Teaching Meditation To Children As A Tool For Their Health

Episode Transcript

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Hi everyone, welcome to the show, I am Dr. Nicole, and on today’s episode, we’re talking about the benefits of meditation for children, teens and family. I know some of you might already be thinking about turning the episode off because you assume this is going to be about trying to get your kid to sit still for extended periods of time, not think about anything — keep listening because that’s actually not at all what we’re going to be talking about. I find there are a lot of misconceptions, especially among parents about what it means to meditate and how to use that as a strategy with kids.

And what we’re going to learn today is how meditation actually helps the brains of our children and of ourselves in practical and doable ways of incorporating meditation into our lives and into the lives of our children. I don’t know anyone better to explore this with than Emily Fletcher. Emily is the founder of Ziva meditation and the leading expert in meditation for extraordinary performance. Her best selling book Stress Less, Accomplish More debuted at number 7 of all books on Amazon. The New York Times, Good Morning America, The Today Show, Vogue, ABC News — all of them have featured Emily’s work. She has been named one of the top 100 women in wellness to watch and has taught more than 20,000 students around the world, has spoken on meditation for performance at places like Apple, Google, many more. Ziva graduates include Oscar, Grammy, Tony and Emmy award winners, NBA players, Navy SEALs, Fortune 500 CEOs and lots of busy parents. Ziva technique is a powerful trifecta of mindfulness, meditation and manifesting designed to unlock your full potential. I use and love Emily’s work. I am so thrilled to have her here today, thanks Emily for being here!

Dr. Emily Fletcher:

Ah! Can that be my alarm clock, an ego boost of your voice — this vast list of things! But I’m really happy to be here and thank you for the work that you’re doing in the world and getting these tools to kids. I’m excited to chat! 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Absolutely. So you know, in the intro, I was sort of joking, but it’s true — people have really in treating ideas about what meditation is, right? They assume it means you’ve got to change your lifestyle, move to some commune, start wearing patchouli, dress a certain way — but what you’ve really done with meditation and with Ziva is to talk about the neuroscience behind it and to make it really practical and doable in people’s lives. So talk more about that. 

Dr. Emily Fletcher: 

Well, first of all, I hate patchouli. I am a little interested in a communal living situation given our current affairs. Really just a neighborhood with people with curated friends, that’s what I’m looking for. But to your point, you don’t have to change your whole lifestyle in order to start meditating. The way that I see it and the way that I teach it is that it’s a tool to help you be the person that you want to be. It’s a tool to help you get better at life. Because no one really cares how good you are at meditating. No one cares how many or few thoughts you’re having when you sit quietly in a chair. No one cares how many minutes a day you’re meditating for. What people care about is: Are you kind? Are you present? Are you healthy? Are you creative? And our kids need that from us. Our kids need us to be present with them. When we’re stressed, when we’re overreacting, when we’re reviewing the past and rehearsing the future we’re robbing our children of being fully present with them.

Also, our children deserve these tools because they’re being asked to face a lot. Even in normal circumstances, our modern day lives are very demanding on children. To sit still, to eat food that isn’t food, to not be in nature, to be asked to focus for long periods of time — it’s not always optimal for children’s development. So now, we throw on top of this huge global transition and kids are being asked to really step up. So with the way I framed Ziva kids is just that it’s a tool to help you become the superhero version of you. It’s a tool to help you unlock your own kindness, your own creativity, your own bravery. Which is really what we’re all looking to do in this life.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Absolutely, and I love that you’re talking about the benefits of this for kids and parents because so much of how our children learn to experience emotions and manage those emotions and behaviors and just manage the challenges of the world is through watching us, right? And how they see us doing that. So I love that this is a tool that benefits children, not only through directly using it with them, but also through our use of these principles and these tools. 

Dr. Emily Fletcher: 

If you’ve ever heard of the Suzuki method, which I’m sure you have — in learning to play violin. The child can’t even pick up the violin until the adult learns to play one song. I thought this is a fascinating concept. Our children learn to speak by hearing us speak. They learn to watch by watching us walk. The same is true with our emotions and with stress. They will learn our patterns and our abilities to regulate stress from watching us, not from what we tell them to do. So I have bad news if anybody is listening like, “Oh yeah, I’m going to get my kids to meditate but I don’t want to meditate, I’m too busy for that nonsense, but I’ll just have my kids do it.” It’s like, well, sorry about it, but your kids could take the class. I could handle your kids, but you’ve got to handle you. You’re going to have to clean your own house. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

That’s right. I love that. And you know, I’m excited for us to be talking about this in terms of you’ve got this great new platform that’s going to be coming soon, Ziva Kids — and actually the listeners right now are some of the first people to hear about it, which is super —

Dr. Emily Fletcher: 

The very first, this is my very first podcast talking about it!

