Thoughts on Autumn Mindfulness Practices

While it’s always in season to practice mindfulness, it feels particularly festive and relevant during the autumn months. Mindfulness can be an abstract concept to teach (I’m still figuring out what it looks like for me at 35!) but it feels more simple and natural to me during this season.

My favorite way to discuss what mindfulness means with my kids is to use the context of our five senses. I like to talk about how being mindful means being aware of what is happening all around us. We can do this by noticing the details around us. What can we smell? What can we see, taste and feel? Fall provides so many natural intersection points to explore mindfulness with all of our senses.

Using the five senses encourages my kids and myself to be present with what is happening all around us. If we are on a walk we will often take turns listing the things that we see, feel and notice all around us. We talk about how the crunching of the leaves feels on our feet and what is sounds like to our ears. We talk about how the pumpkins we carved felt slimy and cold and how the pumpkin bars we baked smelled like home.

This practice of noticing the details and how those details show up with our senses is a beautiful way to explore embodiment with children. It connects an abstract idea such as mindfulness with concrete examples that they can experience with their own bodies. It also ties beautifully into gratitude practices. I like to talk about how mindfulness means noticing the details around us and gratitude means having a sense of appreciation for those details.

To explore these ideas in more detail, I’ve created some simple printables that encourage kids and families to keep lists during this season of details that they notice and appreciate with all five of their senses. The lists come in picture and also word variations to allow kids of all ages to participate. I also created a fun Bingo and matching game to correspond with the lists to encourage some fun fall family activities.

I hope that these activities provide some fun ways to explore mindfulness and gratitude as a family during this season! You can find them here if you are interested in learning more!

I recently completed both a Gratitude Journal and a Mindfulness Journal to help children explore these concepts in more detail. Both journals provide scientific explanations of how mindfulness and gratitude can impact the brain and body. The journals also explore practical ways to practice these life skills.

The journal activities below I give away for free to explore if these are helpful products for the children in your life! Just click here to grab your free printables. I hope they’re fun and helpful tools for the kids in your life!

I may be biased, given that it’s my favorite time of year, but truly there’s no shortage of incredible details to be noticed and appreciated during these fall months!