The Power of Mindfulness- Meditation for Families During COVID-19
Emily Herzlin helps us to understand the awesome power of mindfulness during COVID-19. Please listen and follow along to this guided meditation for parents and kids. We can all benefit from quieting our minds and giving ourselves time to reflect, breathe and meditate during this stressful time.
Featured Speaker:
Emily Herzlin, MBSR
Emily Herzlin, MBSR is a Certified Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) teacher. Emily has been teaching MBSR and mindfulness meditation since 2011 in universities (Columbia, Adelphi, The New School, Harvard), in educational and healthcare settings, in workplaces, yoga studios, spiritual communities, and privately. She worked as a Mind-Body Therapist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center offering meditation to cancer patients, caregivers, and healthcare providers. A resident of Astoria, Queens, Emily leads regular mindfulness meditation classes in her neighborhood. Transcription:
The Power of Mindfulness- Meditation for Families During COVID-19
Melanie Cole (Host): This is the Weill Cornell Medicine Kids Health Podcast on COVID-19 dated March 24, 2020.
There’s not handbook for your child’s health, but we do have a podcast featuring worldclass clinical and research physicians covering everything from your child’s allergies to zinc levels. This is Kids Health Cast by Weill Cornell Medicine. I’m Melanie Cole. And today, we’re having a guided meditation for parents and children to participate together during this time. Joining me is Emily Herzlin. She’s a Certified Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Teacher with Weill Cornell Medicine. Emily, I’m so glad to have you join us today. This is so important in these unprecedented times. Uncertainty and stress is really common in families, especially since we are isolated and, in some cases, families are really isolated together for quite a while. Tell us a little bit about meditation and the benefits of it certainly at this time but really all the time.
Emily Herzlin, MBSR (Guest): Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I’m so glad to be able to share these practices with others. I’ve been finding them so helpful at this time personally. So, obviously, this is an incredibly stressful, difficult time for so many people. We are in a crisis like we have never experienced before. And part of being in a crisis, is also caring for ourselves emotionally, and mentally and spiritually so that we can have the internal resources that we need to keep showing up to keep going. If we don’t take some time to care for ourselves, it’s going to be very hard to continue to be there for others.
And so it might feel hard to step away and take some time to rest and to grieve but we can remind ourselves that caring for ourselves is also a way of caring for others. And so, there are a lot of different kinds of meditation practices that can offer different benefits. So, there’s breathing meditation. There is body relaxation practices. Gentle movement, yoga, self-compassion, loving kindness, mindfulness meditation. These different kinds of practices can do different things. They can give our minds and our bodies and our nervous systems time to rest which we so need. They can help us to pause in the midst of stressful moments so that our minds can find more clarity to be able to make good decisions and they can also help us to be more compassionate towards ourselves and towards others.
It's such a difficult time and we may not be feeling so good emotionally. And our minds might really be kind of messy right now and we may have a lot of anxiety in our bodies and none of that’s actually wrong and it makes a lot of sense given what’s going on. And so, we don’t need to judge ourselves for that. We can be kind towards ourselves rather than give ourselves a hard time and make a painful situation worse. These are some of the ways that meditation practices can help us right now.
Host: Well it’s so important, all the points that you made. So, before we do this guided meditation, which I’m really looking forward to, what are your recommendations for those that do work from home? Do you have a practice that you recommend to help them feel more present and mindful before or after working from home and also, when you are going to guide us, is this something the family can do together?
Emily: Absolutely. And I’d actually like to offer a few recommendations because there’s a lot of different ways into this that will work differently for different people. So, one thing that I think is very helpful for many people is to try to start your day with a few minutes of meditation. It doesn’t have to be a long time. It can be as simple as before you get out of bed, or before you open the computer or before you check the news; really before you read the news, just to take a few conscious breaths and to feel the presence of your body sitting or lying down or standing wherever you are. So, being able to start the day from a more clear and grounded place and I think really important too is when you are taking breaks, really take a break. Don’t work and eat your lunch if you can avoid it. Let yourself taste your food. Let yourself smell your food. If you are with people at home, be present with them, give them your attention. This is absolutely something that you can do with your family at any time throughout the day.
So, let’s just try a short practice together right now. So, just find a comfortable position in whatever seat you are in right now. And when you are doing this, you can also lie down. That’s great. And you can let your eyes close if that’s comfortable for you. Or you can keep your eyes open and soften your gaze. Bringing your hands to your belly, to your lower abdomen and starting to take some deep long breaths. You can breath in through the nose or the mouth. And then breathing out, letting your exhale be long and slow through the nostrils or the mouth. And as you breathe in see if you can send that deep breath way down into your belly so that when you breathe in, your belly expands outward and your hands move out. And then when you breathe out, the belly softens back in and the hands move back down.
So, breathing in fully through the nostrils or mouth sending the breath down into the belly. Breathing out. Relaxing the belly back down. Letting the air flow out slowly through the nostrils or the mouth. And continuing this on your own, really seeing if you can let your attention just be with your body breathing. And if other thoughts come up in your mind, worries or planning; it’s okay just gently come back to breathing in, breathing out. And as you exhale, you can also invite any tension in the body to soften, letting your face relax, letting your shoulders drop, softening your belly, your fingers, your toes, letting your arms and your legs rest. And taking one more full deep breath in and letting it out slowly. And then whenever you are ready, you can let your eyes open if they have been closed. And this is a really simple meditation practice that you can do anytime throughout the day.