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

It’s so, so exciting, so all of you are on the cutting edge of this and we’ll make sure you have information at the end for how you can get all of the details on this one when it does launch. But let’s talk a bit about the neuroscience behind meditation and how it can be helpful for kids because I think people are seeing more — we’re having research studies and things coming out now showing for example that having kids who are struggling with their behavior and emotions in school go to a room to do some meditation techniques as opposed to sending them to detention or suspending them — that that’s such a better approach. So we’re seeing these things come out, but talk with us about why this is helpful to the brain. How is this helpful?

Dr. Emily Fletcher: 

Sure. So there are a few studies that are happening, specifically with inner city schools in San Francisco, where they started implementing meditation instead of punishment and they saw the tensions decrease, they saw attendance increase, they saw violent episodes decrease, grades increase, morale increased and it was just by this one shift: Instead of punishing people, they were giving people tools to help them regulate, and it really made a massive difference. So the cool thing here is that while there are differences between children’s brains and adults’ brains, stress is really an equal opportunity employer. It doesn’t care how old you are. And when we get stressed, our bodies launch into a fight or flight stress reaction. You’ve probably all heard that. What was news to me was exactly what happens biochemically in the body when we get stressed.

So one thing that will happen is our digestion will flood with acid to shut down digestion, because if a tiger were to really attack us, we would need all of that energy to fight or flee. We couldn’t afford it to digest our food. That same acid will seep into our skin so we don’t taste very good if we get bitten into by the tiger, so that’s what’s aging us. Kids aren’t really worried about that, but some of us moms are. And then our bladder and bowels will evacuate. I say it in the kids’ course. Like, “You know the nervous poo’s before you have to give a presentation in front of the class? That’s your body preparing for a tiger attack.” And this is something that everyone is really interested in, is that our immune system goes to the back burner when we’re stressed. Because the body, again, if it’s trying to deal with an imminent predatory attack, it’s not so interested in that cold, it’s not so interested in the cancer that may or not be happening decades from now. It’s got to have all hands on deck right now. So this series of chemical reactions is very useful if your demands are predatory attacks. 

But if your demands are tests or social groups or online bullying or flying or in-laws — then this fight or flight thing is now disallowing us from performing at the top of our game. And that’s really my whole gig with Ziva. I want people to see meditation as the performance tool that it can be, meaning that it’s just going to help you to be a better mother, it’s going to help you be a better CEO, a better student, a better sibling — and there’s nothing wrong with you if you’re feeling stressed, it’s actually your body trying to protect you. And there are tools that we can use to get rid of this stress so that we can unlock these powers that all of us have, and it’s not special. You don’t have to be special in order to be a superhero. We all have the capacity to step into the most amazing version of ourselves. It’s just that often, we haven’t been given the right tools. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Well, the tools piece is so important because I find with kids that we set the bar pretty high for them in terms of what we expect them to do with understanding and managing and regulating their emotions and behaviors — even for young kids. And the reality is that kids need to be taught how to do that. They don’t come into this world just knowing how to do that. And stress and anxiety and all of these kinds of things are a normal part of everyday life experience. Sometimes, kids will come into the clinic and they’ll be like — “I just don’t ever want to feel anxious again.” Or parents will say, “I don’t want to feel any stress”, and it’s like well, you’re a normal person living a normal life, so that’s going to be a part of it. But I can teach you some tools that will help you navigate that and that’s really, as you were pointing out, so important. It’s not that we can create a world where these discomforts, these stressors, these things don’t exist for kids, but we can give them the tools to navigate that in a healthier, more effective way. 

