How to Incorporate Mindfulness Practices into 4-H Settings

According to a renowned teacher of mindfulness and stress reduction, mindfulness involves paying attention to the moment, on purpose and without judgment (Jon Kabat-Zin, 2012, p.1). Mindfulness is purposely focusing on the task at hand, without evaluating it as good or bad. Simply put, mindfulness is just noticing what you are experiencing.

Zenner, Herrnleben-Kurz and Walach (2014) indicated that mindfulness training provides youth with the following benefits:

• emotional self-regulation
• increased empathy and compassion
• better self-representations
• ethical sensitivity
• increased creativity
• improved problem-solving skills

How can we teach mindfulness to youth?

A variety of exercises and approaches exist to teach mindfulness (Burke, 2010; Zenner, Herrnleben-Kurz, & Walach, 2014), including:

• Breath awareness: Help youth to use their breath as an anchor. To do this, engage the group in deep breathing or breath counting.
• Working with thoughts and emotions: Provide youth with tools to manage their thoughts and emotions. An example of this could be a visualization activity to help youth put negative thoughts in some sort of container.
• Psycho-education: In some situations, youth may need professional mental health training that may help to better manage adverse psychological conditions. However, mindfulness activities, which do not have to be taught by mental health professionals, can be coupled with this approach (Goldman, 1988).
• Application of mindfulness to daily life: Explain to youth how to incorporate mindfulness into daily life activities, such as brushing teeth or walking. Tell youth to pay attention to the physical experience of these activities.
• Group discussion: Discuss the youths' experience of practicing mindfulness activities. Teach them how to set goals to improve.
• Body-scan: Lead youth through a meditation to bring awareness to the body. Most approaches in meditation scripts begin by bringing awareness to the toes and moving up to the head.
• Home practice: Explain mindfulness can be practiced in your home. Tell them this can include meditation, awareness of the body through physical moment, and/or kindness practices.
• Kindness practice: Teach youth to practice kindness towards themselves and others through guided or personal meditation.
• Body-practice: Teach youth to practice awareness through physical movement. Yoga and tai chi are great body practices for mindfulness.
• Mindful movement: Explain how movement is a way to practice mindfulness. Walking meditation is a great example of this.

How can we incorporate these mindfulness practices into 4-H activities?

Within a 4-H Extension program context, mindfulness training can help 4-H contribute to positive youth development by inciting personal leadership development. There are various ways to incorporate some of the mindfulness practices described above into 4-H activities. Here are some ideas for how to get started.

4-H Camps and Conferences

1. A mindfulness workshop could be offered for one of youth's workshop choices (Stollar, 2019).
2. A breathing exercise could be completed as a group after breakfast to help youth clear their minds and prepare for the day's educational activities ahead.

4-H Meetings

1. A 10-minute guided meditation could be led after the 4-H pledge to help get youth in the mindset of focusing and learning.
2. A guest yoga teacher could lead a yoga session for a recreation activity.
3. Discussions about mindfulness and how youth are incorporating it into their daily lives can be helpful in helping them to continue to cultivate and grow their practice. Club health officers could lead these discussions.

Personal at Home Practice

1. Having an introductory mindfulness session at a club may encourage youth to develop one or more of the following practices at home. 4-H Extension educators should identify and review research-based resources, videos, and programs available before referring youth to one or more of the following practices.
2. Youth can cultivate a personal yoga practice. Many certified yoga teachers have online video channels to provide personal instruction. Practicing poses they already know is a great way to start.
3. Youth can cultivate a personal meditation practice. Many videos, books and online resources, both spiritual and secular, are available to help youth do this. They can practice loving-kindness meditations, body scan meditations, and breath awareness with available audio recordings.
4. Youth can practice mindfulness when completing simple day-to-day activities, like brushing teeth, by focusing on 3 things they see, 3 things they feel, or 3 things they hear when completing activities (Powers-Barker, Carter, and Worthington, 2018).
5. Youth can practice mindful movement, such as walking meditation, as they go about their day. This involves thinking about the action of walking and considering how it feels to walk, rather than worrying about where you were or where you are going.

Community Practice

1. Youth could join a local yoga studio.
2. Youth could join a local meditation community. 

Think about how you may be able to incorporate mindfulness into your 4-H programming or how you may be able to help volunteer leaders to better incorporate mindfulness practices into 4-H club activities. Consider consulting existing research-based, published curricula, including Learning to BREATHE and GEM: Get Experience in Mindfulness. Other identified Extension resources related to 4-H and youth mindfulness education are shared at the end of the article.

We hope this article helped you to begin considering how you can incorporate mindfulness into everyday 4-H activities. Think about what will work best for your clientele's needs and with your available resources.

Existing 4-H and Youth Mindfulness Resources

Activities

• Mindfulness Activity for Teens (Ohio State University)
• Coloring Mindfulness Activities (Cornell)

Fact Sheets & Articles

• Mindfulness for Children (Michigan State University)
• Mindful Lifestyles (Colorado State)
• Georgia 4-H Introduces Students to Yoga this Summer (University of Georgia)

Books and Curricula

• GEM: Get Experience in Mindfulness (Shop 4-H)
• 4-H Mindfulness Project Annotated Bibliography (University of California)

Past workshops offered

(for agenda and marketing ideas for future trainings)

• Mindfulness for Teens and Adults (University of Delaware)
• Mindfulness: The Intersection of Purpose and Now (Purdue University)
• Mindfulness Moments with Pennsylvania 4-H'ers (Penn State University)
• Mindfulness Retreat (University of California)

Other Compiled Resources

• Mindfulness Education Resources (University of New Hampshire)
• 4-H Yoga for Kids Resources (University of Arkansas)

References

Broderick, P. C. (2013). Learning to breathe: A mindfulness curriculum for adolescents to cultivate emotion regulation, attention, and performance. New Harbinger Publications.

Banks, B. & Bercaw, S. (2018). GEM (Get Experience in Mindfulness) An awareness and acceptance stress management program for ages 10 & up. 4-H.

Burke, C. A. (2010). Mindfulness-based approaches with children and adolescents: A preliminary review of current research in an emergent field. Journal of child and family studies, 19(2), 133-144.

Goldman, C. R. (1988). Toward a definition of psychoeducation. Psychiatric Services, 39(6), 666-668.

Kabat-Zinn, J. (2012). Mindfulness for beginners: Reclaiming the present moment—and your life. Sounds True.

Powers-Barker, P., Carter, S., & Worthington, T. (2018). Mindful wellness. Ohio State University College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences.

Stollar, M.K. (2019). Mindfulness moments with Pennsylvania 4-H'ers.

Zenner, C., Herrnleben-Kurz, S., & Walach, H. (2014). Mindfulness-based interventions in schools—a systematic review and meta-analysis. Frontiers in psychology, 5, 603.