The Importance of a Calm Mind!

How We Start Our Day

At PDC, stretching and calming exercises happen every morning at 9:00 am. The students and the teachers gather in the recreation room on exercise mats and are led into stretching and breathing exercises. On average, most students take two to three weeks before they are able to sit still for 10-minutes without being distracted.

Why do we do this?

We have designed the beginning of our day as a form of therapeutic pre-scheduled maintenance called “Calm & Concentration”.  We realize the importance of our students’ physical/proprioceptive needs as well as explicitly practicing interventions that help them to regulate emotions.

What we do?

We start each session in the morning by focusing our attention on how the mind can interact with the body by doing a light set of stretching or Yoga poses. We focus on being present with and controlling our bodies while challenging ourselves through balancing and building muscle strength that is required for a long and healthy life. The tension and rhythm of the stretches give our minds plenty to focus intently on while we also practice breathing smoothly and appropriately. As we do balancing poses, students are challenged by engaging both sides of their body and the associated parts of their brains that control their dominant/non-dominant motor controls. For many of them, this is the first time in each day that they are paying “attention” to the intricate details of what goes on in their bodies. 

After stretching, we practice 10-minutes of concentration meditation. The students are asked to find a relaxing position to stay in for the whole 10-minutes (usually sitting or lying on their backs). They are then instructed to focus all of their attention on their breathing and how each part of their body responds to every moment of the in and out breaths. For instance, they may focus for a few breaths on how their toes may tighten on the in-breath and loosen on the out-breath, or whether there is any tightness at all in their toes. The key is to stay focused on the interactions of the breath with the body for as many continuous moments throughout the 10-minute period.

We have designed this activity to be advantageous for the cultivation of long continuous focus necessary for learning complex activities and reducing mental disturbances throughout the day.

- Loren Marvin, Lead Teacher