Meditating Children

This morning I walked into the living room to see Grace and the two children.  the two children were sitting crossed legged hands folded in meditation position. The weren't exactly meditating. Their eyes were squinched up like they were trying to meditate really really hard. Both that they were trying hard and trying to meditate hard. It was pretty funny.
Believe it or not I actually have a sort of meditation chi gung breathing exercise I do for the preschool class. For the kids it's more a way to center their attention, and calm them down by making them sit. For me.. I actually need to warm up.

I remember the first time I saw someone from Woo Ching White crane do some serious chi gung meditation. He was shaking really hard, and I didn't know what to make of it. I actually wanted to laugh. Most kids, upon seeing someone shake in this way (including when they see me shake) will laugh. Sifu would always tell them not to laugh and to take it seriously. Because of this confusion and disruption to class, in the past I have tried simply nt to shake when meditating in front of kids. Technically they shouldn't see me shake if their eyes are closed, but what kid really follows that rule? Also, if as a teacher, you close your eyes to a room full of kids you are really just asking for it.


Recently I have actually gone in a completely different direction. I just start with the breathing exercise that comes after the meditation and if my body shakes, I let it shakes. And the children always laugh and try to copy the shaking.

If your goal is to teach a student the proper way to meditate and to know why you are shaking and teach them the secrets of Kung Fu, then my Sifu's way of telling them to take it seriously, and not to copy the shaking but to let it happen on its own, and a bunch of lectures and explanations combined with years of practice is appropriate. But even in the traditional school setting, kids and even adults are not necessarily interested in all that. Even the ones that ask questions might only be mildly interested.

My goal, when teaching preschoolers, or any children, is to entertain. Oh right, and expose them to Kung Fu and traditional training methods and culture and all that. But really first and foremost, to keep their attention. (If you lose their attention you have lost everything.) And that means entertaining them even if it means jumping through hoops and bending over backwards.

Luckily Shaking during meditation is not only very entertaining, it is easy. It is easier to let it happen then to prevent it from happening, and Since I'm actually doing a bunch of Kung Fu that they will be half doing, I need that little mocha shot of chi as the only little warm up that I'm going to get.

If they laugh and copy.... great! They aren't going to "jau fau yup mau" from shaking a little bit for less than a minute once a week. If they tried to imitate the shaking seriously for 6 hours a day straight without proper guidance.... yeah they could get into trouble... but they won't. They can't. And if you play candy crush for 6 hours straight. you will also run into trouble so meditating "wrong" or by "forcing it" is not the worst thing out there. Running wrong, or sitting at a desk wrong is probably more dangerous nowadays. "jau fau yup mau" is really only a real hazard for monks on Shaolin Temple who are trying to achieve certain Chi Gung things they learned from a book but no longer have the master's with the oral history part of it. And since they've been around since the 70's they might have even had enough monks that went through these problems that they have now figured out what they were doing wrong and reinvented some safe guards.

Besides there are other forms of warm ups for kids in music classes where they sing and "shake, shake, shake their wiggles out." So essentially we are doing the same thing. They are warming up with a game. I am warming up with chi gung. And in the process, they are introduced to the idea of chi gung and meditation.