Silence and stillness

Overview

For younger students, practising stillness and silence can initially be presented as a challenge and a competition- to see how long they can be very still personally and as a group.

A guide for the length of the meditative prayer practice is gauged by working up from ten seconds to no longer than one minute per year of age; i.e. a five year old child would start with ten seconds and might work up to five minutes.

Note: For meditation, students should NOT lie down. They should remain seated, with straight backs. If children go to sleep, they are not meditating, they are relaxing.

Silence exercise

Practising being silent also means becoming aware that when we are silent, the noisy world does not, and it can intrude into our silence. Students learn how to accommodate that noise without becoming worried about it.

What can we hear?

Often when we try to be silent, the first thing we notice is…..noise! Let us try that: being silent and noticing what noises we can hear.

Let’s sit very still and close our eyes. Let’s listen for what we can hear- in the room and outside the room. Let’s be as quiet as we can for 30 seconds and listen for what we can hear.

Who heard anything? What was it? Do we notice these things when we are about our normal classroom activities? What changed?

When we try to be still and silent, we don’t worry if we hear noises. We simply note that we heard the noise and then return to trying to be silent- in our bodies and in our minds.

Listen to our breath

Being silent in our minds is to try to stop thinking thoughts- to empty our mind of thinking so that our bodies and our minds can be still and silent.

One way to do that is to listen to our breath as it comes in our nose and gently out through our lips. Let’s try that. Listening and feeling our breath as it comes in…. and then blows out….

Prayer Mantra

We can turn our stillness and silence into a prayer by adding a word to our breathing: a special prayer word is Ma-ra-na-tha, which means: come Lord Jesus! We say (in our minds) Ma as we breathe in; ra as we breathe out; na as we breathe in again and tha as we breathe out again. Let’s say that aloud and then silently, just in our minds.

Another way is to use the English, saying in our minds: Come (in breath) Lord (out breath) Je(in breath) sus (out breath).

Stillness exercise

Wriggle and rub

Being still for a long time can be hard to start with. And just when you want to be still, parts of your body sometimes need to move- because of an itch or a pain. So before we start, let’s rub our noses…ears…face…arms…legs…head…neck…shoulders.

Be still body!

Now, let’s begin to still our body bit by bit.

Let’s start with our toes. Wiggle them inside your shoes. Then we say: “be still, toes!”

Now we wriggle our whole feet. Then we say “Be still, feet!”

Let’s move to our legs. Move your legs out and in, while keeping your feet on the ground. Then we say: “Legs, be still!”

Let’s wriggle our bottoms on the chair, while keeping our feet and legs still. The we say: “Be still, bottoms!”

Keeping our bottoms, legs and feet still, let’s move our bodies and shoulders. Then, we say:,” be still body!”

Now let’s wiggle our hands and fingers, without moving our torso, legs or feet. Then we say: “Be still, hands!”

Keeping our hands, arms, bodies, legs and feet still, lets wriggle our face: jaws and noses, and blink our eyes. Then we say: “be still, face!”

Lastly, we move our head back and forward, up and down, side to side, while keeping our face, arms, hands, torso, legs and feet still. Then we say: “Be still, head!”

Now, every part of our body is still. Let’s see if we can hold that stillness for …… minutes. (Up to five by the end of prep)

Gently stretch

Now that we have been very still for …. whole minutes, lets gently stretch our muscles as we come back to normal movement.