Dr. Emily Fletcher: 

Yeah. And I love the way you’re saying that. To navigate that, to navigate it in a healthier way, to see there’s nothing wrong with kids who are feeling emotions, there’s nothing wrong with adults who are feeling emotions. And to be honest, this is what a big part of my job is when I teach adults, is that I’m giving them permission to feel their feelings. I have this nerdy song in Ziva Online where I’m like, “Better out than in! Umm Umm!” And I have to do a stupid little dance around it to make people laugh, because most of us have been trained since infancy to not feel our feelings — like, “Shh, don’t cry, shhhh don’t be sad, have a bottle. Don’t be angry, have a toy. Don’t be mad, have some more food.” And we’ve just been trained to shove down our emotions. And interestingly, what Ziva does is that it’s a balm. It’s not a pain pill. This is not something that you take, like you said, to numb your emotions. It’s not something that you do to make yourself immune from the human experience. It is resilience training. It is giving you the tools to feel, to feel fully and to move through to the other side. So the imagery that we use in the kids’ course — there are two different ages for Ziva Kids, the first one is 4-8, but we use the analogy of the stormies. So the stories are if they’re feeling sad or angry or scared, and I love the image of the stormy — and to be honest, when we did the first iteration, we shot an alpha test a few months ago, and we were calling them stress monsters because we thought it would be kind of funny to have just little balls with little furry hair, and we thought it was cute like, “Oh, stress monsters!”

But then halfway through, I realized, oh no, we’ve made a grave mistake. I do not want children to think that their emotions are monsters or that they are monsters if they’re feeling angry. So we switched it to the stormies, which I love because if a storm is coming, there’s nothing wrong. It’s just time for rain. Sometimes there are lightning storms, sometimes there are rain storms and sometimes it’s just a cloudy day. But the beautiful thing is that the sun is always shining, like even on a cloudy day, the sun is always there and similarly, even if our children are feeling these big emotions, their bliss is always there inside of them. So the more we can give ourselves and our children permission to feel these things, to feel them fully, we simply move through to the new now more quickly. We’re able to come into the present moment, which is always where our bliss and fulfilment is. It’s always here, always now.

We are usually in stress or anxiety or depression when we are reviewing the past and rehearsing the future. This is really the beauty of meditation, is that it’s taking your present moment awareness to the gym. So if we think about the brain: Left brain, right brain — left brain is very good at past and future analytical thinking, critical thinking, language, math, balancing our checkbooks. Even for young children, because of the way that we school them, they’re really taking that left brain to the gym. What we’re doing with meditation is we are taking the right brain to the gym, which is in charge of, like I said, present moment awareness, color, creativity, music, connection, intuition, creative problem solving. And if you look at a human brain, it does split right down the middle, 50-50. And I don’t think nature makes mistakes. I don’t think that nature would have given us 50-50 if it wanted us to use 90-10. I think this is why people are getting so excited and why meditation is having such a renaissance right now, is that when we start doing it, when we start taking this right brain to the gym, we start — our brain starts coming online. We are able to use not only our critical thinking, but also our creative thinking. We are able to feel our emotions and make decisions based on them versus an either/or phenomenon, which plenty of us have been living in for a long time.  

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Absolutely. And we know from neuroscience research, that really the integration of the right and the left brain that allows us to function our most optimally, right? Whether it’s a child or it’s an adult — when we can bring those pieces together, that allows for optimal function and it allows for what we really want for ourselves and for our children, which is to be able to regulate that. To feel what we’re feeling, but also to feel that more logical, analytical part of our brain to manage what we do with those feelings, right? And kids need to learn how to do that. We have to teach them how to do that. they don’t just wake up one day and it’s like, “Oh, I’m two years old now. I’ve got that all figured out.” That’s a process over childhood and even into adulthood of figuring that out. But this gives the tools for helping to support bringing both of those halves of the brain together to better integration, at least that’s how I kind of look at it. 

Dr. Emily Fletcher:

Yeah, I think that’s beautiful said. And I know I keep harping on this, but I think it’s really important — because often we as adults, because many of us grew up in this paradigm of “Don’t speak, just smile, just be there, don’t feel your feelings, just be seen and not heard, you have to fall in line” — yes there is a place for discipline, yes there is a place for functioning in society. But I think that we’re collectively suffering from this repression of emotion. If instead, we all as children were given tools to process and to feel and to create instead of destroy in a healthy, productive way, I think that a lot of the problems that we’re facing as a species right now would look very different. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

I totally agree, and I love what you said, going back to the idea of stormies and allowing ourselves to feel feelings. So often, I think what happens for children for sure, but even for a lot of us for adults — we have this idea that when uncomfortable feelings arise, they’re never going to be away. Kids will be like, “God, I’m feeling that feeling, I need to make it stop right now because it’s not going to go away, it’s going to stay.” And one of the things about feelings is that they come and they peak, but then they go. So Love that idea of the stormies because storms come and they pass. And for kids to learn that when you can sit with those feelings, both feelings that they associate as positive as well as positives, as well as feelings that may be uncomfortable. When you can sit with those and just learn greater tolerance for those feelings, they don’t have to be so scary and they don’t have to act out in ways to try to stuff them down or make them stop, or maybe get a need met in a less appropriate way because they can trust that “I’m having this feeling, it’s okay and it will pass.”

