Ping Pong

28 September 2019

In collaboration with HERE for you for them

Ping and Pong. Send and Receive. Serve and Return. All word pairs that express the beautiful balance between giving and taking.

Being responsive to a young child’s babbles, cries, gestures and needs through eye contact, touch or words, is essential for the development of the child’s social and communication skills. These Serve & Return interactions help strengthen the child’s brain architecture.

A parent or caregiver of small children will usually find it quite easy to bounce back the ball to the child. But are we in a ready position to receive? Let’s stop calling this bouncing thing a ball, and name it acceptance, recognition and love. It comes quite naturally to give these sentiments to our child or children. Feeding our own hearts and minds with them can be a little more challenging. Yet, how can we keep giving when the wellspring that is our heart feels depleted?

Cultivating self-love is a practice that takes patience and acceptance of our own vulnerability. The following brief meditation provides a platform to welcome in acceptance, recognition and love for our most vulnerable self. When we nourish the source, it will rebound with an abundance to give.

• Sit in a comfortable position
  Close your eyes
  Rest your hands on your thighs, palms up
  Touch thumb to index finger
  Breathe deeply

• Inhale to welcome in a connection to your heart
  Exhale to connect with the hearts outside the confinement of your physical body

• Your focused attention to the heart will bring it a sensation of warmth

• Breathe in to receive acceptance in your heart centre
  Breathe out to spread acceptance from your heart centre

• Breathe in to receive recognition in your heart centre
  Breathe out to spread recognition from your heart centre

• Breathe in to receive love in your heart centre
  Breathe out to spread love from your heart centre

• Notice a longer exhalation. More giving and sharing.
  Notice a longer inhalation. More to take in and give your self.

• Honour where you are at this very moment
  Let yourself be nourished by the practice of both giving and receiving

• Continue to breathe in the warmth that you are receiving
  Continue to breathe out the warmth that originates in your heart centre

• Take a few more conscious, deep breaths with this heart focused attention

• Drop your chin to your chest
  Softly open your eyes and lift your head

Once you have expanded your awareness back into the space where you are sitting, notice whether you feel recharged and ready to keep ponging back each ping. Then remember that with a patient and accepting practice we can be our own brain architect as well as our children’s.

HERE for you for them bring yoga and mindfulness to families. We are currently working together with Family Support Hammersmith & Fulham to introduce London families to mindful awareness practices in a series of weekly workshops.