Mindful Families Meditation

We love working with our My True SELF partners at Imagine Bella Academy of Excellence. At the beginning of this school year, the third year of our partnership, they set the intention to mindfully create and expand their connections in the community so they can better share and showcase the practices that allow mindfulness and social-emotional learning to be integrated into their whole-student, whole-school, and now whole-community practices. This year they have managed to far exceed their intentions. So, today, we pause in true My True SELF fashion to celebrate progress and success with Mindful Families Meditation. 

Families participating in Meditation Monday!

Rylie Boodjeh, Lead Mindfulness Facilitator at Imagine Bella Academy

Rylie Boodjeh, Lead Mindfulness Educator at Imagine Bella Academy of Excellence, had this to say about Mindful Families Mediation:

Mindful Families Meditation, in my opinion, is one of the most beneficial and expansive offerings for our school community yet. We are able to bring whole families together with mindfulness and meditation. We chose Mondays for the offerings because it allows us to promote a more centered, intentional start to the week for our students at Imagine Bella and their families. 

The Mindfulness Classroom is the setting for this great program. To set the relaxing vibe for the environment, we play a soothing background video with accompanying white noise wave sounds. Lavender essential oils are diffused and sprayed. The overhead lights, as always, are off in the mindfulness room, as we prefer lamps and low lights to illuminate soft light. The serene environment is seen, smelled, heard, felt, and amplified. 

A tea bar is prepared, and families are able to pick from an assortment of herbal tea options with honey available to add a bit of sweetness. Tea is such a great way to warm up and prepare for the mindfulness practice and is also an accessible tool to promote wellness and regulation. 

Families enter promptly. Students are extremely excited, and the families enjoy the ambiance and share how wonderful it feels to be in the mindfulness room. The room is set up with yoga mats in an open circle. An adult size chair is placed at the back of each yoga mat to give the parents and caregivers the option to sit on the yoga mat with their child or on the chair behind them. 

For our first session, we had nearly twenty parents and caregivers attend and about as many children, so there were close to forty meditators. We began with breathwork and moved into guided meditation where everyone was invited to explore the prompts within their own comfort zone. The response was wonderful – relaxed smiles, conversation, and reports of more centered minds. Continued programming of this type can immensely help our community as more families find moments to pause, breathe, and be together. It dissolves barriers and builds bridges of peace in the community. 

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