence, as well as academic success.
Here are three mindfulness exercises for students with ADHD to get them ready to process new information and actively learn.
Take a short "noticing walk"
During their walk encourage them to silently tap into all of their senses and complete an activity, like the following ones:
Buy a yoga card deck
Let students take turns picking a pose and practice as a group or class.
Practice mindful eating during snack or lunchtime
Give a slice of fruit or vegetable to each student and ask them to study it.
Doing exercises like these help to increase personal awareness. Emotional circuits in the brain are stimulated and leads to a host of physiological benefits, including greater well-being, resilience, emotional balance, and improved cardiac and immune function.
According to Daniel Siegel, MD, neurobiologist and author of "The Mindful Brain", mindfulness training like this can help them improve their emotional and social intelligence, as well as academic success.
Here are three mindfulness exercises for students with ADHD to get them ready to process new information and actively learn.
Take a short "noticing walk"
During their walk encourage them to silently tap into all of their senses and complete an activity, like the following ones:
- To look at a flower or some leaves on a plant - if they had to paint it themselves, what colours would they use?
- To find some pebbles - how smooth or rough do they feel? How do they know how smooth or rough they are?
- What can they smell - is that smell making them feel anything?
Buy a yoga card deck
Let students take turns picking a pose and practice as a group or class.
- Challenge them to learn the name of every single pose.
- Try slowly changing from pose to pose.
- Invent a new pose and give it a name.
Practice mindful eating during snack or lunchtime
Give a slice of fruit or vegetable to each student and ask them to study it.
- Ask them to study it - look at it (is it wrinkly or smooth?); touch it (is it hard or soft?); smell it (what does it smell like?); taste it (is it sweet? sour? crunchy? juicy?)
- Ask them if they noticed anything about the fruit they hadn't noticed before.
- Ask them if they thought of anything not related to the fruit, while they were studying it.
Doing exercises like these help to increase personal awareness. Emotional circuits in the brain are stimulated and leads to a host of physiological benefits, including greater well-being, resilience, emotional balance, and improved cardiac and immune function.
