Susan Kaiser Greenland: Nothing Is More Important Than Teaching Mindfulness to Kids

April 23, 2019

Susan Kaiser Greenland: Nothing Is More Important Than Teaching Mindfulness to Kids

Susan Kaiser Greenland April 23, 2019

Susan Kaiser Greenland is an author, meditation teacher, and the founder of the Inner Kids Foundation, which is devoted to bringing the lessons of mindfulness to children. Her books include The Mindful Child and Mindful Games. With Sounds True, Susan has created Mindful Parent, Mindful Child, a 30-day training program for integrating mindfulness into your family’s everyday life. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Susan about her efforts to fold mindfulness into basic childhood education, as well as how she came to this work after 20 years as a corporate lawyer. Susan outlines some of the practices that are ideal for children and why parents should have their own mindfulness routine. Susan and Tami discuss mindfulness-based games and the steps to making common practices (such as a body scan) more fun and engaging. Finally, they consider how to balance the ideal of non-striving with motivated work, as well as what the future of children’s mindfulness education might look like. (62 minutes)

Susan Kaiser Greenland is a mindfulness teacher and founder of the Inner Kids Foundation (along with her husband, author Seth Greenland), a not-for-profit organization that taught secular mindfulness and community-based programs from 2001 to 2009. She has researched the impact of mindfulness in education, childcare, and family health at UCLA, and her research has been published in the Journal of Applied School Psychology. Susan’s work has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, USA Today, Real Simple, HuffPost, and Parents magazine. She currently works in the United States and abroad as an author, public speaker, and internationally recognized educator on the subject of sharing secular mindfulness and meditation with children and families.
 
For more, visit susankaisergreenland.com .

 

Author photo © BarbaraKatz-2018

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Also By Author

5 Ways to Connect with Interconnection by Susan Kaiser...

5 Ways to Connect with Interconnect by Susan Kaiser Greenland

It’s no surprise that the well-worn aphorism “It takes a village to raise a child” has resonated with many parents, along with another ancient proverb thought to have originated in Africa, “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.” Why do these now-clichéd old sayings ring true?

Because being a parent is lonely sometimes, and these sayings evoke a felt sense of connection and interconnection for which many parents long.

It’s the warm, fuzzy feeling that bubbles up at children’s holiday concerts, sporting events, and other neighborhood programs. It’s an understanding from the inside out that being a parent is as much about the community as it is about our children. It speaks to a holistic perspective that challenges the narrow view that we are independent, self-contained individuals and instead elevates a mindset that recognizes the many ways we are dependent and connected.

When we tap into this view, we remember that the way we relate to our children ripples out to touch their friends, teammates, classmates, teachers, coaches, doctors, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and on and on and on. Remembering this ripple effect can be a powerful antidote to the stress, strain, and even the doldrums of a busy parent’s life.

Here are five themes that help parents connect with interconnection.

A Ripple Effect

When their caregivers are so tired, stressed-out, afraid, or frustrated that they habitually speak and act impulsively without thinking through the consequences, it’s tough for children to imagine a community of relaxed, reflective adults who relate to one another thoughtfully, collaboratively, and with kindness.

Similarly, when kids live in communities where the prevailing mindset is that resources are scarce and there’s not enough to go around (like many of us do), it’s tough for them to imagine a world where collaboration and altruism, fueled by an understanding that achievement is not a zero-sum game, are woven into the culture. Switching the lens through which kids and parents view the world from a me-first orientation to a generous one can be an uphill battle, but it’s a struggle that can be won. How? By remembering the ripple effect made by even small acts of kindness and collaboration.

Takeaway:  Today, watch for places that you’re starting a ripple effect. How does that make you feel?

Ordinary Magic  

“The highest to which man can attain,” wrote Goethe, “is wonder,” but when busy parents are pulled in many directions at once, it’s easy to lose sight of the wonder in every moment.  If you pause and look closely at chores and workaday obligations that feel relentless, you’ll notice that even what seems to be a fixed routine is anything but solid and predictable.

