Find Your Calm

Telling someone to just calm down, doesn't work, they need a how to calm down technique. We all need a how to, we aren't Nike, we can't, Just Do It.

Before I share a fun and quick way to teach our students how to calm down let's take a moment to understand a few whys. 

In a quick read on beingwell.yale.edu we can learn that finding our calm can help with our heart health. This is something we all need, not just adults. We have students who might be dealing with health issues which are heart related. 

Finding calm can also help reduce muscle tension and elevate stress. Calm helps us avoid depression, anxiety, and even obesity. If we think about our students, they often tell us they spend all of their free time on games and eating junk food. With each passing year childhood obesity rates increase.

Calmness can also help improve our brain function and memory. These are key in a school setting, don't you think?

While Yale gives us a compelling list, there is still more. 

Mayoclinic.org also has shared a list of research based reasons to find your calm.

The Mayo Clinic has shared that finding calm can:

-Slow our heart rate

-Lower our blood pressure

-Improve our digestion

-Slow our breathing

-Control our blood sugar levels

-Lessen the activity of stress hormones

-Increase blood flow to major muscles

-Lessen muscle tension and chronic pain

-Improve mood

-Improve the quality of our sleep

-Lower fatigue

-Lessen anger and frustration (do you know how many times a day a young student tells me they have anger issues ....TOO MANY.... it's not issues with anger they have, it's lack of skills to calm the anger)

-Boost confidence to handle problems (we all could use more confidence, especially our students, they need to be shown how to build confidence in themselves).

Now that we have a significant list of reasons why we should practice finding calm lets begin to explore the how.

Below is a picture I found this past weekend and loved it. 

This is a great way to teach our students (and ourselves) how to calm down. It involves breathing and utilizing imagery of things that comfort us, make us happy, and help us feel calm.  We can take time to make a calm palm  with our students and then refer back to it anytime there is a need for a refresh.

What might your calm palm look like?

-books

-movies

-podcasts

-tiktok

-family

-friends

-hobbies

-chocolate 

-French fries 

-pets

-outdoors

-sleep

This mindfulness activity is a great opportunity to get to know what things your students find calming. This is a great way to connect and build relationships while building a resource and supporting a calm student and calm classroom.

Once you have created the Calm Palm, you can use it to take deep breaths in and out.  As a student (or you) breaths in you move your finger along a line and land on a item of comfort. I like to pause the breathe and hold the image in my mind. Then I move down the next line and slowly breathe out. This is repeated on all five fingers (or 10 if you have done both hands).

I hope this calming technique helps in your calm journey.

Here is another way to find some calm, come to my office (Nov 11-15) and grab a treat in honor or November 13th, World Kindness Day.