Pizza breathing is something that a lot of the students at River Oaks have learned to do in order to calm down when they are feeling anxious or angry. At school we have pizza cuts outs we can use or the kids colored their own pizza. But also we can make a triangle and the kids pretend that is a slice of pizza to do their breathing.
What we usually do with the kids is we do the breathing with them to calm down. We tell them to “smell the pizza” and “blow on the pizza” to cool it down. Kids love doing this and we try to make sure they are smelling and blowing on the pizza slowly to get into meditative breathing stance. I suggest having kids practice 10 breaths when already calmed down, so if you see them getting upset they will already know what to do.
Follow up questions for kids after doing pizza breathing:
– How does your body feel after doing pizza breathing? (Kids will usually say relaxed or sleepy).
-If you are feeling angry, could you try doing this to calm down before you react?
-Tell me about a time you think you can do pizza breathing?
I found a video below that shows a pretty good example of pizza breathing. It is not exactly how we do it at River Oaks but pretty close. Please see the video below:
