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Wednesday, July 9, 2025

4 simple ways to meditate as a family

by

Kaylan Bartholomew
2149 days ago
20190822

Even in the most lov­ing of fam­i­lies, fam­i­ly life can be chaot­ic. Try­ing to bal­ance home­work, meal­times, laun­dry, ex­tra-cur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties for dif­fer­ent peo­ple with their own needs, de­sires and stress­es can be dif­fi­cult. That is why we some­times (or of­ten) do not re­act from a place of com­pas­sion and kind­ness with the peo­ple we love the most. By bring­ing mind­ful­ness in­to your fam­i­ly, every­one can learn the tools to help re­duce their stress and man­age their emo­tions, which will bring the fam­i­ly clos­er and mak­ing every­one feel more con­nect­ed.

Mind­ful­ness means to pay at­ten­tion to what you are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing in the present mo­ment. Sci­en­tif­ic re­search shows that mind­ful­ness can help peo­ple re­duce stress, im­prove fo­cus and at­ten­tion, man­age dif­fi­cult emo­tions and feel com­pas­sion and em­pa­thy. By prac­tis­ing as a fam­i­ly, par­ents can al­so ben­e­fit from these amaz­ing tools. While there are many ways to prac­tise mind­ful­ness, here are a few ideas to eas­i­ly bring mind­ful­ness in­to your home:

Slow down your meals

Meal­time is a great op­por­tu­ni­ty to prac­tise mind­ful­ness with the fam­i­ly. Paus­ing be­fore you start eat­ing to ex­press your ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the meal, all of the peo­ple in­volved in get­ting that meal to the ta­ble and the chance to come to­geth­er as a fam­i­ly helps to bring every­one’s minds to the present mo­ment. En­cour­age your fam­i­ly to slow down and ob­serve the meal—the colours, shapes and tex­tures. Take a mo­ment to savour the aro­ma and see if you can iden­ti­fy some of the in­gre­di­ents used. Then, take the first bite to­geth­er, chew­ing slow­ly to no­tice the tex­tures, tem­per­a­ture and flavours in your mouth. Take turns shar­ing your ob­ser­va­tions, as each per­son may per­ceive the same meal in amaz­ing­ly dif­fer­ent ways.

Go out­side

Spend­ing time in na­ture pro­vides good food for the sens­es, which makes it great for mind­ful­ness prac­tice. You can go for a walk and lis­ten care­ful­ly for sounds you may typ­i­cal­ly over­look such as the sounds of birds in the trees or even your own breath. You can look around and see if you can no­tice a de­tail that you may not have no­ticed be­fore such as a new flower bloom­ing. Or, sim­ply stop to look at the clouds float­ing by, ap­pre­ci­ate the sun­set or the stars twin­kling in the sky. Spend time ob­serv­ing with­out talk­ing at first and then take some time to share your ex­pe­ri­ences with each oth­er.

Grat­i­tude

One sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly proven way to boost your mood, build pos­i­tive re­la­tion­ships and im­prove your over­all well-be­ing is to feel and ex­press grat­i­tude. The beau­ty of grat­i­tude prac­tise is you can do it any­where—at the din­ner ta­ble, at bed­time or in the car on the way to school. Sim­ply have every­one share three things for which they are grate­ful. Ask­ing your chil­dren to elab­o­rate on why they feel grate­ful helps you to get to know them bet­ter and helps them to fo­cus on pos­i­tive things in their lives. It is al­so a great prac­tice if they can ex­press their ap­pre­ci­a­tion to some­one, as that not on­ly makes them feel good, but the re­ceiv­er as well.

Mind­ful hugs

Some­times all we need is a hug. Hug­ging boosts the feel-good hor­mone oxy­tocin and re­duces the stress-pro­duc­ing hor­mone cor­ti­sol mak­ing us feel hap­py and re­laxed. It is al­so a great way to mod­el af­fec­tion at home. As our lives get more hec­tic and the chil­dren grow old­er, we some­times lose these im­por­tant prac­tis­es that keep us con­nect­ed. Take a 20-sec­ond hug and pay at­ten­tion to how you feel do­ing it. Or, you can take three deep breaths to­geth­er as you hug, feel­ing your body re­lax with each breath. Give your­self the time to no­tice your love for your fam­i­ly in that mo­ment.

One com­mon in­gre­di­ent re­quired for these mind­ful­ness prac­tices is to un­plug—turn off the de­vices so you can con­nect. Mind­ful­ness is not a quick fix to your house­hold fren­zy. It takes time to move away from our au­topi­lot re­spons­es and cre­ate new habits. How­ev­er, the more you in­cor­po­rate mind­ful­ness in­to your nor­mal rou­tines, the clos­er the fam­i­ly will be­come. To­geth­er you will have the tools and a strong bond to re­ly on in chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tions.


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