Welcome to this session,
Breathing for Kids by Kirsten Dochel.
Let's start this session in sitting.
You might need to sit forward if you're on a chair.
You want your feet to be flat on the floor and of course your lovely spine long and tall.
Perhaps you'd be more comfortable on a stool or maybe even on a step on your staircase if you're out of the way and able to be uninterrupted.
Let your shoulders drop.
Allow your jaw to be soft and notice that your tongue just sits fat and soft in the bottom of your mouth.
Your hands can be on your lap,
Palms up or palms down,
Just comfortably.
Breathing,
Your clever body does it all the time all by itself.
You don't have to think about it at all.
Check it out right now.
What can you feel about your breathing?
Is the air coming in and out your nose or maybe have a blocked and snuffly nose and your breathing through your mouth?
Maybe one nostril is a bit blocked and the other one is clear.
Is your chest moving when you breathe or your belly or maybe the sides or back of your body?
Thank you body for such clever breathing.
Thank you body.
And you know you can also change your breathing.
Take a breath and right now you imagine you are blowing candles out on a cake.
Blow all the air out of your lungs,
Every last bit and then let go and feel how your body takes a nice deep breath in.
Then just let your body do its own breathing.
Our breathing can change too when we sneeze or yawn or cough or take a big sigh out.
Try the sigh or the yawn now.
Open your jaw wide and slowly stretch your arms and legs out like a slinky cat.
Oh and sigh or yawn out.
Do you notice how your breath changes?
The sigh is a nice easy breath out that feels pretty good.
Being able to choose how you want to breathe is a bit of special clever body action that you can use anywhere,
Anytime to help feel better and more calm.
How we breathe affects how we feel in our body and also in our emotions.
Sometimes people hold their breath when they were worried or stressed and they don't even realize that they're doing it.
Some people feel really panty and do quick breathing but we can learn a way to breathe that helps us feel more relaxed and comfortable.
Put your thumbs on your belly button and feel that your hands rest gently on your lower belly.
Just imagine in your creative mind that you have a nose just below your belly button and that you can breathe in and out through here.
Now keeping your hands on your belly,
On your next breath out do the blowing out candle breath.
You can feel your belly push in as all the air goes out of your lungs.
Then imagine your belly can breathe in.
Don't try too hard but let your soft belly gently push your hands out when you take the breath in.
As you breathe in your belly boulders and then just let the air move out by itself.
Your belly drops and moves in a bit.
Just keep going with that breath.
Really no effort.
If you're not used to breathing this way it can feel a little bit unusual at first.
Don't try too hard.
It can be a smallish breath not a big deep long one.
Drop your shoulders so you're not holding any tension in the top of your body and notice if doing this breathing makes you feel a little bit easier,
A little bit calmer.
A good thing too about concentrating on breathing is that we don't worry about the other things that might have been jumping around in our mind.
We've gathered all our focus to one thing,
The breath.
This gives our mind a bit of a break from thinking.
Let your hands drop now and let's try breathing in a different position.
Stand up,
Have a little shimmy and a shake and then once again put your hands on your belly and imagine you have a big balloon at your belly.
Let the air go out of your lungs and imagine the balloon shrivels down as the air goes way out of the balloon and then breathe in again through that lower belly nose and fill up the balloon.
Your belly pushes into your hands when the air goes in and when the air pours out your belly moves towards your backbone.
You can even add a sigh out or maybe even a ho ho ho ho.
Feel that breathing as you're standing.
Now to finish off this session I invite you to lie down on your back.
Make your way to the floor or the bed.
You can have your knees bent up or your legs flopped down and fully let go.
Place your hands on your belly again.
Picture the air all going out of your lungs every last bit and then direct your body to breathe in through that belly nose area at your hands.
Slowly in,
Slowly and easy out.
Just notice the rising and falling of your belly.
You might like to count in,
Two,
Three and out,
Two,
Three,
Four,
A little bit longer on the out if you can.
Do a few more rounds of this and as you do also notice that your jaw can soften.
Melt your muscles and bones onto the floor or the bed.
Remember how ice or ice cream melts.
Let your muscles and bones melt and rest for a bit and now let those instructions go.
Don't give your breath any instructions.
Just feel your breath cool or warm,
Clear or snuffly.
Get super interested in how your amazing body breathes itself.
This is a good one to do in bed at night.
Now it's time to leave this little breathing break.
On your next breath in,
Imagine that breath is full of sparkly,
Zingy,
Zippy energy.
Breathe it in.
Feel it like bubbles of fun and tingliness and then switch on the muscles of your body,
Switch on your mind and start to have a big yawny stretch as you start your body and mind motor for the next thing that you are doing.
Remember that you can take those nice belly breaths anytime to help you calm down.
Thanks for practicing with me.
Have a great day.
Bye.
