How to Teach 5 Minute Mindfulness™ to Kids

How to Teach 5 Minute Mindfulness™ to Kids

4 contact hours · Asynchronous · Continuing education available · Recommended companion to Overcoming Adversity and Sharpen Suicide Prevention.

Resiliency Technologies, Inc. has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7243. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Resiliency Technologies, Inc. is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.

Written in 2007 by Robyn Hussa Farrell, MFA, E-RYT, 5 Minute Mindfulness™ is an evidence-based, trauma-aware mindfulness curriculum built for people who need to lead a practice for others. It was created inside eating disorder and substance use treatment settings and has been delivered continuously since then across K-12 schools, vocational rehabilitation, early childhood programs, adolescent athletics and healthcare systems. The curriculum covers four modality categories, and every activity follows a three-part structure that fits inside a five-minute window.

Designed for counselors and other mental health professionals who work with children and adolescents, including school counselors and child and family therapists; the course is also open to educators and other adults who seek to lead mindfulness practices with young people.

Evidence base

Mindfulness-based interventions are associated with reduced suicide risk and strengthened protective factors across multiple studies and a meta-analysis (Chesin et al., 2023; Collins et al., 2018; Miller & Interian, 2025; Schmelefske et al., 2022), and self-compassion specifically has been linked to reduced suicidal ideation and self-harm (Cleare et al., 2019; Suh & Jeong, 2021). 5 Minute Mindfulness™ has been delivered as suicide prevention training to coalitions in South Carolina and New York, including as part of VNS Health Safe Pathways, a five-year New York State Office of Mental Health suicide prevention initiative. From 2013 to 2019 it ran as a youth-to-youth peer resiliency program in South Carolina, in which high school students were trained to facilitation fidelity and then led sessions for elementary-aged children in K-12 schools.

The program has been evaluated continuously across seventeen years. The National Eating Disorders Association commissioned the original best-practices toolkit, and exercises from the curriculum were published in Yoga and Eating Disorders (Costin & Kelly, 2016). More than 5,000 South Carolina educators received the training through the Compassionate and Resilient Schools initiatives, whose outcomes were published in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Trauma (Parker et al., 2020), with train-the-trainer delivery to more than 1,000 of them. Across eleven documented South Carolina cohorts, 90.4% understood the MBSR evidence base, 90.0% intended to bring the curriculum into their setting, and 93.9% learned something new (Hussa Farrell, 2026). Sixteen adolescent athletes completed an eight-week protocol measured with three validated instruments; sport anxiety fell significantly by week 8, and mindfulness improved (p = .031) (Patrizi et al., 2019). All thirty K-2 students in an early childhood deployment, every one living in housing insecurity, gained across all five literacy dimensions and all six social-emotional domains assessed (Bauer et al., 2020). In New York City healthcare workforce cohorts, confidence rose from 37 to 41 (p = .001), the high-confidence group grew from 48.9% to 72.3%, the low-confidence group was eliminated, and participants' belief that suicide cannot be prevented fell significantly (p = .029, d = 0.51) (Rios & Biber, 2024).

Learning objectives

As a result of participating in this program, participants will be able to:

• Apply at least two mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) strategies to support their own wellbeing and the wellbeing of the clients, students or patients they serve
• Describe the physiological and psychological mechanisms by which brief, repeated mindfulness practice supports stress regulation, attention and emotion regulation
• Demonstrate at least one 5 Minute Mindfulness™ technique using the three-part centering, core practice and cool-down structure (the ARC), suitable for a professional, classroom or clinical setting
• Select an appropriate technique from the four categories of mindfulness practice (breathing, gentle movement, meditation and journal writing) for a given population, setting and time constraint, including adapting language to participants' belief systems
• Identify trauma-informed adaptations for leading mindfulness with children and adults who have experienced trauma or adversity, including creating a safe environment and responding when a practice brings up strong emotions
• Describe how to deliver a 5 Minute Mindfulness™ practice with fidelity inside a two-to-five-minute window, and summarize the research on the benefits and limits of brief, regular practice

Sources

Bauer, C., Carson, G., Shirley, L., & Hussa Farrell, R. (2020). After-school resiliency for children ages 4 to 7: LEAP program outcomes [Program evaluation]. Mental Fitness, Inc.

Chesin, M. S., Dave, C. V., & Myers, C. (2023). Using mindfulness-based cognitive therapy to prevent suicide among high suicide-risk patients who also misuse opioids. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, 21, 3721-3734. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-022-00817-x

Cleare, S., Gumley, A., & O'Connor, R. C. (2019). Self-compassion, self-forgiveness, suicidal ideation, and self-harm: A systematic review. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, 26(5), 511-530. https://doi.org/10.1002/cpp.2372

Collins, K. R. L., Stritzke, W. G. K., Page, A. C., Brown, J. D., & Wylde, T. J. (2018). Mind full of life: Does mindfulness confer resilience to suicide by increasing zest for life? Journal of Affective Disorders, 226, 100-107. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2017.09.043

Costin, C., & Kelly, J. (Eds.). (2016). Yoga and eating disorders: Ancient healing for modern illness. Routledge.

Hussa Farrell, R. (2026). 5 Minute Mindfulness™: A practice-based evidence review, 2007-2024 [Unpublished manuscript].

Miller, R. B., & Interian, A. (2025). Sitting with suicide: Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for suicide prevention in military veterans. Clinical Social Work Journal. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10615-025-00994-x

Parker, J., Olson, S., & Bunde, J. (2020). The impact of trauma-based training on educators. Journal of Child & Adolescent Trauma, 13(2), 217-227. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40653-019-00261-5

Patrizi, J., Jones, A., Bishop, B., Stoner, A. M., Fadel, N. M., & Bendyk, H. (2019, May). Courtside mindfulness, keep your head in the game: The effects of 8-week mindfulness training on adolescent volleyball athletes [Poster presentation]. American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA, United States.

Rios, I., & Biber, D. (2024). Sharpen® health care worker app data [Program evaluation]. Resiliency Technologies, Inc.

Schmelefske, E., Per, M., Khoury, B., & Heath, N. (2022). The effects of mindfulness-based interventions on suicide outcomes: A meta-analysis. Archives of Suicide Research, 26(2), 447-464. https://doi.org/10.1080/13811118.2020.1833796

Suh, H., & Jeong, J. (2021). Association of self-compassion with suicidal thoughts and behaviors and non-suicidal self-injury: A meta-analysis. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, Article 633482. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.633482

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