By bringing a sense of wonder and mystery to the everyday occurrences that make up family life (this flower, her smile, his laugh, that traffic jam), what once seemed like ordinary occurrences become nuanced, extraordinary ones. Okay, maybe not the traffic jam.

Takeaway: Today, make time and space for the “ordinary magic” of everyday experience.

Meet Everything with Love  

If you’re anything like me, your knee-jerk reaction to a crazy to-do list and an over-crowded schedule is to bear down and muscle through. There’s an alternative, though. When you react to being busy by pausing rather than speeding up, you’re brought back to what’s happening in the moment.

If you relax rather than power through, you interrupt your body’s fight or flight response that releases adrenaline and activates the wing of your nervous system that promotes ease and calm instead. A few breaths later, you’ll be able to see what’s happening within and around you more clearly, set priorities more confidently, and return to what you were doing in a more balanced way.

Now you’re ready for what I think is the most radical piece of the mindful worldview. You’re ready to meet whatever comes your way with love—a practice I learned from the remarkable meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein. Can you think of a more apt intention for parents?

Takeaway: Test drive this approach the next time you find yourself in a conversation with someone who is challenging. See what happens if you meet what they say with love, even if you don’t feel it.

Don’t Expect Applause

It’s not a great idea to expect something in return when helping others; it’s better to do what needs to be done for its own sake. That’s what it looks like to prioritize motivation over results. Prioritizing motivation doesn’t mean ignoring outcomes, though. It just means remembering that there will always be things outside your control.

So how do busy parents with long to-do lists acknowledge uncertainty without becoming overwhelmed? By staying present in the moment and focusing on the goodness of what you’re doing instead of the results.

Takeaway:  The next time you’re faced with a job that seems overwhelming, break it down into small tasks. Take-on one job at a time, and focus on the goodness of the task that you’re doing instead of the result. See what happens.

You’re basically good (seriously, you are).

Parents often hold themselves to unrealistically high standards because they want the best for their families. Being hard on yourself can backfire though, because the more preoccupied you become, thinking about where you didn’t measure up, the less bandwidth you have to remember the places where you did.

What if, instead of being hard on yourself, every time you feel mildly dissatisfied you view that dissatisfaction as a reflection of your basic goodness? Let’s say you’re frustrated and cranky because your children aren’t getting along. What if, rather than beating yourself up for being impatient, you view that frustration as a manifestation of a deep desire for your kids relate to one another happily and with ease? In other words, you see frustration as an expression of your basic goodness.

Takeaway: If feelings of dissatisfaction or impatience bubble up today, see if you can view them as an expression of your basic goodness—your hope that everyone is healthy, happy, safe, and living with ease.


Susan Kaiser Greenland, Sounds True

Susan Kaiser Greenland is a mindfulness teacher and founder of the Inner Kids Foundation (along with her husband, author Seth Greenland), a not-for-profit organization that taught secular mindfulness and community-based programs from 2001 to 2009. She has researched the impact of mindfulness in education, childcare, and family health at UCLA, and her research has been published in the Journal of Applied School Psychology. Susan’s work has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, USA Today, Real Simple, HuffPost, and Parents Magazine. She currently works in the United States and abroad as an author, public speaker, and internationally recognized educator on the subject of sharing secular mindfulness and meditation with children and families.

For more, visit susankaisergreenland.com.

Mindful Parent, Mindful Child by Susan Kaiser Greenland, Sounds True

Click here to see Susan’s newest work: Mindful Parent, Mindful Child

For anyone who wants to bring mindfulness into their family life, Susan Kaiser Greenland, a pioneer in bringing mindfulness to children and families, presents easy-to-learn practices created to help busy parents fit mindfulness into their daily routine. Mindful Parent, Mindful Child is structured as an “audio journey” for daily use, offering 30 potent practices that will teach the essentials of mindful awareness, compassion, self-regulation, stress relief, and much more in just ten minutes a day.


