DeStress Monday at School
Setting Healthy Intentions
Start your day with an expert-guided meditation.
Teach your students about setting intentions with the help of a brief recorded intention-setting practice.
For Teachers
Monday morning is a wonderful time to set an intention for your week. Setting an intention means allowing yourself to identify a goal or hope within yourself that you would like to focus on this week, such as being open to new experiences, developing or deepening connections with other people, or practicing self care. You can also practice setting an intention at other times – for instance, at the start of a class you are about to teach or at the start of a family gathering. You can also “check in” with yourself to reflect on your intention throughout the week.
This seven minute meditation led by Joe Loizzo will help you relax your mind and set healthy intentions for the week ahead. Dr. Loizzo is founder and director of the Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science. He is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and Columbia-trained Buddhist scholar with over thirty years’ experience studying the beneficial effects of meditation on healing and learning. Currently, he is Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry in Integrative Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College.
For the Classroom
Students of all ages can practice setting an intention – for the week, for the day, or for the next hour. For younger children, it is probably best to focus on shorter time periods, whereas older children can focus on a longer time period, such as a full week. Here is a suggested introduction and brief recorded intention-setting practice that you can use with your class:
Monday morning is a fresh start. It’s a great time to decide how you would like to feel and be this week, this day, this class period. That’s called setting an intention. Maybe you would like to feel relaxed and deal with stressful things in a calm way. Maybe you would like to be curious and try new things. Maybe you would like to be friendly and spend time with new friends. When we think about how we want to be, it sometimes helps us to be that way. This brief recording can help you practice setting an intention.
Full Curriculum
See the full DeStress Monday at School Curriculum