Eat or Be Eaten….. OR…. Tracking Greater Self-Control

In the book The Way of the Mindful Education, Daniel Rechtschaffen suggests that perhaps one of the first forms of mindfulness was animal tracking.

Close your eyes for a minute and put yourself in the footsteps of someone from a time in which you did not go to the store for food. Take a deep breath and picture yourself getting ready to track an animal you need, to be able to feed your family. From childhood you were taught by your elders how to track the animals you were seeking out. The way they taught you was to take you on a tracking hike. They showed you the tracks, they spoke the words into you. You didn’t sit and read about the tracking process, you lived it as you were taught it.

As you were living the teaching of tracking animals you were also taught to have an awareness of yourself and your surroundings. You were taught that as you tracked an animal, it was very likely, another animal was tracking you. If you wanted to survive you needed to have a total awareness of your present moment. You needed to be mindful!

This mindful living taught you to calm your body, slow your breathing, keep your focus on the present and your surroundings. As you learned about animals, you learned to control yourself. You were living your lesson of self-control.

George Leoniak the author of The Mindful Tracker, is an internationally known and certified tracker who teaches mindfulness alongside tracking. He talks about not putting projections into the tracking experience. He states it is best to have an open mind and not assume a track is a squirrel track until you study it, track it, and know it. He talks about how this relates to how we see ourselves and others and not putting projects onto others and getting to know them and getting to know ourselves.

George talks about never taking cell phones into a tracking environment to ensure you are full submerged in the experience, to find the zen, to be mindful. We can use this lesson to help us remember to put aside distractions an be fully present in our mindful experiences.

If you’d like to learn more from George check out his website - http://mindfultracker.com/

Now that we have explored the origin of mindful tracking and creating self-control let’s find a way to live this and pass it along to our students.

I would not suggest taking your students on a tracking adventure outside. That being said we can do a mock-tracking inside.

For this week’s mindfulness, after you have worked with your students to understand that background to mindful tracking, practice the tracking!

Maybe you simply read to them from the blog. Or maybe you get super creative and create a tracking story to tell your students. Make sure to talk about taking slow deep breaths, having quiet steady slow steps, keep focused wide eyes, and use your ears to listen for signs of what is and is not in your surroundings.

After you have created the back story, taught the mindful self-control, practice! Please!!! I have taken the time to put animal tracks around the building. I encourage you to take a mindful walk around the building, find a set of animal tracks (there are a few different sets) and track the animal.

Sitting with Ourselves

Another great element of self-control is being able to be still with ourselves, in silence.

In mindfulness we have various practices which can aid us with learning to be still, be silent, and gain better self-control.

Inner Explorer … which we all have access to, every day, and we can send it home to parents too… has some silence practices.

Inner Explorer Daily Practice

Pre-K-1: Practice #10

1-4: Practice #15

5-7: Practice #20

These practices, which are titled Comfortably Quiet, encourage you to take small amounts of time to sit quietly with your own thoughts and feelings. 

They encourage you to explore your inner truths and wisdom to help you begin being your best self.

We can also introduce quiet mindfulness by helping our students engage more than one sense at a time.

You can start with asking your students to sit and listen to the sounds around them. Tell them that you will set a timer for one minute and during that time you would like them to be as quiet as possible so that they can hear the sounds around them. Ask them to notice a sound they have never heard or paid attention to previously. After you complete the minute have the students report on their findings.

You can also utilize the sense of sight during the quiet mindfulness. You can talk with your students about quietly observing the room and searching out a sight they have never paid attention to before. As the students search out sights, ask them to remain silent and take mental notes on the sights. Set the timer and allow one minute of time and then come back together to explore the findings.

I personally like to call this mindfulness Spiderman Mindfulness, telling the students they are using their spidy senses.

You could even use the sense of smell. This sense may take some preparation, such as, bringing in something that may have a noticeable smell. I do warn to have caution with this if you have anyone with breathing issues or sensitives to smell.

If you’d like to get creative, combine our Thanksgiving week blog with this one and do a mindful eating. Again, encouraging the quiet experience.

It can be difficult to sit in silence. 

I had a friend in college who would go running with me and talk the whole time. I liked to run in silence, utilizing the time to process thoughts and feelings and even plan out my day. My friend liked to run with someone to talk, engage, and build a friendship. 

My friend was in foster care for part of his childhood and he experienced a lot of silence. To him silence was not easy. It was not a way to process internally, but rather a reminder he was alone. 

Before beginning this mindfulness spend some time talking with your students about silence. Talk about the fear of the quiet. Be open with them and acknowledge the awkwardness, the uncomfortable moments, and sometimes the loneliness. 

Then talk with them about the quiet as an opportunity to help them process thoughts and feelings. Help them explore the ideas that silence can clear our minds and relax our bodies.

And as always, Practice With Them. Don’t be busy with other tasks. Sit in the silence with them.