Sound Sleep for Children: Medicate or Meditate?

Growing minds and bodies need a lot of sleep as well as fresh air and exercise and many parents are concerned that their kids aren't getting enough sleep, or that the sleep they do get isn't quality sleep.

Children in turn often suffer from anxiety, stress, over-stimulation from too much video game playing or over-tiredness from being up too late. Often kids will fixate on upcoming tests or quizzes at school, or playing in an important sports match. Young minds often find it hard to switch off or to get out of the talk track that's running in their heads.

This is where meditation comes into its own.

It's not always easy to teach kids standard meditation. We live in an age of instant gratification and it's a rare child who wants to work at something every day without seeing much in the way of results. Kids will see (and hear) results with music lessons or language lessons more quickly than with learning to meditate, and how often do we need to encourage them to practice those skills every day? Not that teaching kids to meditate is a bad thing. It's just something that even adults can struggle to do well on a regular basis.

Using a meditation that has a hypnotic language track woven into it allows our kids to get the benefits of meditation without them having to still their minds. Currently, a huge number of our kids have a more than passing familiarity with the advantages of prescription drugs that help them to still their minds, amongst other things. Meditation can act in a complementary way with prescribed medicines to help kids feel more relaxed, calm and at peace.

And for those kids who haven't been prescribed medication, using therapies such as meditation can provide a more natural alternative.

Hypnotic language tracks can speak direct to the subconscious, providing encouragement and support. Listening to a meditation track at night can help to ensure a quick and easy slide into a deep sleep, which in turn allows the mind to begin the process of healing and further developing the body and brain.

There are different kinds of meditations on the market today. Some utilise hypnosis, while others use brainwave entrainment and still others provide guided visualisation. A good meditation can use all three techniques.

Children have wonderful imaginations and guided visualisation can help them to see the world around them differently, or give them a place where they feel safe. If the guide uses hypnotic language, this will allow the conscious mind to be bypassed and the subconscious can come to the fore and draw out any issues lying below the conscious awareness. Often, issues can be dealt with during this time without affecting the waking life of the child. At the same time, using brainwave entrainment means that the meditation will effectively cause the brain to move into a meditative state by itself as it copies and replays the sound frequencies it hears. Frequencies can be provided for states such as healing, anxiety reduction and immune function support, amongst others.

By using meditation, we can support our children, help them to improve health and wellness, gain self esteem and send them out into the world in a more positive state of mind. When we need to medicate, meditation is a useful support tool. When we don't need to medicate - why not meditate?

Phoebe Dangerfield is an NLP Master Practitioner, Results Coach and lover of hypnotic language. Phoebe has a free meditation download currently available at her blog http://www.meditationmonk.com/ The meditations available through meditationmonk.com do not contain subliminal messages, audiostrobe or screen flashing and can be used with or without headphones depending on what you choose.

Visit http://www.meditationmonk.com/ to get your free meditation download and to learn more about brainwave entrainment.

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