Susan Kaiser Greenland: Nothing Is More Important Than...

Susan Kaiser Greenland is an author, meditation teacher, and the founder of the Inner Kids Foundation, which is devoted to bringing the lessons of mindfulness to children. Her books include The Mindful Child and Mindful Games. With Sounds True, Susan has created Mindful Parent, Mindful Child, a 30-day training program for integrating mindfulness into your family’s everyday life. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Susan about her efforts to fold mindfulness into basic childhood education, as well as how she came to this work after 20 years as a corporate lawyer. Susan outlines some of the practices that are ideal for children and why parents should have their own mindfulness routine. Susan and Tami discuss mindfulness-based games and the steps to making common practices (such as a body scan) more fun and engaging. Finally, they consider how to balance the ideal of non-striving with motivated work, as well as what the future of children’s mindfulness education might look like. (62 minutes)

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Breaking away from the idea that there is one “right...

We live in a wild world with a wealth of information at our fingertips. This means we can read reviews, check forums, and see what other parents are saying about everything we purchase or do for our children. 

But that is not always a good thing. There is such a thing as too much research. 

I distinctly remember working with a client who had very high expectations around her child’s food. She was concerned with what ingredients were in the food, how it was prepared, how it was served—and anything less than “healthy” felt wrong to her. She was a self-proclaimed perfectionist who wanted the best for her child—she wasn’t going to “lower her standards” at the request of her partner or anyone else. 

As a result of her food concerns, she spent hours upon hours extensively researching topics related to food such as GMOs, toxins, ingredients, and safety. Through her research, she also read that stress could decrease her milk supply—so she shut down any conversations when her family tried to approach her about this or how it had taken over her life. 

This level of research was no longer about the food—postpartum anxiety was in the driver’s seat, pushing her to search for control. 

It’s also important to break away from the idea that there is one “right” way to mother. Just because we have access to information doesn’t mean there isn’t room for nuance. Take “healthy food” as an example. What constitutes a “healthy” diet has been a debated topic for decades and is often a wellness space filled with fads and extremes with each approach contradicting the next. There have been more rules prescribed to our food then I can count that cause people not to trust themselves and leave them seeing food as being good or bad. Food is not black or white. Our approach doesn’t have to be all or nothing.

In my client’s case, research had gone beyond just information-seeking. Sometimes, research is just research. But other times, research is:

  • Trying to find the “right” or “best” way to do something
  • Seeking reassurance
  • Grasping for certainty
  • Feeding your anxiety
  • An attempt to soothe your anxiety

I have seen this pattern play out many times with many of my clients. I believe that in many ways intensive mothering prevents us from seeing signs of anxiety. When we interpret perfectionism and the need to avoid mistakes at all costs as being a good mother, we have a lot of pressure to carry. It’s no wonder that so many of us find ourselves in the research rabbit hole.

Does that mean all research is bad? Of course not. But we need to learn the difference between when it’s helping and when it’s not. Researching should be used to provide you with enough information to make an informed decision. It should have boundaries—not be all-consuming. 

Excerpt from Releasing the Mother Load: How to Carry Less and Enjoy Motherhood More by Erica Djossa.

Erica Djossa

Erica Djossa is a registered psychotherapist, sought-after maternal mental health specialist, and the founder of wellness company Momwell. Her popular Momwell podcast has over a million downloads. Erica’s a regular contributor to publications like the Toronto Star, Scary Mommy, and Medium, and her insights have been shared by celebrities like Ashley Graham, Nia Long, Christy Turlington, and Adrienne Bosh. She lives in Toronto. For more, visit momwell.com

5 Tools to Create More Space in Your Mind

Busyness, distraction, and stress have all led to the shrinking of the modern mind.

I realize that’s a strange thing to say. Most of us don’t think of our mind as something with space in it, as a thing that can either be big or small, expensive or claustrophobic.

