- Would you like your children to be able lead a happy and healthy life since childhood?
- Would you like to enable and support them in being respectful, honest, emotionally-matured people who are living life to their full potential?
- Would you like teach them how to healthily embrace their emotions?
Imagination is a natural part of childhood, so offering our children a possibility to focus on their inner world through imagination is one of the best methods.
But what is important to mention is that we as parents are the most important part for our children.
Because if we donť have healed our emotions and wounds from past, we cannot be fully present for them.
Children need the most secure attachment with, safe environment where they are welcomed as they are and able to express all emotions. This is the most important part of all.
But if we want them stay connected to their emotions, feelings and body wisdom, we have wonderful possibility to enjoy even with them imagery world.
Why is developing imagery by children good?
Imagination helps to:
- Develop creativity and flexibility
- Focus
- Calm down and tune in this their inner world
- Feel safe and comfortable in own body
- Access body wisdom and stay in contact with intuition
Nowadays lifestyles are generally more stressful than ever. We demand a lot from our children and expect them to achieve more in their studies, in sports, music, social behavior …
They have duties at school and at home, and lots of activities on the side to develop them and give them all they need for life.
We want to help them and please them, to let them play and spend time on different type of electronics, we want them to be “in”.
We usually let them go on the internet, as we can perfectly use internet for online learning and find a lot of interesting information. So this world is fascinating for them. But…
… There is too much information to cope with. There are too many activities, too many tasks and duties. So usually not much time is left for them to play like we played when little. To go to the nature, to discover things at a slow pace, to imagine a world populated with fantasy friends or animals to whom we could ask for help or play with.
Intuition is currently mostly forgotten in the modern curriculum. Spontaneity is expected to magically occur to our children. Creativity is stimulated with a couple of pencils and a sheet of paper, let apart mindfulness, wholeness. Basically the focus is fully on the left hemisphere of our children’s brains while the right one is denied existence.
What about drawing a link with hyperactivity, focusing issues, attention disorders and more generally stress in children?
On top of that we observe a shortening of the magical phase experienced by children while some do not experience it at all. This developmental stage occurs between 3 and 7 years old and has been a core element in Piaget’s work (source: https://www.britannica.com/science/magical-thinking or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_thinking). In their fantasy world children become omnipotent and all -powerful which is a very important experience in brain development on their way to logical thinking.
Our children hold the key to own lives within themselves and this is why we have to support them in finding their inner power, their mindfulness, to assist them in finding ways to calm down, accept and embrace emotions, and to nurture their fantasies. These abilities will enable them to cope appropriately with stressful situations during their entire adult life.
Moreover, the time spent with your children reading, relaxing, or meditating will support your bounding between you as parent and child. It is best to set up a routine, with a dedicated time to practice relaxation together. To make a ritual from it.
Calming down our minds supports creativity and fantasy. It makes us feel good and helps develop our self-awareness.
Images and wholeness
Our emotions and wounds are store in symbolic image language.
Our wholeness and connection with our bodies and emotions as babies was something what we were born with. Same as fantasies and image language.
This was here before we could speak. It is our primary process as Freud mentioned.
Supporting imagination by children is important so they can stay connected to their bodies, be the authors of their lives by being able to see connections between the inner and outer world since childhood.
Wouldn’t it be great if children knew that they hold the key to their life within themselves? That they possess and can use their inner powers?
And wouldn’t it be great if they knew that it is enough to calm down, find their inner peace to be able to cope with most if not all difficulties in life?
Obviously all this is possible if safety is present and if they have chance to be attached secure way to caring adult.
So why not teach our children and show them the way to be able to experience connection of body and mind?
Getting quiet helps children to find a way towards their source of capacities (skills, competences). In that moment they are developing evolutionary newest part of brain which helps us to be compassionate, emphatic, self loving. Just when we are relaxed we can have access to this part of brain which is responsible as well for effective learning.
So that would also help improve how they do at school. Just bringing more mindfulness, meditations and imaginations to school.
There are exercises which you can easily do with your children. For example: watching clouds and asking your child which shapes or animals they see in them and what these animals are feeling, experiencing. Just be an observer, do not judge or interrupt.
Using the above, they learn how to sense and perceive with their body instead of their head only (mind, thoughts).
We were brought up in society, where the attention and accent are on our thoughts, rational thinking and reasoning. Mainly we focus on form, body, appearance, status. Not many of us were raised and led towards appreciating their inner world, discovering and valuing our feelings and emotions. Not often were our emotions and feelings the center of attention as were our results and successes.
Usually we learned how to express the only emotions that were acceptable to society and learned to categorize them accordingly.
Many of us have feelings deeply locked inside. And when we restart our journey towards finding our “inner child” (how we can name those suppressed and not expressed feelings) and ask them, what do they need, we can heal our past, present and future.
Starting the imagination process with an open mind and heart is enough but at the same time the most difficult. In that moment our “inner child” can finally express and show their needs.
Our body has the knowledge, all the wisdom but if this wisdom does not go further and does not reach our soul, then it is of no use.
Through imagination our inner wisdom may speak out and our soul can communicate with us to lead us.