Easter Mindfulness by Tara O’kane

Since beginning and completing the Creative Youth Well-Being and Mindfulness course, mindfulness and meditation have become an important part of my day.

During these uncertain times, I have really felt the benefit of it and I have been trying to encourage my children to take part too. I have tried several times to invite my daughter to meditate with me, but I am usually greeted with an eye roll and a “Boring!” response. However, I am finding ways to sneakily introduce her to mindfulness, and using crafts is the key, as far as my daughter (and me for that matter) is concerned! 

Normally, on the Easter weekend we would be wearing out our National Trust membership visiting as many parks and woodlands as we could squeeze in.  As a whole family we are missing this time in the great outdoors. Inspired by a picture I’d seen on Pinterest, I decided to create these Nature Eggs and thought it would be a great way for my daughter and I to use nature in a mindful, but fun way. 

It was such a simple idea, but so effective! 

1. Recycling the cardboard from what seems like an endless stream of parcels arriving from Amazon at the moment, we cut out egg shapes of various sizes-they could be any shape, but since it was Easter we went for eggs. The thicker the cardboard you use the better, if you are planning on using pebbles too. 
2. We went out into the garden, armed with a shoe box to see what natural treasures we could find. If you don’t have a garden, you could use your daily exercise to collect items from nature too. 
3. After that, we took some time to carefully choose the items we wanted to use. 
4. We arranged them onto the egg shapes, adding bits, taking bits away and swapping bits around until we were happy with it and used a glue gun to attach the items.
5. To complete them, we trimmed the edges so that the egg shape stood out. It is not compulsory to do this part, they also looked good as they were. And voila! You will have created a unique piece of mindful, natural art.

 

When we had finished, we spent a little time looking at each other’s’ creations, saying what we liked about them, which was a beautiful way to finish off.

I was actually surprised at how mindful this task was. We both really wanted colour in our pieces and we found things in the garden that we hadn’t before because we were actively noticing. Things like tiny little petals that had blown in from next door’s garden and gathered under a bush, berries that had fallen off trees, empty acorn shells that the squirrels had hidden among fallen leaves. I honestly had no idea how many different sizes, shapes and colours of pebbles we had! We were both picking each one up individually sharing what we could see with each other. 

I can honestly say, creating the nature eggs left us both feeling relaxed, calm and less ‘caged in’. My daughter and I connected with nature and with each other. We have started creating some art when out for our daily walk, using what we can find in the woods, as you can see in the pictures. Last week we went back to one spot and found that someone else had come and added to what we’d done, so we are spreading the mindfulness vibe! 

Tara O’Kane