Meditation can be really helpful to teens, especially for stress, During meditation, it is important that the young people are comfortable, so using hero or easy pose, but they need to have good posture with the spine aligned. Hopefully the stretches during class has helped with this and their flexibility to allow them to be comfortable.

There are lots of meditations to use with teens, here are some examples:

Yoni Mudra 

Using the Yoni Mudra is a great way to practice meditation. Get them into yoni mudra with their hands to block the senses and start with 10 big deep slow breaths (don’t forget to give all the instructions first!). The breaths should be deep enough to be really loud. Then stop and return to normal breathing. Ask them to focus on the sounds that they can hear in the ‘silence’.

Body Scan 

A body scan is a great way to meditate. This works in the same way as the one we do in Juniors, except now it can be slower and longer, with more detail. Make sure you are using proper words for body parts and don’t dumb it down.

Walking Meditation 

Meditation doesn’t have to be sitting down, you can walk too. Doing slow walks, tight rope walks, hip circles that we would practice with the mothers in baby yoga can be used with the teenagers.

Mindful Movements 

Movements from the book can be used as meditation. Focus on doing the moves slowly and focussed.

Counting 

Count backwards from 100 all the way to 0. Tell the young people to count slowly and try to focus only on the numbers, allowing any other thoughts to just pass through. Once they reach zero, just stay quiet concentrating on slow deep breaths until you gently ask them to stop.

Counting Thoughts 

Give each young person a pile of pom poms. Tell them they will be sitting still and quiet for one minute and every time they have a thought pass through their mind, move a pom pom to the side. When the time is up, open their eyes and see how many pom poms they moved. Are they surprised? Is it more or less than they thought?