Breathe Relieve Mindfulness Card Set

All children experience difficulties in understanding and regulating their emotions at the best of times.  For children with additional social, emotional and cognitive challenges, it can be literally impossible for them to respond to logic/reason and to be calmed once they reach a certain point of distress. 

Often adults try to help children by using more words or increasing/changing their volume/tone of voice to get a child’s attention.  However, all this extra stimulus can be counterproductive; it can just be experienced as noise.  This noise is just another signal to tell that primary survival brain that there is still a threat to be alert to.  This in turn can increase fear and anger, which can escalate behaviour. 

Higher functioning parts of the brain will only come back online when the survival brain is convinced that the threat has disappeared.  The way the survival brain knows when to do this is through the messages it gets about decreased heart rate, blood pressure and the stress hormones.  This is why the fundamental basis of any effective coping strategy must first look to support the child in understanding how to soothe their body first.  Once their body is soothed, other brain functions will return which will enable them to be better positioned to try emotional and thought based coping strategies.  

The Breathe Relieve Mindfulness Card Set contains cards which depict a different breathing technique.  Breathing techniques can be really successful when used consistently.  To fully concentrate on controlling their breath, children need to keep the rest of their bodies still (or complete slow controlled movements in rhythm with their breathing) and use their minds to focus on the basic task at hand. All of this helps to soothe the body and reassure the survival brain that all is well.  Although a lot of the strategies are the same (because let’s face it, slowly breathing in and out is a simple process), having multiple of the same type of exercise is helpful.  The variance in the focus of the activity, i.e. from a flower to a star, is enough to keep better attention than if you solely used the same card all the time.  However, the repetition of the same exercise helps to strengthen the children’s understanding and practice of how to regulate their breathing.

This PDF is 15 pages long in total.

Please be advised that:
- This purchase is non-refundable or exchangeable, due to the digital download delivery of this product. Do take the time to fully consider this purchase.
- No physical item will be shipped or printed; this is a digital product only, which you will receive a unique download link for, via email.
- Due to differences in technology, personal screen settings and quality of printing, there may be some variation in the appearance of the cards on your screen compared to how they print. For best results, print on high quality card or paper stock and laminate your product for it's protection.