Activity: Students watch and follow a guided meditation that encourages practitioners to use their imaginations and slow breathing to inspire hopeful and positive thoughts about the future. 

Materials needed: 

Directions: Explain: “Do you have hopes and dreams, things you’d like to see, do, become in life? Did anyone ever ask you what you want to do when you grow up? We will watch and follow a guided meditation about feeling positive in your mind and heart. Because the video shows beautiful images as the narrator talks, you can keep your eyes open, even though the narrator tells you to close your eyes - or you can choose to close your eyes. Try your best to relax, but don’t fall asleep! Follow the instructions and prompts for breathing. Breathe in slowly through your nose, breathe out slowly through your mouth.” Make sure students are sitting comfortably and show the video.  At the conclusion of the video, ask students to quietly (without talking) think about a few things mentioned in the video. Guiding questions for students to ponder: 

• Are you more relaxed, feeling more optimistic about your day? 
• Did the slow breathing help you feel calm? 
• Were the pictures and sounds of the ocean comforting and make you feel at ease? 
• When the narrator asked you to think of something you’d like in the future, were you able to imagine it and did that make you feel happy and more hopeful? 
• Can you remember a feeling that makes you glad to be alive and do you feel safe and lucky? 

Wrap it up: If you practice breathing like this you will improve and you’ll find that it will calm you down and help you think better. If you practice positive day-dreaming, you will be able to keep good feelings alive. It won’t happen from just this one experience - you need to practice breathing and imagining peaceful, calming experiences, and when you do that you will find that it isn’t so hard to feel like that more consistently.