Each month Sati Pasala Sydney holds a 2 hour session with the participation of around 30 children. A typical session begins with refreshing the concepts of mindfulness, and includes practicing mindful walking and sitting as well as reflection writing and review. The children take part in these activities with much enthusiasm. However the most looked forward time is the Mindful Activity and Games segment. Each game is designed to engage the children in a simple mindful activity which highlights a basic concept in practicing mindfulness.
The Mindful Game of Feb Sati Pasala Sydney session was to build a tower using wooden building blocks. The rules were, that blocks were to be placed one at a time by each child taking turns and that once a block is placed it cannot be removed off the structure by another. What seems to be an easy task at first became quite a challenge because the blocks were of different sizes and shapes. The concept of being aware of the present moment were discussed.
Another game was to color a picture which had many individual objects. Each group was given a limited number of color pencils and the children had to share the pencils. The children were asked to be mindful of the emotions that would come and go in the process of waiting for the pencils. The rule of the game was that no two items next to each other should be the same color. Here again, the game seemed simple enough to do, but being mindful enough not to color two consecutive images the same color proved to be not that simple. The children explained their thought process, how they were anxious about getting the right color, and agitated when someone was taking longer to give a color they wanted as well as being satisfied when they got the color they wanted.
At the May Session the children were give a picture of a tree that was made of faces of famous world leaders. The activity was to identify how many faces were there as well as group them into features such as old – young, man-woman etc. There were a few prominent faces that were immediately identified by all, but it took careful scrutiny to identify all the 11 faces. This process was tied meticulously with the mindful practice, by explaining to the children that even though at first one would notice the in breath and breath only, as you look more closely you would see the other details such as cold air, hot air, long or short breath etc.