Hi,
My name is Evan Fried,
And this is a meditation for parents to do with their children.
I have two daughters,
And I do this with my eldest every night before bed,
Usually,
Or when she's having some really strong anxiety.
And we call it the hand meditation because it's really simple,
And it makes counting breaths and meditating easy,
Like very easy.
So all we do is we put our hand out,
And we take our pointer finger,
And we put it at the base of our thumb,
And then we start breathing.
We inhale on the way up the finger.
We exhale on the way down.
Before we start doing this,
I have a few pointers.
On the inhale,
You want to make sure that your belly is feeling like a balloon.
On the exhale,
You want the belly to kind of contract and let all the air out of the balloon.
This is a strong,
Healthy breath that helps reduce anxiety.
So we're going to start right now on the inhale,
Up the thumb.
Inhale down to the crevice.
Inhale up the pointer.
Exhale down to the crevice.
Inhale up the middle finger,
And down to the crevice.
Inhale up the ring finger.
Exhale again.
Inhale and exhale.
You can do this as many times as you need until your child has calmed down or has gone to a little bit of a centered place.
My daughter and I have fun with this.
Sometimes she makes me start at the top of my head or on my back,
But we try to make it really fun and not serious.
So just continue that hand breath with your child.
Even use it yourself when you get into a situation that's really frustrating.
It's a really easy technique to really be able to count and manage the breath.
So I hope you enjoyed that and that you and your children can practice this daily.
