Imagination is required to settle the mind. A settled mind is patient, peaceful and free from anxiety. Most of us, children and adults alike, don't have that kind of mind, so we have to trick the mind into believing that we do by pretending it is patient and peaceful and free from anxiety. Pretence is just another form of imagination, so for children this is easy to do. A settled mind can follow the in-flow and out-flow of the breath through the nostrils. But what a child will find, as every adult also finds, is that the mind wants to constantly veer away from the breath to imagine what else it could be doing, remembering things it finds annoying, dreaming about all the places it would like to go, the people it must be friends with, the people it mustn't be friends with, the next iPhone it would like to own and on and on it goes. Thoughts pop into the mind all the time and the mind can't stop itself from scrolling down and looking at all the pictures and captions. When this happens the mind stops being peaceful, patient and free from anxiety and starts behaving like a naughty puppy. In the Yoga Bananas® Technique we tell a child to use their wonderful imagination when this happens, pretend their mind is just that - a naughty puppy that is constantly distracted. So each time the mind veers off...quickly call back that naughty puppy! The quicker this is done each time, the longer the timeframe of peacefulness.
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