Mindfulness activities for the whole family to enjoy.

In my last article, I mentioned that Mindfulness is about being okay with what ‘is’ instead of what ‘could be’. Sitting with the feelings that you have, accepting them as a part of life and creating the feelings that work for us.

Below are a list of examples of Mindfulness activities you could do as a family to stay positive and connected to each other and your environment.

Deep Breathing

A great exercise to do at the start of the day. Sit together, breathe in for 4 seconds, hold a second, breathe out for 4 seconds. Someone may be allocated to do the counting and then change after a few breaths so that everyone has a turn.

This is a great exercise to become familiar with. If any time in the day, someone is getting grumpy or anxious, another member of the family are able to let the person know and take them through the breathing exercise to reset their thoughts and get a calmer perspective. This is a training game for the whole family to become helpful to each other when someone is not doing so well with their emotions or thoughts.

Dancing freeze game: 

Every hour an alarm goes off and everybody in the house runs to a room and dances for 2 minutes. When the timekeeper says “Freeze”, everybody must stop immediately in the pose that they are in. Everybody then looks at each other’s pose and considers how their own body is placed and how this pose feels. Try to keep the pose for the count of 50.

Dancing releases endorphins which fight negative feelings and energise the body. To do this every hour together in this way makes it fun, but also gives everybody a ‘happy’ boost each hour.

You may choose to do it every 2 hours? It is up to the family to decide the rules.  This activity strengthens the family unit and makes it fun too.

My goal game

 Sit together and consider what your goal is for the day. What are you trying to achieve? Close your eyes and think about this. Then tell each other this goal, why you want to achieve it and how you plan to achieve it. You can ask for ideas from the other family members if you want to.

Now that you are all aware of each other’s goal, help each other to achieve it. Point out great progress that is being made and ask how each other is going with their goal throughout the day. Telling someone a goal we wish to achieve, brings it to the front of our mind and also makes us more accountable and determined to achieve it.

Grounding game 

This activity brings you to the present moment. Think of three things that you can hear, three that you can see and three things that you feel inside you.

This can be adapted to a game with 2 or more people where you each go outside with a notepad and list all of the things that you can in 5 minutes that come under these categories and then see who has the most. You need to discuss what you heard, saw and felt with as much detail as possible. 

In the next article, I will look at great apps for relaxing and feeling calm.