Meditation is a very positive healthy routine for adults, including school-age children. Not only can it provide positive energy, but this activity is also believed to improve children’s achievement at school.

Of course, it’s no secret that schoolchildren face the challenges of changing the modern world. With each new digital distraction, it becomes more difficult for children to focus on the things they should. Not a few of them experience the pressure of exam stress, competency, anxiety about their performance and potential future opportunities, and so on.

Through meditation, many positive benefits can be felt by school-age children who tend to be stressed with all their routines because in general, mindfulness is an activity that involves deep breathing and awareness of the body and mind.

Want to know what are the benefits of mindfulness meditation, especially for school-age children? Let’s see the full review.

1. Reduces stress and anxiety

Mindfulness meditation is believed to be a well-proven method for managing stress and anxiety. Both of these conditions develop through internal and external stress. Internal pressures include self-criticism, self-doubt, worry about abilities, and so on. It can also be a symptom of other developments, for example, a child with certain health conditions may feel anxious about his or her future well-being.

While external pressure can be in the form of parental influence, school burden, or pressure from peers. With mindfulness meditation, children allow themselves to acknowledge stress without thinking about it.

Instead of feeling stressed and anxious about the past or the future, he can focus on the life he wants to live each day. Even research in 2014 showed that 124 students who did mindfulness meditation did not experience anxiety and stress when facing school exams.

2. Increase attention and focus

In many ways, paying attention is important for schoolchildren to learn. But as mentioned above, today’s technological advances can be a challenge for a child in learning time. Starting from being tempted to play online games to play social media.

Recent research in 2018 shows that mindfulness meditation; mindfulness practice is effective in increasing the resource known as mindfulness even when the child becomes a beginner learning the art of meditation. You can see improvement with a careful 10-minute session. If your child has trouble maintaining his focus on study time and assignments for long periods, practicing mindfulness meditation can promote improvement.

3. Improving the cognition of school children

Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that mindfulness meditation enhances cognitive function while responding to time-sensitive activities. One study in the journal American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2019 shows that children who meditate during tests show better scores.

This result can be achieved because mindfulness increases learning effectiveness, attention, and memory in students.

4. Help children who struggle with perfectionism

Mindfulness and perfectionism cannot coexist in the same moment of awareness. Mindfulness meditation means being aware of everything around you, including yourself, without judgment. By practicing mindfulness a child who focuses obsessively on a perfect score can see the value of taking risks and making mistakes.

It can also reduce emotional pressure effectively on oneself to be successful every time. The learning process must be experienced, enjoyed, and not brought as pressure so that children can benefit from this realization.

5. Improve memory

Mindfulness has been scientifically proven to be beneficial for memory. When a child actively listens during lessons and pays more attention, this trains his awareness to stay focused in the present moment, so that ultimately he is better able to absorb structured information better.

In addition, it is also easier for children to remember what their teacher said in the last class because they listen actively. Her study notes won’t look like scribbles anymore, as she carefully writes down every word.

A 2019 study in the journal Brain Imaging and Behavior suggests that students who are attentively paying attention to information, such as a teacher teaching a classroom, can better retain new information as it relates to it, for example reading a book on the same topic.

By simply listening or reading attentively, children can improve their academic performance, so they do better in school.

Those are some of the benefits of mindfulness meditation that children can get. Besides being able to improve concentration and be good for mental health, mindfulness meditation can also overcome everyday personal and academic problems.