Host: Wow, that was terrific. Thank you so much Emily for guiding us through that meditation that we really all could use just now. Thank you again. For information about COVID-19, including symptoms, prevention and travel advice; please visit www.weillcornell.org/coronavirus or call our hotline at 646-697-4000. That concludes today’s episode of Kids Health Cast. Please remember to subscribe, rate and review this podcast and all the other Weill Cornell Medicine podcasts. I’m Melanie Cole.
The Power of Mindfulness- Meditation for Families During COVID-19
Melanie Cole (Host): This is the Weill Cornell Medicine Kids Health Podcast on COVID-19 dated March 24, 2020.
There’s not handbook for your child’s health, but we do have a podcast featuring worldclass clinical and research physicians covering everything from your child’s allergies to zinc levels. This is Kids Health Cast by Weill Cornell Medicine. I’m Melanie Cole. And today, we’re having a guided meditation for parents and children to participate together during this time. Joining me is Emily Herzlin. She’s a Certified Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Teacher with Weill Cornell Medicine. Emily, I’m so glad to have you join us today. This is so important in these unprecedented times. Uncertainty and stress is really common in families, especially since we are isolated and, in some cases, families are really isolated together for quite a while. Tell us a little bit about meditation and the benefits of it certainly at this time but really all the time.
Emily Herzlin, MBSR (Guest): Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I’m so glad to be able to share these practices with others. I’ve been finding them so helpful at this time personally. So, obviously, this is an incredibly stressful, difficult time for so many people. We are in a crisis like we have never experienced before. And part of being in a crisis, is also caring for ourselves emotionally, and mentally and spiritually so that we can have the internal resources that we need to keep showing up to keep going. If we don’t take some time to care for ourselves, it’s going to be very hard to continue to be there for others.
And so it might feel hard to step away and take some time to rest and to grieve but we can remind ourselves that caring for ourselves is also a way of caring for others. And so, there are a lot of different kinds of meditation practices that can offer different benefits. So, there’s breathing meditation. There is body relaxation practices. Gentle movement, yoga, self-compassion, loving kindness, mindfulness meditation. These different kinds of practices can do different things. They can give our minds and our bodies and our nervous systems time to rest which we so need. They can help us to pause in the midst of stressful moments so that our minds can find more clarity to be able to make good decisions and they can also help us to be more compassionate towards ourselves and towards others.
It's such a difficult time and we may not be feeling so good emotionally. And our minds might really be kind of messy right now and we may have a lot of anxiety in our bodies and none of that’s actually wrong and it makes a lot of sense given what’s going on. And so, we don’t need to judge ourselves for that. We can be kind towards ourselves rather than give ourselves a hard time and make a painful situation worse. These are some of the ways that meditation practices can help us right now.
Host: Well it’s so important, all the points that you made. So, before we do this guided meditation, which I’m really looking forward to, what are your recommendations for those that do work from home? Do you have a practice that you recommend to help them feel more present and mindful before or after working from home and also, when you are going to guide us, is this something the family can do together?
Emily: Absolutely. And I’d actually like to offer a few recommendations because there’s a lot of different ways into this that will work differently for different people. So, one thing that I think is very helpful for many people is to try to start your day with a few minutes of meditation. It doesn’t have to be a long time. It can be as simple as before you get out of bed, or before you open the computer or before you check the news; really before you read the news, just to take a few conscious breaths and to feel the presence of your body sitting or lying down or standing wherever you are. So, being able to start the day from a more clear and grounded place and I think really important too is when you are taking breaks, really take a break. Don’t work and eat your lunch if you can avoid it. Let yourself taste your food. Let yourself smell your food. If you are with people at home, be present with them, give them your attention. This is absolutely something that you can do with your family at any time throughout the day.
So, let’s just try a short practice together right now. So, just find a comfortable position in whatever seat you are in right now. And when you are doing this, you can also lie down. That’s great. And you can let your eyes close if that’s comfortable for you. Or you can keep your eyes open and soften your gaze. Bringing your hands to your belly, to your lower abdomen and starting to take some deep long breaths. You can breath in through the nose or the mouth. And then breathing out, letting your exhale be long and slow through the nostrils or the mouth. And as you breathe in see if you can send that deep breath way down into your belly so that when you breathe in, your belly expands outward and your hands move out. And then when you breathe out, the belly softens back in and the hands move back down.
So, breathing in fully through the nostrils or mouth sending the breath down into the belly. Breathing out. Relaxing the belly back down. Letting the air flow out slowly through the nostrils or the mouth. And continuing this on your own, really seeing if you can let your attention just be with your body breathing. And if other thoughts come up in your mind, worries or planning; it’s okay just gently come back to breathing in, breathing out. And as you exhale, you can also invite any tension in the body to soften, letting your face relax, letting your shoulders drop, softening your belly, your fingers, your toes, letting your arms and your legs rest. And taking one more full deep breath in and letting it out slowly. And then whenever you are ready, you can let your eyes open if they have been closed. And this is a really simple meditation practice that you can do anytime throughout the day.
Host: Wow, that was terrific. Thank you so much Emily for guiding us through that meditation that we really all could use just now. Thank you again. For information about COVID-19, including symptoms, prevention and travel advice; please visit www.weillcornell.org/coronavirus or call our hotline at 646-697-4000. That concludes today’s episode of Kids Health Cast. Please remember to subscribe, rate and review this podcast and all the other Weill Cornell Medicine podcasts. I’m Melanie Cole.