red: i am loved

This week we looked at the final colour of the rainbow – red! For the children, red meant many things. For some children it signified anger and feeling cross. For other children it represented love and feeling loved. For some it felt like the colour of happiness.

For the classes this week, I chose to use the mantra “I am loved” for the colour red. The reason for this is two-fold. One is the obvious: red equals love in the valentine’s day sense. The other reason was because, when I pondered on how the mantra “I am loved” makes us feel, I came up with feelings of safety and security. In other words, feeling supported and held. And co-incidence or not, but the base chakra’s colour is red! The base chakra is found at the base of the spine. It is associated with feeling grounded, safe, supported and having a strong foundation. So, I felt the mantra “I am loved” was a good fit for the colour red.

So, have the children found their rainbows?! Mmmm… all shall be revealed next week in the final class of the term. Their affirmations bags are certainly now full of rainbows:
• Violet: I am important
• Indigo: I am safe
• Blue: I am true to myself
• Green: I am class
• Yellow: I am special
• Orange: I am brave
• Red: I am loved

The highlight of the classes this week was the loving-kindness meditation that we did. This type of meditation is one where the focus is to direct loving energy towards oneself and others by silently repeating a series of mantras. It was important for the children to first feel the loving energy in their beings. I thought that some children might find this hard so I offered them the suggestion of thinking about how they feel when they see a small puppy or kitten. Children usually have great affection for baby animals and this helps them to get an understanding of what loving energy feels like. I then asked them to direct that same love they feel towards puppies and kittens, towards themselves and others as we worked through the meditation.

I kept the loving-kindness meditation simple, focusing on the following mantras:
May I be kind
May I be loved
May I be happy

This practice helps to soften the mind and heart. So, in the meditation, we dis not only extend loving-kindness to those who love us and the people we like, we also shared the loving-kindness meditation to those who we find it hard to like. Possibly people that irritate us or are unkind to us. We also extended the loving-kindness meditation to them. This has a powerful impact in developing compassion and empathy as well as working through feelings of forgiveness and being able to let go of the hurt.

And finally, the children were very happy to add red, the final colour, to their mosaics. The mosaics have turned out so well. A lot of care and hard work has been put into each one by each child. I will grout them over the weekend and they will be ready for the children to take home next week.

I encourage you this week to silently say the words “I am loved” to yourself each time you see something red in nature. May you feel loved.

Just a reminder that next week is the last week of the term. There are still a few places for the holiday workshop on the 13th and 14th Dec if anyone is interested.

Thanks
Bianca