Dr. Emily Fletcher: 

Aha. And there are a couple of concepts here. One: There’s a Maya Angelou quote, and she says every storm runs out of rain. And I just think it’s just so simple and so profound. Where we are collectively, every storm runs out of rain. To your point, it will end, and you could panic about the rain, you could cry about the rain, you could get angry at the rain. It’s going to rain anyway. And there’s a concept in Buddhism — I’m not Buddhist, I don’t teach Buddhism, but there is a beautiful concept that comes from Buddhism, which is that of the double arrow. The idea is that pain is part of the human experience, and that’s a single arrow, that people will die. We will fall down and skin our knees. There will be apin, that’s part of the human experience. That’s a single arrow. But if we put fear on top of pain, then we create a double arrow and it gets stuck. 

And I think that’s what we’re inadvertently teaching our children when we ourselves don’t have the tools to fully process and feel our emotions, or if we try because of our own discomfort — because it’s hard as parents to see our children in pain. So we instinctively or habitually try to calm it or soothe it. I think that we have to watch ourselves to make sure that the calmness, the desire to help and to love is one that gives spaciousness for our children to feel instead of squelching the emotion. I think if we really can do that for ourselves, give ourselves space to feel and process, then one, we’re leading by example, and then two, it’s easier to sit in the discomfort of seeing our children moving through an emotion and just asking questions, right? How are you feeling? Where in your body are you feeling this? Does it feel like it’s never going to end? Do you maybe want to draw with me? Let’s draw how we’re feeling right now. Do you want to maybe move our body? 

So one of the things that we do with the younger kids is that we have them shake. Every animal, when they get stressed, they shake it off and there’s some exciting neuroscience about the impact of shaking off stress. So that’s actually how we start the practice for the kids. To your earlier point, we’re not just telling our kids to sit silently or not move or talk or have any thoughts because that sounds like punishment. We start by shaking it off and we’re very careful with the language that we’re even saying that in this that we’re shaking through the stormie, that we’re moving through the emotion. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Yeah. As opposed to trying to make them stop or go away — yeah, we’re moving through it. And the tools to do that in a way that is helpful, the research about the shaking, we’re seeing that come out now. All kinds of trauma, PTSD, where that kind of physical movement is so helpful for that. I want you to touch on — in Ziva, you’ve really come up with an approach to teaching this and to helping people embrace this as a practice that, at least I have found is quite different from a lot of what’s taught out there in terms of meditation in terms of meditation, whether we’re talking about children or adults. So can you talk about that a bit? What makes Ziva and the approach they use different from a lot of other meditation processes or apps that might be out there?

Dr. Emily Fletcher:

Sure. So what a lot of people now call mediation are the free apps on our phone. Most everybody has at least one free meditation app on their phone if not a few. There are a lot of them that are really great. A lot of them have really changed people’s awareness, changed people’s fear, they’ve gotten their toe in the water, which is all great. I am a fan of most of them. And what I would say is that what most of the “meditation”, and I’m using air quotes on purpose there, apps are teaching is actually mindfulness. This gets confusing for folks because we’re using the terms mindfulness and meditation as synonyms and as these tools are becoming more popular, it’s important that we become specific with our vernacular. So I would define mindfulness as the art of bringing your awareness to the present moment, which is beautiful and necessary and this is why people say “Cooking is my meditation”, or “Exercise is my meditation”. What they’re really saying is, “I am present when I’m cooking/I’m present when I’m exercising”, which is again — great. Mindfulness is very good at dealing with your stress in the now. It is very good at creating a state change. Like “Ugh, I had a crazy day at work — let me do 10 minutes of my app, I feel better in the now.” Kind of like a pain pill. 

