Iniciação à meditação com crianças de quatro a cinco anos de idade

Abstract

The incident of anxiety and stress in people’s life has increased over the years, becoming a possible indicator in the increasing of anxiety cases in adults, young, teenagers and even children. In this way, activities that provide tranquility, relaxation, attention and concentration in educational environments have been developed as strategies to reduce the effect of high levels of stress. Based on this idea, this study aimed to teach children between four and five years old two exercises, a breathing one and other of concentration, seeking to start meditation in this age group. To achieve the proposed objective were accomplished: a formation with the institution pedagogical team – Centro de Educação Infantil (CEI) (Early Childhood Center), and 10 interventions – meditation initiation sessions with two early childhood education groups (Preschool A and Preschool B). 40 individuals participated in the study, 34 children and six members of the pedagogical team – four teachers, a pedagogue and the principal. Each intervention with the children has presented a different class plan, and following the implementation of the activities contained in each of the plans, the information and the feedback obtained by the researcher were systematized in a logbook. Farther, it was conducted a semi structured interview with the institution pedagogical team. All data collected during the investigation were compiled into a single document, originating the Research Analysis Corpus which had the summary of the initial parent-teacher meeting of CEI; the 10 class plans; the observations and the notes of each intervention realized with the children; the children’s comments; the critical incidents (positives/negatives); other notes about the running of the institution and/or the lead researcher’s impressions; the individual interviews from the complete pedagogical team; and the lead researcher’s observation regarding these interviews. This Corpus was used as the basis for the data analysis in this study. The data analysis occurred through the content analysis. As a result of the research, it was observed that the children responded well to the proposed activities, they associated the information apprehend and related it with the daily and, based on these developed practices, an Adapted Protocol of Meditation was obtained for children between four and five years old. Thus, it was concluded that is possible to start meditation with children of the age group researched, and that the breathing and concentration exercises combined were able to provide, at the same time, a relaxation response to the children, the control of one’s own body and they were referred to a meditation activity.