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The Case for Teaching Meditation to Teen Boys
Cory Allen, author of a new book on modern mindfulness, makes the pitch to teens directly
Personal challenges show up early in our lives, much sooner than we often expect them to. When we hit our teen years, and our hormones kick into full gear, so do our feelings of angst. I remember being a teenage boy and feeling almost paralyzed by anxiousness; like I was incompatible with the rest of humanity. This created a tremendous amount of emotional discomfort and frustration.
One day, I stumbled upon an immensely transformative tool: meditation. As a teen, I started meditating every day, quietly in my bedroom. Little by little, I was able to create the space I needed to breathe, gaining awareness of how I was operating in the world. I’m forever grateful that I chanced upon the tools of mindfulness and yoga, because without them, I wouldn’t have been able to work through my pain and point my life in a new direction.
Almost anyone you ask will have a few good stories about how traumatic their teen years were. It’s a pretty universal human experience: Both teen boys and teen girls obsess over their position in the pecking order, trying to discover each other’s vulnerabilities through relentless verbal jabs, and using sports and the occasional schoolyard scuffle to…
