quietmindmeditation_teens

Funny (not!) scene last weekend when Melbourne weather surprised us all with a beach day. A balmy, blue sky 30 degrees – and an invitation to join friends by the beach for a late lunch and catch up.

Us adults went for a walk along the nearly empty beach, with the dogs racing in and out of the water, just chatting and catching up. The teenagers? well when we got back to the house the teenagers (all four of them) were each immersed in their PHONE.

Four beautiful, happy, engaging and confident kids who hadn’t had a chance to catch up for months .. all sucked into the little screen, the guru-technology.

Ignoring the beautiful souls beside them .. ignoring the real life unfolding around them ..

SAD 🙁

Online today over at Mindful.org is a report of Jon Kabat-Zinn speaking at the Harvard Graduate School of Education about applying the practice of mindfulness in schools – I have posted many times before (here under Teenagers) on the introduction of meditation/mindfulness here in our own Melbourne (Australia) schools and overseas.

I learnt to meditate when I was in my final senior school year – and that was 20+ years ago!

You can read the full Harvard Magazine article HERE

Kabat-Zinn talked about the importance of adults showing children how to pay attention, and how to do so in the heat of the moment so they can make wiser decisions.

“Mindfulness is like a muscle, and without exercise it will lose its strength,” he said. “Our world is so much about doing that the being gets lost.”