The Peace of Childhood: Introducing Meditation to Children

Virtual / In-Person

Past Event

Registration is now closed.

A program for educators and counselors, campus ministers and pastoral staff, church staff and youth ministers, parents and grandparents – all who care for the mental and spiritual health of children today…

Children experience God before they think about God. Meditation allows them to reconnect and hold to this capacity that we are all born with. Over 30 years’ experience of teaching meditation in schools in 30 countries has taught the WCCM that ‘children are born contemplative’. They take up meditation with great openness and enthusiasm. Learning in the classroom they usually say they also meditate at home and often teach it to other children and even to their parents. They like to meditate.

It is the experience of schools worldwide verified by spiritual wisdom and scientific research that teaching meditation to children contributes immensely to their well-being and wholeness and to their awareness of God in their life. The question today is therefore not ‘why should we teach meditation to children?’ but ‘why on earth don’t we?’ The challenge is, in fact, not to teach the children but to help teachers and schools to show them how to do it. Meditation is a life-skill developed with regular practice. In helping children to develop meditation as part of their life we are giving them a tool of faith for coping with the dysfunctions of the modern world.

This Meditatio Seminar will include practical instruction and best practices for teaching meditation to children, what children say about it, small group discussions, time for meditation together and how to find support in the next steps.

Keynotes include Fr. Laurence Freeman, OSB, Director of the World Community for Christian Meditation and Noel Keating, author of Meditating with Children: a Resource for Teachers and Parents. Video presentation on Building Resilience in Children and the Role of Meditation by Dr. Jean Clinton, Professor and Child Psychiatrist. Additional video presentations will include examples of actual meditation sessions with children and testimony from children, teachers, and parents.

See the Program Schedule

More information about WCCM and Outreach to Children: WCCM Outreach - Children and Meditation

Questions: Bill Hobbs, JRC Director – bhobbs@jesuitretreatcenter.org

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