Breathing Skills
These skills provide visuals for creating steady, controlled breathing patterns, which slows down our stress response and increases focus. These activities can be discreet and done in almost any setting.
Negative emotions activate the body’s stress response, making it difficult to regulate our feelings. Breathing techniques can help control our stress and slow down our bodies. For most children, it is difficult to make positive choices, inhibit impulses, or use coping skills until their stress response decreases.
Balloon Breathing Activity
Deep breathing can help your mind and body calm down. Try this balloon breathing activity to learn how to deep breathe.
Box Breathing Activity
Box breathing can help you focus on your breaths and feel calmer. Try this activity to learn how to box breathe.
Movement Skills
These skills provide playful, quick movements to help students release energy, reset their bodies, and improve focus.
Physical activity can release built-up tension, increase circulation, and connect mind and body. Movement causes our bodies to release brain chemicals that reduce stress and improve mood. In fact, regular aerobic activity is as effective as psychiatric medication for for some mental health concerns.
Muscle Tension and Release Movement Activity
Some feelings make bodies feel tense and stressed. Learn how to let go of that stress through muscle tension and release.
Grounding Skills
These skills help students connect to the present moment by focusing attention on their senses or surroundings, which supports calm and reduces overwhelm.
Emotion dysregulation, or emotions that are out of control, take over our attention and thoughts. Grounding skills include strategies that redirect attention to the present moment, which helps our brain and bodies switch gears. These strategies also help reverse the body’s stress response and improve relaxation.
Sensory Countdown Grounding Activity
Using our five senses can help us focus our mind on the present moment by paying close attention to the things around us. Check out this sensory countdown activity.
Body Scan Grounding Activity
Some feelings can make it hard to pay attention to anything else, including our bodies. Take a minute to focus on how your body feels.
Visualization Skills
These skills use mental images or visual aids to help students understand and settle strong thoughts or emotions.
Visualization gives students a concrete way to understand emotions and see that intense feelings can settle. Visualization helps us put distance between our minds and our emotions, reducing emotional intensity and improving relaxation. Visualization can be used to teach about emotions or to reduce distress when feeling overwhelming emotions.
Look for Green Visualization Activity
Big feelings can be overwhelming. Focusing on something else, like finding the color green in the room, can help.
