The Mindful Teen: Powerful Skills to Help You Handle Stress One Moment at a Time (The Instant Help Solutions Series)
Dzung X. Vo MD FAAP
Language: English
Pages: 248
ISBN: 1626250804
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In this powerful book, a pediatrician specializing in teen and adolescent medicine offers a breakthrough mindfulness program to help you deal with stress in healthy ways, improve communication, and reduce conflicts with family and friends.
Being a teen is stressful! Whether it’s school, friends, or dating, the teen years are full of difficult changes—both mentally and physically. If you’re like many teens, you may have difficulty dealing with stress in effective ways. You aren’t alone, and there are things you can do to stay calm, no matter how stressful life becomes. All you need to do is stop, breathe, and be mindful and aware in the present moment.
The Mindful Teen offers a unique program based in mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) to help you deal with stress. The simple, practical, and easy-to-remember tips in this book can be used every day to help you handle any difficult situation more effectively—whether it’s taking a test at school, having a disagreement with your parents, or a problem you are having with friends.
If you’re ready to uncover your own inner strength and resilience through mindful awareness and take charge of your life, this book will show you how.
experience come alive. Try This!Beginner’s Mind and Your Own Inner Child You can learn a lot about mindfulness by closely observing young children. Take a moment to remember the last time you took a walk with a young child (for example, three or four years old). Maybe you were walking on the beach or through the forest. Or maybe you were walking down the sidewalk in your neighborhood, to the park. Or perhaps you might remember what walking to the park or playing in a sandbox was like for you as
a child. What do you think that experience was like for that young child? What was it like for him or her just to walk and look around and explore the world? Did the child become fascinated by something as ordinary as a leaf, a tree, or a rock? Was the child delighted and entertained by the common sight of a bug on the ground or a cloud floating by? When you were a young child, you naturally approached every experience with the same beginner’s mind. That’s because every experience—learning to
upset, there is still only one thing to do: breathe and smile. Now, you may be wondering, Why should I smile when I’m not feeling happy? Isn’t that being fake? Smiling doesn’t necessarily mean pretending to be happy when you’re not. Rather, intentionally smiling can help you bring loving-k indness and self-compassion into whatever situation you find yourself in, 47 The Mindful Teen whether it’s an easy situation or a difficult one. When you’re in a pleasant situation, smiling can help you
Look over your left shoulder. Breathe in and out. Try to lengthen your spine a little bit, sitting as tall as you can. Continue to breathe like this four more times. On the fifth breath out, come back to center. Breathe in deeply. Breathe out, twisting to the other side, and hold for five more mindful breaths. Experiment with practicing mindful movement just before you practice sitting meditation or the body scan. Or, practice one or two brief mindful movements any time your body feels stiff or
boundaries—k nowing when 176 Mindful Peacemaking at Home to say “No,” “I need to go chill out for a little while,” or “That’s not okay.” When you get on an airplane, the most important safety instruction that the flight attendants give is the one along the lines of “Put your own oxygen mask on before helping your child put on his or hers.” They know that if you don’t take care of yourself first, you won’t be able to help anyone else. It’s the same when handling stressful situations with the