High school students can face many challenges, given that we live in a fast-paced, high-pressure environment. To support their well-being, this program integrates mindfulness and meditation techniques to help students manage stress effectively, improve focus, and enhance overall mental health.
Program Overview
Introduction and housekeeping.
Guided meditation:
- Duration: 10 minutes
- Techniques:
- Box breathing
- Body scan
- Using sound to anchor awareness in the present moment
- First jhana to combat head aches and other pains
- Hand-on -heart reality.
Purpose: This session aims to demonstrate the effect that just 5 minutes of meditation can have. If students can’t commit to 30 minutes of meditation a day, can they manage 6 x 5-minute sessions throughout their day?
Real-Life Testimonials:
- An office professional who meditates for 10 minutes like this facing the wall, between clients. She shared how powerful it is: she can focus more, relax, calm and make less mistake.
- I was very busy with running a business, and raising 3 small children, but I always find time to drop and rest regularly. 5 minutes here, 10 there. While waiting for potatoes to boil or watching the kids play.
Motivation: We know how to take care of our physical health through, diet, exercises and sleep. We give ourselves no choice to brush our teeth. Yet, we make so many excuses when it comes to taking care of our mind.
Background information: Life is stressful. While a certain level can act to motivates and keep us focused, too much stress, for too long can debilitate us. Even a healthy dose of stress is good, it is only meant to be temporary. Prolonged stress can lead to many health issues such as cardiovascular, physical, mental problems, reduced productivity and strained relationships.
Sources of stress: Sources that trigger our stress response are called stressors. These can include academics, relationships, social media, physical and mental issues. To prevent or reduce the negative effects of stress, we identify the sources. We can do this by keeping a journal:
| Date/Time | Source | How I reacted | How I felt | Strategy used | New strategy |
| Wed, 9.30am | Exams | Procrastinated | Overwhelmed | -Distract with TV | -Diet |
| Over eat | -More Gaming | -Exercise | |||
| Distract with social medias | -Study night | _enough sleep | |||
| -Relaxation | |||||
| -Talk to counselour |
Prevention
Prevention strategies of stress involve self-care that we control of such as diet and exercise.
- Diet: Allow proper time for home cooked, balanced meals and drink enough water.
- Exercise can include walking the dog, dancing or going to the gym.
- Sleep: Don’t forget to allow time for enough sleep.
- Avoid: Prevention of stress also includes avoiding certain people or circumstances that are stressors.
Reduce Stress
Reduction strategies are actions we can do during or immediately after a stressful event. The aim is to reduce the negative effects of stress so that we can function smoothly if not optimally. Mental- care means creating emotional boundaries and proper mental hygiene. These include:
- Box breathing: Breathing into the stomach for 4 counts, hold for 4, breathe out for 4, hold for 4.
- Body scan: Imagine a white light scanning form the top of the head down to the toes. As it moves, we relax that muscle.
- Walking meditation: Demonstrate how to do walking meditation.
- Mindfulness: Present moment awareness means being conscious of where we are, what we doing, and our intention. For example, when eating, we are 100% focus on all the sensation of the experience, who we are with and why are we eating. Use sticky notes with key words such as “now, Present moment, Reality…” and place them around the house. These can be on the fridge, door knobs, steering wheel or above the pillows. If we practice something long enough, it’ll become our habit.
- Positive self-affirmation:
- Remind ourselves that we are good enough, we deserve self-kindness
- Other people’s actions or non-actions are not because of us. Each person is responsible for their own thoughts, feelings and actions.
- Remember that what other people such as family, teachers, friends, and I say, are all just opinions; at the end of the day the only advice worth listening to is yours.
- I make myself feel; no one causes me to feel. This attitude raises our awareness and take responsibilities of our emotions. This empower us because what I create, I can change. Once we blame, we lost that power.
- Focus what is right in front of you. One small step as a time. We take care of today and be open to possibilities tomorrow.
The above techniques are power tools to interrupt negative self-talk, cravings, reliving the past or dwelling in future anxiety. These mental hygiene strategies prevent bad habits from littering our minds with rubbish so that when we meditate, we spend less time cleaning them. Present moment awareness also acts as a way to preserve our mind energy and direct it at things that are important to us like study, work or meaningful connections.
Additional techniques:
- Laughing: Take time out to watch a few funny video clips. Humour distracts and reduces the stress response.
