In the meditation portion of my last class, I asked my class of 6th graders to take a dive with me under the ocean – to imagine that they have the magical ability to breathe fully under water. They ocean they are diving into is the way they feel right now, it is what their body answers when, with their breath, they ask it “How are you feeling today?” I asked them to see their inner ocean as their canvas, their movie screen – their place to really see the emotional reality in which they’re in right now.
When we emerged, the majority of my students had surfaced from some of the scariest places I’ve ever heard of:
“I saw myself diving into a dark hole, and I couldn’t find my way out – there was no way up, and no way down. When I got the bottom of it, there were sharp rocks and so many dead bodies there, but they held on to my legs and pulled me down every time I tried to swim away.” C, age 11
“I saw myself being eaten limb by limb by a shark, and I kept asking it to let go and it wouldn’t.” R, age 12
“I couldn’t breathe – even when you told us that we could breathe, I couldn’t breathe. My body didn’t have enough space for me to breathe in – so I just drowned” D, age 11
Now have no fear – I did not leave my students in these gloomy underwater universes. The second portion of the meditation had them diving back in, walking through their worlds, and with guided music consciously altering what they saw by breathing affirmations into their body, by practicing “I Am” tools as they walked, and by creating a reality where they could help themselves. On the other end, I thankfully witnessed a class of resilient students who found ways to protect themselves in their previously dreary environments.
This particular class of 6th graders was on the last day of what was a full week’s worth of state mandated testing. In addition, in the weeks leading up to this, teachers were asked to shelve their curriculums in order to properly prep their students for these tests. Classrooms that may have, just a month ago, been abuzz with discussions about science experiments, ancient Greece, or how current events reflect history were shushed into practice exams and proper procedures for filling in those endless multiple choice questions. Knowing that I would be working with 47 stressed out and tired 11 and 12 year olds, I decided to give them imagination and play as a tool to relieve their stress.
The lesson is called “Creating My Reality” and it typically comes later on in the year, but what I witnessed and heard from my students in the check-in, compelled me to push it up a few weeks. I simply asked my students:
“What is reality to you?”
Some of their answers had me floored:
“The bad stuff of life”
“What I have to deal with”
“The stuff that you don’t want to happen”
“When you get a reality check”
“When you wake up from being a child”“
The harsh truth”
Eager to discuss with each other what reality is, a raucous debate emerged with one clear theme – Reality is something that holds a lot of stress. What they saw as a game of imagination and pretend, I saw as a very real reflection of how stress is affecting my students.
One visit to The American Institute of Stress website (appropriately, www.stress.org) is enough to make anyone want to crawl under a blanket and melt into a puddle of tears. The homepage alone lists “50 common signs and symptoms of stress” which range from the physical: neck ache, back pain, muscle spasms; to the emotional: increased anger, frustration hostility; to the psychological: sudden attacks of life threatening panic. Of course, nowhere does it mention what prolonged periods of stress can do the spiritual self –but we’ll get there. These symptoms focus on the adult reaction to stress – emotions and physical reactions in the body translated into actions and behaviors that we recognize as “stress-induced”. As educated and socialized adults, we understand that stress has these effects on us.
What about our kids then? How do they interpret and understand stress? If all 50 things on the sings and symptoms are happening simultaneously – and often, many of them are, how can someone still developing their basic understanding of self and foundation properly identify an overwhelming physical, emotional, and psychological reaction as “Stress”. Even more pressing, how can they actually cope with it?
In the “I Am Here” Workshop – the first one that any class interested in The “I Am” Project workshops or curriculum gets, I ask the students to tell me about a situation that stresses them out. Many of them have a basic understanding of where stress can come from – homework, fights with their siblings, over-scheduled lives. In some of the schools I go to, the stressors are a little bit different - knowing that I’m alone when I get home, having to take care of my younger sibling, walking home and getting there safely. They know that stress comes from parts in their lives that make them feel uncomfortable, anxious, and that prompt them to be more alert than usual.
When I ask them, “What actually IS stress?” – I get a lot of blank stares. They know where it comes from, but they’re not quite sure what it is. When I press them, I get a lot of answers that basically end up meaning - “It’s really bad.”
So before we continue, what actually is stress?
According to the same American Institute of Stress, stress is defined as “ a normal physical response to events that make you feel threatened or upset your balance in some way.” Truthfully, when your body’s stress response is working properly, it is your body’s way of telling you that something needs to be addressed – it shows you that something is off balance. Our modern response to stress is the same as our ancestral one – it triggers the “fight or flight or freeze” response. When you’re stressed out you can either do something about it, avoid it, or get overwhelmed by it. Even as adults we struggle with how to actually deal with stress.
In the three years I have been working with kids 11-19 in their natural habitats – classrooms – I have witnessed stress levels rising in their lives without any accompanying relief. I find that every year, I need to adapt and deepen the practices that I teach them in order to access their stressors at their deepest roots. Kids are facing demands in school, at home, and in their communities that reach a dramatic pitch in a world of increased competition, constantly advancing technology, and an unrestricted access to information. When I was 11, I was still learning fractions and probabilities. Now, these 11 year olds are behind if they’re not learning how to code.
The “I Am” practices that my students learn are tiny – but effective - tools that enable students to become agents in restoring their own balance. It’s too easy for younger generations now to access unhealthy means of “coping”- and who would blame them if these nightmarish scenarios reflect what they feel within them every day. The key is communication – talking about stress with others, but most importantly understanding how it affects them day-to-day. In becoming aware of their own bodies and how they interpret and express emotions, they are able to stat the root cause of what stresses them out – and how they may need help to address it. Plain and simple – if our students are going to be subjected to endless testing, heightened competition, and increased pressure – they need to learn tools that can help them cope, and they need to practice them every single day.
There is hope yet – in the same school, another 6th grade class that I’ve been working with reportedly asked their teacher to allow them to meditate before starting every test. The teacher reported calmer students, a quieter classroom, and – at the end of the week – more smiles than she’d expected.
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