Healer Q&A: Mindfulness & healthy habits for kids with Mary Montague
The following interview is a transcript excerpt from The Heallist Podcast episode. Listen to the full audio version or watch the video below and subscribe to get notified of new episodes.
In this episode of the Heallist Podcast, Mary Montague, founder of The POGA Method, discusses the importance of introducing mindfulness and healthy habits to children from a young age. She emphasizes the right age to start these practices, the techniques suitable for different age groups, and how to create routines that foster mindfulness.
Mary shares insights on empowering children through independence, goal setting, and the significance of movement and yoga in processing emotions. The conversation also touches on the balance of positive reinforcement and the role of food in habit formation. Overall, the episode provides practical tips for parents to help their children develop a mindful and intentional lifestyle.
The Right Age to Start Mindfulness Practices
Around age three is normally the time to start. So at age three or even in elementary school, you're starting new subjects like music, art, science, lab, P.E, and everything is new to you, so you don't have a resistance to it. If you were taking a mindfulness class or a yoga class or whatever as a child, you would assume that everyone does this. You wouldn't know that this particular method is unique or new and progressive. Kids just do what they're taught to do. They're experiencing life for the first time, so they're very receptive to it and very open to it. But if they had these skills from a child, from a young age, then it's always going to be embodied within them that then they can use them as needed as they navigate life and maybe they come back to it at a later stage.
Self-awareness is definitely number one and to be self-aware you can connect to your breath, which is the easiest thing to do, with kids. They're life coping skills that you continue to practice, and if you practice them in a preventative way, before something becomes an issue, then it's the most beneficial.
My favorite tip to tell parents is that let's say kids, you know your child really wants a new pair of shoes or there's some clothing brand that they really really like. Maybe they can work on these healthy habit checklists with some sort of incentive in mind, rather than just giving them gifts and shoes and clothes kind of you know willy-nilly.
Creating Systems with Your Child
Sometimes at night we're kind of fighting a little bit before bed. It's really about the parent and the child creating a system together that feels good for both people, that really creates healthy habits for success.
What about sunlight? First thing, in the morning, depending on where you live, can breakfast be outside. If the weather is appropriate, can you go on a little walk around the block before school starts? Can you walk to school? Can you put your feet in the grass? Can you just open the shades and open the windows? First thing, just some sort of transition to have the day start with a more vibrant energy would be really helpful.
Have some downtime to self-regulate and just have free time to be bored and just allow for them to be a little bit of flexibility through the schedule.If you can just say it once and then just allow for a little bit, rather than the constant follow-up, and just see how they do with a little bit more space, because they probably are very capable of doing it and we're probably, as adults, inserting ourselves a little bit too much.
Mindset is so important and self-awareness is so important. So that's when guided meditation and visualization would come in, and also just having that downtime for them to be able to think themselves. To feel self-empowered, to say, “okay, who do you want to be on your first day of school?” “Who do you want to be this year in fourth grade? What's your goal with your schoolwork?” “What's your goal with your friends?” “What's your goal outside of school?” “What's your goal at home?” Let them visualize who they want to be and then you could say, ”well, in order to be that person, what kind of things do you think you need to do every day?”
The whole concept of your identity like James Clear talks about this a lot in his book Atomic Habits is, if it's your identity, where you're the kind of person who does this and they start to show up as that kind of person, then they're more likely to do the habits to get them to the goal.
Rewards, Healthy Relationships, and Movement to Process Emotions
Instead you're sending two messages where you are giving them the positive reinforcement, but you're also just saying, yeah, you're being an active participant in the household. So it doesn't necessarily have to be 'wow, you put your dish in the sink. Amazing,'... it could just be 'thank you for helping out' or 'that really helped me’.
You don't want food to be this reward thing where we're constantly, you know, kind of depriving ourselves of an ice cream and we only get an ice cream if we earn it. It should be a little bit more intuitive than that. So that's kind of entering a dangerous zone.
You're just talking openly about food. How did this food make you feel I love this kind of vegetable? What do you like? Just having open conversations about food and then having open conversations about treats and just saying there's treats out there that are so delicious but they're made to be treats and you could say, “my favorite treat is mint chocolate chip ice cream, but I know that if I ate it all the time it would make me feel sick.”
My biggest philosophy with movement is it helps us process our emotions and it stops us from rumination. And this one boy was almost in disbelief where he said, wow, I had so many thoughts in my mind before, and now I just feel nothing... So that made me so happy because no matter what kind of movement it is, it's just giving your body an opportunity to work through those emotions, process those emotions and get them out, and then, with a clear mind, you can move forward with your day.
The POGA Method: A Unique Approach
By the time I got to work I would sit on a big, huge Pilates ball. Another alternative if you want to sit is sit on that pilates ball because it engages your core and that gentle movement just kind of keeps your mind alert. And this was my light bulb moment for my business, where I just realized how connected we were, for those 10 minutes where they all just breathed together with me and got so focused on their mind-body connection and they were so centered that after 10 minutes when we went back to their desk, we didn't waste any time. We had just caught up and were able to 2x the amount of time moving forward.
So from that point on I realized, okay, these kind of modalities of movement, breath work, mindfulness, stretching within the classroom for little tiny breaks to help kids focus and self-regulate and really to help with transitions, is going to be hugely beneficial.
Pilates, being body control, mixed with yoga, which you can do so many things for kids with yoga.Combining Pilates and yoga together is really the sweet spot.Over time, I realized how much attention was needed for mental health and social emotional skills. So then we've added two more pillars of meditation and mindfulness.
You're never too old and you're never too young to do something that's going to create a healthy habit for yourself. If you feel like you've started some bad habits in your home, start again. You can always start again. It's never too early and it's never too late.