But just think about the last time you felt overwhelmed, stressed, or out of control. Chances are, you might not even have to think that hard. You might be experiencing that state right now as you read these words.

What happens in these moments? 

First, our mind wanders. It spins through all sorts of random thoughts about the past and the future. As a result, we lose touch with the direct experience of present time.

Second, we lose perspective. We can’t see the big picture anymore. Instead, it’s like we’re viewing life through a long and narrow tunnel. We become blind to possibility, fixated on problems.

Put these two together and you’ve got the perfect recipe for eradicating space in the mind. The landscape of the mind begins to feel like a calendar jammed with so many meetings, events, and obligations that these neon colored boxes cover-up even the smallest slivers of white space. 

So it could be nice for our partner, for our kids, and, mostly, for our ourselves to consider: how can we create more space in the mind?

Here are five tools for creating mental space. If you want to go deeper, check out my new book with Sounds True on the topic called OPEN: Living With an Expansive Mind in a Distracted World.

1. Meditation.

You’ve no doubt heard about all of the scientifically validated benefits of this practice. It reduces stress. It boosts productivity. It enhances focus.

That is all true. But here is the real benefit of meditation: it creates more space in the mind. To get started, try it out for just a few minutes a day. Use an app or guided practice to help you.

2. Movement.

So, maybe you’re not the meditating type. That’s fine. You can still create space in the mind by setting aside time for undistracted movement.

The key word here is “undistracted.” For many of us, exercise and movement have become yet another time where our headspace gets covered over by texts, podcasts, or our favorite Netflix series. 

There’s nothing wrong with this. But it can be powerful to leave the earbuds behind every once in a while and allow the mind to rest while you walk, stretch, run, bike, swim, or practice yoga.

3. Relax.

When it comes to creating headspace, we moderns, with our smartphone-flooded, overly-stimulated, minds seem to inevitably encounter a problem: we’re often too stressed, amped, and agitated to open.

Relaxation – calming the nervous system – is perhaps the best way to counter this effect and create more fertile ground for opening. When we relax – the real kind, not the Netflix or TikTok kind –  the grip of difficult emotions loosens, the speed of our whirling thoughts slows, and, most important, the sense of space in our mind begins to expand.

How can you relax? Try yoga. Try extended exhale breathing, where you inhale four counts, exhale eight counts. Try yoga nidra. Or, just treat yourself to a nap.

4. See bigger.

When life gets crazy, the mind isn’t the only thing that shrinks. The size of our visual field also gets smaller. Our eyes strain. Our peripheral vision falls out of awareness.

What’s the antidote to this tunnel vision view? See bigger.

Try it right now. With a soft gaze, allow the edges of your visual field to slowly expand. Imagine you’re seeing whatever happens to be in front of you from the top of a vast mountain peak. Now bring this more expansive, panoramic, way of seeing with you for the rest of the day.

5. Do nothing.

Now for the most advanced practice. It’s advanced because it cuts against everything our culture believes in. In a world where everyone is trying desperately to get more done, one of the most radical acts is to not do — to do nothing.

Even just a few minutes of this paradoxical practice can help you experience an expansion of space in the mind.

Lie on the floor or outside on the grass. Close your eyes. Put on your favorite music if you want. Set an alarm for a few minutes so you don’t freak out too much. 

Then, stop. Drop the technique. Drop the effort. Just allow yourself to savor this rare experience of doing absolutely nothing.

Nate Klemp, PhD, is a philosopher, writer, and mindfulness entrepreneur. He is the coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Start Here and the New York Times critics’ pick The 80/80 Marriage. His work has been featured in the LA Times, Psychology Today, the Times of London, and more, and his appearances include Good Morning America and Talks at Google. He’s a cofounder of LifeXT and founding partner at Mindful. For more, visit nateklemp.com or @Nate_Klemp on Instagram.

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