Feel/See Mindful Activity

This week’s classroom (and staff) mindfulness activity entailed the senses of feeling and seeing. I asked students to close their eyes, focus on their breath, put their hands out and ground themselves. Then, I placed a shell fragment in their hands. I had collected these shell pieces on a trip to Northern California & Southern Oregon. There were a large variety of shapes and kinds of shells. Some were larger than others. After passing them out, I led the students (and staff later in the week) in a practice of first feeling the object in their hands. I asked them to keep their eyes closed and just really feel the object as if they were blind. I also shared an anecdote of my godmother’s husband, Jimmy Woodlee, who was a blind chiropractor who used only the sense of feel to heal his patients. I explained that our fingers are very sensitive and observant. After a minute or so of feeling the objects, I asked them to open their eyes, and still without speaking, to see the object in detail. The directions included observing the object completely and intimately.

Using a three-tone chime, I used a different tone for each part of the activity. One tone was to indicate closed eyed observation with just the fingers, whereas another tone corresponded to opening the eyes and looking mindfully at the object. I alternated back and forth with these tones (activities) and before finishing up with a breath awareness practice I asked students while their eyes were closed to visualize a scene where this shell could be: a beach, in the ocean, floating on a wave. Finally, the practice ended with the third tone of the chime, which indicates the end of our mindfulness activity.

I found that this activity really caught the attention of all groups (middle school, high school, and teachers). I plan to repeat the activity and adding more to it. For example, after the mindfulness feeling/seeing practice, I would ask students to draw the scene they envisioned for the shell. Then, taking the visual scene, they would write either a story or a few paragraphs describing the scene.

After speaking with Erin Woo today (mindfulness teacher at Brown University and contributing teacher in the year-long Mindfulness School teacher training course), I could add on to this activity by alternating between writing and then sitting quietly, observing the shell more each time. She said that this leads to even more awareness and descriptive writing.

The staff activity took place before a PD meeting. Instead of an EQ check-in, I led the staff in this feel/see mindful activity using the shell. It was short and abbreviated, and I explained to them after we’d spent a minute or two feeling and seeing the shell pieces how I had used the activity in class.