It’s an immediate state change, versus the meditation portion of the Ziva technique is creating a trait change. It is healing you on a cellular level and it is dealing with your stress from the past. So as I’m sure you know, we’re not dealing with today’s stress. It’s every time you’ve ever been in a fight or flight, it’s left a little open window on your brain computer and there are some studies suggesting that we’re even inheriting that from a few generations prior. We have this epigenetic thing that we’re born with. And so, the important piece to know here is that where Ziva is so special, the reason what people see is real performance enhancement is that we’re not just dealing with the stress from today. We’re actually giving you a tool to give your body rest that is even deeper than sleep. And when you do that, the body knows how to heal itself. One of the things that it heals itself from is stress, not only from today, but all this stuff we’ve been accumulating for our whole lives. And when you clear out the body and the brain in that way, that’s where you sort of really see this return on investment. You put in 15 minutes, you get back hours of productivity in your day. Because many of us don’t even realize how much stress is costing us. Many of us don’t even understand how it’s affecting our sleep latency, our ability to rejuvenate during our sleep, our recovery time, our immune systems, our decision-making capabilities, our creative abilities. And so, once you sort of get rid of that, it’s like turning off white noise that you didn’t even know was on and you’re like, “Gasp! I just have so much more space, I have so much more time, I have so much more creativity, I am able to hear my own intuition. I’m not making bad decisions as much, I don’t get sick as often”

So it’s a small investment to make to get a massive return on investment. Then we end with the manifesting. So the Ziva technique, like you mentioned, it is mindfulness, meditation and manifesting. The mindfulness is the appetizer, the meditation is the main course and the manifesting is the dessert. We even manifest with the kids because they are so beautifully poised to still have a handle on their imagination. They really still believe that anything is possible. They are so imaginative and that’s what manifesting is. It’s using your imagination to live into, to be creative about who you want to be in the world. Who do I want to be today? How do I want to feel today? It’s not magical thinking. It’s not like, “Oh let me put a picture of a Ferrari on my wall, and then I’ll get a Ferrari.” It’s more about reminding yourself of what your dreams are. And kids are so beautifully positioned to never forget that like so many of us adults have. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

It’s really that combination of those three things that really is very powerful and makes the approach or the way that you teach that different from a lot that’s out there. And I do think to your point about the mindfulness focus, I think that that does tend to be where the focus is. But when you bring the meditation with that, and then the manifesting also, there’s really power in that. 

Dr. Emily Fletcher: 

Yeah. And another thing to note is that most apps are working on an addiction model. They want you to keep coming back. They’re free, normally, because of advertising dollars, so they’re getting paid based on how long your eyeballs are on your phone. For me, it’s like who wants to be tethered to their phone for meditation? It’s like having an AA meeting in a liquor store. It’s like let’s cut that cord. Let’s be self-sufficient. Wouldn’t it be great to just close your eyes and be able to come home to yourself without headphones and WiFi and internet and all of that? And I think especially for our kids. They’re so zoomed out right now that we will use technology just to give them the tools for a few days. After the 7-day course, they’re going to be able to close their eyes and go in, any place on a road trip, on a plane ride, at school, after school before a sporting event, before sleep, they’re just going to have — and it really does start to feel like a super power, where you’re like, “Oh, I can step into my kindness, my bravery, my creativity, whatever I choose.”

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

And something that they can always have with them, which I think is so powerful. And really, for any of us, right? When we’re feeling overwhelmed, when we’re feeling stressed, anxious, that’s all about managing uncertainty for ourselves than feeling like, “Ugh, I don’t have control over what’s happening”. And we often don’t have control over what’s happening, but we have control over our response to it, and it strikes me that that’s really what you’re focusing on right here is giving kids a tool, giving us as adults a tool that regardless of what’s going on around us, we can control how we respond to that and kind of go inward and use these tools to help us manage through. 

Dr. Emily Fletcher:

Aha. So in the kids’ course, we have this awesome character, his name is Zibunny — so we’re working with writers from Sesame Street and Harvard child psychologists — so my world has been so weird these past few months — I’ve spent hours a week looking at fur colors and eyeball shapes, I’m like “What is my life right now!” But anyway, Zibunny is being birthed as we speak and he is en route to New York City. So he is my teaching partner and he is in Superhero School for the kids’ course. And everyday he is dealing with another challenge. His big brother won’t let him have his superhero cape, he broke his mom’s jelly bean bowl and he doesn’t want to tell her. He has a test at school and he’s scared. So everyday, he’s dealing with these big things that are causing big emotions that feel outside of his control. And I’m not guiding him to say, “Oh, well go beat up your brother/yell at your mom/tell your teacher you’re not taking the test.” It’s never about changing or controlling the external circumstances. It’s about our ability to adapt. It’s about our ability to surrender. 

