Page 20 - About the Town Winter 2021/22

Supporting the Mental Health of Our Children
Click for Breathing Tutorial
Mental Health comes in many guises, positive and negative. We all have mental health; it’s part of us. However, some of us seem to float through life with no worries (on the outside), and many of us have enormous anxieties and stresses.
How we deal with and manage our mental health is so important. We’ve all heard on the news more recently about the effects of Covid 19 and the impact this has had on the mental health of our youngsters, as well as the extra anxieties it has given us adults.
My name is Mandy Owen, and I’m a Relax Kids, Baby Mindful, and ChargeUp coach offering mindfulness and relaxation from pregnancy to adulthood, and I now run ‘The Calm Centre’ in Old Skelmersdale. I have been very concerned about the mental state of our children recently, and so I want to share some simple, yet effective breathing techniques to help your child if they become stressed or agitated and you don’t quite know what to do to help.
Breathing Exercises (click for tutorial):
You can read this to your child to guide them through the steps:
• Start by lying or sitting down. If you feel comfortable doing so, close your eyes and remain as still as possible.
• Scan your body from your toes to the top of your head
• Squeeze your toes, then relax
• Squeeze your calves, then relax.
• Squeeze your thighs, then relax.
muscles, and relax.
• Squeeze your chest, and relax.
• Tighten your arm muscles and clench your hands, then relax.
• Push your shoulders up to your ears, then push them as far down as you comfortably can, then relax.
• Screw your face up, then relax.
• Now just be... listen to your breath going in and coming out.
Many of my youngsters find the ‘Hand Breathing’ technique really useful too:
• Put one hand up and with your index finger of the other hand, follow the outline of the fingers from the thumb all the way to the pinky finger.
• As you go up, breathe in. As you come down, breathe out.
• Do this as slowly as possible. The slower the breaths, the more relaxed and calm you feel.
I hope you find these techniques useful.
To find out more about how you can get involved with any of my classes, or any other services I offer, follow us on Facebook @RKWLwithMandy or Instagram @relaxkidswithmandy or call 07380 286389
• Squeeze your tummy and your bum
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