Deep Breathing for Relaxation

 

  2020 has been an unpredictable stressful year that feels never ending at times for teachers and students alike. Your students might be expressing feelings of stress and anxiety more than ever this school year. Arguing, daydreaming, frequent trips to the nurse, and tattling could be common behaviors in your classroom right now. Some of these are examples of trauma response behavior and you can do some more reading on those here. Everyone needs extra grace, kindness, and new ways to cope with the stress. One great technique is deep breathing exercises.

  Deep breathing exercises have been shown to help reduce stress and help the body relax. While deep breathing, our bodies elicit a relaxation response which includes lowering heart rate, muscles relaxing, slower breathing, and blood pressure decreasing (Source). Doing this can help students to regain focus and find more peace to get through the day. 

One way to make deep breathing more visual, colorful, and fun for students is to use this stretchy toy. You can introduce this activity by modeling how to do it for the students. Eventually, you can make it apart of your daily routine and have students volunteer to lead the class in the exercise. Many students will be eager to be in charge of the class activity for a bit!

 

Begin the activity, by explaining to the students that you will be doing a deep breathing exercise and you need them to sit comfortably in a flat position. Demonstrate the technique of slowly breathing in through your nose, and slowly exhaling through your mouth.

When you are breathing in, the toy will be closed and sucked in just like your breath. As you are breathing out, expand the toy to represent the air going out. Try to exhale for at least 5 seconds for the best results. Repeat the deep breathing as many times as you feel necessary. 

I would personally do the deep breaths in and out about ten times as it's just long enough to really feel the exercise working without losing their attention. These kind of expandable toy balls can be found at many stores like Walmart, Target, or Hobby Lobby. They are relatively affordable and can even be found on amazon. I have linked one on amazon for you here in case you cannot find one in your stores.