And while I don’t use terms like adapt and surrender in the kids’ course, I do think these are important concepts for us as parents to have with us because again, the more we understand them and the more we can model them, the better we’re going to be able to guide the children and to be their sidekicks, and that’s how I frame the adults, is that they are the kids’ sidekicks as they go through the training.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

I love that. So many pieces that you’re bringing together for this that are just so exciting, I can’t wait for families to be able to access this, and professionals too. Because obviously, this is something that can be used in schools that can be used by any practitioner working with a child in any capacity. 

Dr. Emily Fletcher:

From your lips to God’s ears! I mean our poor kids are going through a lot right now! My only regret is that this isn’t out right now. I wish I just had it to just pour over the planet in this moment in time, but I’m going to trust, I’m going to take my own advice, I’m going to adapt, I’m going to surrender, I’m going to trust that the timing is perfect. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

It always is, right? To that point, can you give our parents who are listening, maybe a starting point or two? MAybe it doesn’t have anything to do with their kids. Maybe it’s a starting point for themselves of how they can start to incorporate some of this or think about something differently or maybe it is something that they could do with their child. What are some ways that parents could just start dabbling in this?

Dr. Emily Fletcher:

So there are some fun things that come to mind, and I’ll teach something for the parents first, and then I’ll teach an adaptation of ti that they can share with their kids, but this is the simplest and also one of the most effective tools I’ve ever found, it’s called the 2x Breath. All we’re doing is we’re inhaling through the nose for the count of two and we’re exhaling through the mouth for the count of four. And that might sound simple because it is, but let’s not underestimate the power of it. We don’t want to confuse simplicity for weakness. The power in this comes from the simplicity. So to the magic in the 2x Breath is that we’re doubling the length of the exhale for the inhale. If you do that for 10 to 15 cycles, then you start to strengthen the Vagus nerve, which is the super highway between your brain and body. And when you do it enough times, your vagus nerves just produce something — the German word, I think is Vagusstoff, it means “Stuff of Vagus” like basically, your vagus nerve starts producing a neurotransmitter that actually slows down your heart. So when we get stressed, the first thing that happens is that our heart rate increases. So one of the markers of an adaptive resilient human, be it adult or child, is what we call heart rate variability. 

Heart rate variability means basically, can you adapt or not? Can you launch into fight or flight when it’s appropriate? Can you relax when it’s appropriate? And because so many of us have been dealing with chronic stress for so long, we’re just amped. We have that adrenaline and cortisol that’s just making our heart beat at a very fast rate all the time. And if we get too stressed for too long, it goes into adrenal fatigue. So anyway, this 2X Breath, I’m just explaining a little bit of the science because otherwise it’s easy for people to write it off, or like oh, she just told me to take some deep breaths. And that is basically what I’m telling you to do is take some deep breaths, but there is a little bit of discipline around it, and that is simply doubling the length of the exhale from the inhale. So we can do some together now and then afterwards, we can adapt it for kids. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Right, let’s do it. 

Dr. Emily Fletcher:

So you can do this seated or standing. If you’re really amped, you can do it even walking. So you would inhale for 2 steps and exhale for 4 steps, but ideally, you’re seated right now. You don’t need fancy fingers, you don’t need to be cross-legged, just in the chair is cool. And let’s inhale through the nose for two. And then we’ll exhale through the mouth for four. Really good. Inhaling through the mouth for two — big belly breath, and exhaling through the mouth for four. Inhaling into the belly, and then breathing space around the heart, and on this exhale, we can soften the brow, soften the jaw, let the shoulders drop, let the belly soften. We’ll do a few more, you can close your eyes if you like. Breathing into the belly, breathing space around the heart, and then exhaling through the mouth for four and feeling every muscle in your jaw, your brow, your shoulders start to soften and relax. We’ll do two more breaths letting this be the biggest inhale you’ve taken all day, and exhaling, letting your muscles soften and surrender, feeling your feet heavy on the ground, letting go of anything that is not serving you. And one final time, the biggest inhale you’ve taken all year, and then exhaling, just releasing, releasing., releasing, letting go, letting go, letting go. So you can continue you. You can keep your eyes closed. 

