KS2 · Physical education · Year 3
Performing meditative balances in pairs
Health and wellbeing: mindfulness and meditative balances
Learn it. Recall it. Make it stick.
IllumED Slides
IllumED · 1/10
Your learning goal
I can execute meditative balances correctly to help me feel more relaxed and I can work with my partner to help improve their breathing technique.
1 of 10
Performing meditative balances in pairs: slides adapted from the imported teaching text; recall questions created from its keywords, learning points and common mistakes. Self-check practice, with no automatic grading or XP. Answers stay on this page and are cleared when you leave.
What you’ll learn
I can execute meditative balances correctly to help me feel more relaxed and I can work with my partner to help improve their breathing technique.
Key learning points
- Move: to perform a meditative balance and hold for 10 seconds, we need a strong posture, focus and slow deep breathing.
- Think: focusing when balancing for a long period of time and being still helps us feel calm and less anxious.
- Think: creating meditative balances helps improve our focus, strength and flexibility benefiting our minds and bodies.
- Feel: performing meditative balances to the best of our abilities demonstrates self-discipline.
- Connect: encouraging others and providing feedback shows excellent communication skills.
Words to know
- hold
- maintaining a still position without movement
- balance
- maintaining stability and control over the body's position to remain stationary
- partner
- someone who collaborates or works together with another person or group towards a common goal
Common mistakes
Pupils think that performing animal themed meditative balances requires acting like animals and making animal noises. This also means that pupils forget to control their breathing as they balance.
Explain to pupils that if we make noises and actually act like animals, we are creating actions and using characterisation, not balancing to ensure calm, focus and relaxtion. We must remain silent and focus on long, slow breaths in and out.
For parents, carers and teachers
- Take the class through the first few animal themed meditative balances one at a time before pupils go off on their own to explore the rest.