- Time out: Remove ourselves from the stressors to practice breathing and mindful-kindful walking or just some quite time (5 mins meditation).
- Tea or coffee: Allow ourselves time to refocus on something else, like drinking tea or coffee. Again mindful-kindful drinking.
- Release emotion: if circumstances permit, like in a quiet room or with a friend, crying can be a good emotional release. Others include, a brisk walk, jumping up, down shaking, exercise, nature or cold shower.
Manage stress
After school, work, meetings or incidents we need to find ways to reduce the stress of the day and unwind. These include:
- Meditation:
- Similar to guided meditation above.
- After some time, we might feel happiness or joy. Drop all the tools and immerse in these beautiful feelings, which nourish and refresh the mind.
- Mindful-kindful present moment: Allow the mind to take a break and experience every moment of life.
- Exercise : The benefits include releasing emotional tension held in the muscles and releasing of dopamine. Activities can include walking, hitting a ball, swimming, yoga or dancing.
- Boundaries: self-care also means external and internal boundaries.
- With external boundaries: We chose to be with people who respect, and benefit us. We are kind to ourselves by reducing time spent with toxic people, social media, groups or activities that limit or causing us harm.
- Self-awareness: Internally, we respect all parts of ourselves and find time to nurture them.
- The body – diet, exercise, water, sleep.
- Emotional regulation – tune into the body and feel your emotions. Talk to someone as a way of processing feelings. Find other ways of releasing pent up emotions like dancing, exercise, nature or cold shower. Remember that thoughts produce feelings, which feedback to thoughts and eventually led to emotions.
- Goals: Set SMART goals– specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time frame.
- Social self: Cultivate meaningful connections with family and friends. These are our support system throughout life.
- Perception – Be aware how we perceive life. Recognize and update limiting beliefs, that no longer serve us.
- Potential–develop heart, moral and wisdom qualities.
- Counselling: Allow emotional release and processing by talking to a formal counselour or mentor.
Notice that in all strategies, whether it is to prevent, reduce or manage stress, there are elements of internal support and external support. Internal supports are tools within our control such as relaxation techniques, diet, exercise, sleep and positive affirmations. External support are friends, family, pets and professionals.
To organize all the above points of discussion into a table and we have a stress management plan:
| My goals | My triggers | My warning signs | My coping strategies | My personal support |
| -Learn self-love -Experience life more -Limit bad habits | -Lack of communication -Lack of food and sleep | -Irritable -Knots in tummy | -Proper food -Exercise -Mindfulness -meditation | -my dog -my family -my friends |
| My professional support | My physical care | My emotional care | My mind care | My social care |
| –Mentor | -Walking the dog | -have boundaries with friends and social media | -self-affirmations | -check in weekly with family |
| –hotlines | -singing | -body scan and feel my feelings | -meditation | -check in weekly with friends |
| –Gp | -Less coffee, more water | -journalling to release emotions | -mindfulness | -identify toxic people and limit time with them. |
| –counselor | -More home cook meals | -Make time to do nothing. | -session with my mentor | |
Benefits of meditation/mindfulness
- Stress reduction: By focusing on the present, we disengaged from stressful thoughts. This in turn reduces stress hormone like cortisol, leading to calmer state of mind.
- Emotional regulation: We learn to observe thoughts and feelings, we can response to them instead of reacting. This led to emotional stability.
- Flexible perspective: By being a non-reactive observer, we strengthen the part of the brain dealing with memories, learning and problem solving. This helps us in developing new perspectives and adapt to different point of views.
- Greater self-awareness: Allow us greater awareness of thoughts, emotions and behaviours, which led us to better recognise stressors and triggers.
- Qualities of sleep: calms the minds which helps the body to rest.
- Increase focus, resilience: We learn to direct our focus and sustain at a certain task even with loud distractions. This help build resilience to challenges.
Cleveland Clinic
Harward Gazette
Conclusion: I’m glad to have this opportunity to connect with you all, even though we may never meet again. I’m sharing with you these tools, of mindfulness, meditation, self-care, stress management plan, some of which have been with me for 30 years. On a finishing note, I want to leave you with this image. A Lotus
The greater the mud: the bigger the bloom.
I always remind myself of this metaphor in my roughest, darkest times in life. The lotus grows from the mud, (that’s our suffering), raises up from the mud (what do we need to do or the qualities do we need to develop survive) and present to the world its beauty (our gifts, our possibilities, our wisdom, our hearts, our connections).
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