And now, I will adapt it a bit for something you can share with your kids. So again, we will simply inhale through the nose for two. And this time, as we exhale, we can hum. So, “Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.” So simple, we’re just humming, we’re just putting a little bit of sound in the exhale, so inhaling through the nose for two and exhaling. And as we exhale, make a little bit of the humming sound. We’ll do one more, and on this final one, inhaling through the nose, as you hum, I invite you to put your hands up on your face and just see if you can feel the vibration in your face as you hum. Feel it in your nose or in your cheeks. Really good. And dropping your hands in your lap, keeping your eyes closed, letting your breath be easy and natural, and just noticing how you feel. Just for 20 seconds or less, just noticing how you feel now versus how you felt before we took those few 2X Breaths. Really good, and in your own time, whenever you’re ready, we can start to slowly, gently open the eyes. 

So the 2X Breath is what I recommend for the adults. Just in for 2 out for 4, you could do it walking or seated and it’s fun to add in the humming for the kids, because sometimes, and I call it “feel the vibration”, they can put their hands either here, or sometimes on their nose. We can do it high, we tend to resonate up here when it’s a high tone, you could do it on your chest on your throat when it’s low, and the kids kind of think that that’s cool, especially if they younger to have real time feedback — like, “Oh, I can change my vibration, it’s happening even by changing the tone.” And actually that humming is also very, very calming to the Vagus nerve, in addition to doubling the length of the exhale. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Yeah, I was going to say that humming is such a powerful tool for toning the vagus nerve too, that’s great, because I think for kids, especially young kids, that physical feedback, that, feeling that in their body, that’s a powerful, powerful thing. I think probably even some adults would benefit from and enjoy doing that too. 

Dr. Emily Fletcher:

The only thing about humming is that hard to do at work or if you’re out in public. But so many of us are at home right now, so it’s like — Hum away! Live your humming dreams!

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

That’s right! Hum for your best life! I love it. One thing that I think is worth pointing out is that we can’t expect kids to just start to be able to do this stuff when they’re struggling with something. We need to practice and make this a part of our lifestyle, part of what we’re practicing during times when we’re feeling calm too, because sometimes parents say, ”Well, I taught them how to do that, but they’re so getting all distressed so they’re not able to use their breathing.” I’m like, “Well, how much have you practiced it at times when they’re able to actually practice it and feel it?” We’re not getting good at anything when we’re all worked up, right? So this is making a daily habit of this — right?

Dr. Emily Fletcher:

That’s exactly right. It wouldn’t be like, “Oh, I’m going to go into a gym and just pick up a 350 pound weight.” No, you have to lift weights everyday. You have to get stronger. And that’s one of the beautiful things about Ziva is that it’s not — so Ziva Kids is a 7-day training for the little kids, it’s about 8-10 mintues a day, for the older kids it’s about 15 minutes a day. The cool thing is that once you go through the 7 days, you can always come back and refresh. You can always come back, I’m trying to make them as entertaining as possible so the kids want to come back and revisit and watch the episodes again like an episode of TV. But the idea is that once they move through that 7-day training, they’re going to have these tools to take with them, they’re going to understand it inside and out, and yes, we will give some triage tools, like okay, so you have a test. So you’re dealing with bullying, so you have to move — there are going to be some triage audios, but the actual core of the matriculation is designed to give kids a daily practice. That said, I don’t want parents to be like drill sergeants. I don’t want parents to be like “Did you meditate today?” I don’t want them to be the meditation police because kids will find their own way to it. Once you tell them that “This is a superpower, and you can actually go inside and access it however you need, and in the ways and times you need”, they might be doing it and not even telling you. So we have to watch ourselves that we aren’t like, “Oh you have to do it every morning before you brush your teeth.” They might be doing it in school before. test and not even telling you about it.

So along with the kid’s training, there is some parents training. There is supplemental parents training because I have to give the parents the guidance of like., “Hey, let them lead the way. Give them some space, you model your own behavior. They learn by watching, not by telling”. So there is the guidance as well. And the other thing I just want to mention is that with Ziva, for a lot of kids, it definitely happens with the parents as well — there can be a phrase of emotional and physical release, like a detox that happens in the beginning. So a lot of the training that I’m giving to the parents is how to help their kids through that and how to not be scared of it, and actually see it and celebrate it as part of the healing process, which is good, because then it starts to get us out of that system — that habitual framing that we’ve had for so long of like, oh let me just shut it down. Off the bat, most kids are going to have a bit of a catharsis. So if we can embrace that and celebrate that, then it’s downhill from there. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

That’s great that you’re giving parents the tools for knowing what to expect from that and how to manage that. I think to your point about the modeling and to parents not being the meditation police, I think that’s really important, and I want to say to those of you who are listening who maybe feel like, “Ugh, my kid is so challenging, my child is so resistive, am I going to be able to get him or her to do this?”

What I would say is don’t try to get your child to do this. Model. That’s really powerful. If you have a really resistive child, whether they are a younger child or maybe they’re a teenager who is going through a resistive period, you being the model instead of telling them they have to do this — just, you do it. Have them see you doing it. If you’re feeling worked up, you could use this. If you’re noticing that this might be helpful to them during something they are going through, you can just drop into doing some of the 2X Breathing, those kinds of things. Don’t get focused on trying to get or force your child to do it. Just get into the habit of modeling that, and that is a much more, I think, inviting way to approach it and avoid those power struggles. 

Dr. Emily Fletcher:

Ah, thank you so much for saying that, because anytime we’re pointing at someone else, we’ve got 3 fingers pointing back at us. And I can guarantee you that if your kid is stressed, it might not be exclusively you, but I guarantee you that your stress is not helping the cause. So if you can do your own tools and techniques to decrease your own stress levels, that in and of itself is a gift. That in and of itself is going to help your kid’s stress. Because if you’re happy, then they feel like they’re not responsible for their happiness. Kids are narcissistic by nature. They think that the world revolves around them, it’s one of their survival mechanisms. So if we as parents are angry, sad, upset, depressed, our kids can’t help but take a lot of that personally. They think that it’s their fault. That’s just how we’re wired.

So as you start to practice your own mental hygiene, as you start to take responsibility for your own stress management, it takes the onus off your kids. They’re going to feel that you’re happier. So I would say Ziva Kids has not yet quite come out, so the thing that you can do if you’re going, “I really want my kids to do this.” The best thing you can do for yourself is you do Ziva Online. Start now, start modeling. Make it inviting. And then even, when, say you do get Ziva Kids and they’re like, “I don’t want to do that”. I would say, okay, let’s just color and then just let’s play the video. Let’s play it in the background and you and I can color. And they’ll take in what they take in and we’re going to have coloring books and worksheets and all of that. So you could be like, “Okay, well let’s just draw Zibunny” And Zibunny will be over here talking and they’ll receive what they’re meant to receive.

My best friend has an 8-year-old daughter and she’s testing out some of the videos for me right now, and for years, her 8-year-old was like, “No, no, no, I don’t want to do that, I don’t want to do that.” And then one day she just said, “I want to do Ziva” and then she did it like 3 times in a row. So we’ve got to trust their timing. We can’t dictate it for them.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Yeah. Make it an inviting process. I love that. So this is coming soon. Where can parents go to get more information, number one, if they want to explore Ziva now for themselves but also to be kind of first in line to get the info on Ziva Kids when it’s released?

Dr. Emily Fletcher:

So the best place to go is our website, which is zivameditation.com. And if you go to /kids, then you can go and put your name and email and you will be the very first to know when Ziva Kids is released. And there you could also find out about Ziva Online, and that’s our 15-day adult training that teaches you the mindfulness, the meditation, and the manifesting. There will be — if you do Ziva Online now, then the pricing will be different for you when Ziva Kids comes out. We want to reward our early adopters. We want whole families meditating together and make that really easy for folks.  

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Yeah, and I think it’s a wonderful suggestion for the adults to get started with that now so that they’re comfortable and familiar with it and then when the Ziva Kids is ready to launch into that with their children. We’ll make all those links available and of course, keep all of you updated as the launch is getting close, but Emily, this has been such a wonderful conversation. You’ve shared such great strategies with people, I just can’t thank you enough for being here. 

Dr. Emily Fletcher:

I really appreciate the work that you’re doing and I’m honored to be a guest, so thank you for having me, and it was my first time talking about Ziva Kids, which feels really fun!

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

So exciting! Oh, it’s going to be awesome! I can’t wait and I know all of you are excited too, so thank you so much for being here for this episode and we will catch you back here next week.