Night time relaxation for children: Eyes & Face

This is the second in a short series of night relaxation techniques for children. The first is posted here.


Originally posted on Sunny Side Up - see full post here.



Tonight, the request was no different.

"Mummy... you rub my eyes a little bit?"

And so I began. I use a technique fashioned from something I picked up when I used to do Shiatsu yoga several years ago. Along the principles of the leylines of the body - the Chi? the meridians? depends who you talk to - and it uses little pressure points. Release points, where stored tension melts away. I'm rusty on the details, but do recall being ever so fascinated to find them on my own face that I have always remembered them.

If you move your finger around your eye socket, directly under your eye (inline with the pupil, I believe) you will feel a little tiny divet - a groove - in the bone. You can feel this on both sides of your face, left and right. Applying a little simple pressure (I slowly, almost imperceptibly, make circles when I do this on Lolly's face) for a few moments before moving on to the next points which are part way up the bridge of the nose, I'd say right where your cheekbone meets the side of your nose. The next point is right in the inside corner of your eye socket, about the closest point your two fingers are going to be when tracing this path around the eyes. Moving up to the top centre of the eye sockets, you should be able to feel another of those ever so slight little grooves in the bone - if not, just go for that middle point again. The circle is made complete by pressing on the outermost edge of the eye socket.

From there, I find the two centremost points on her cheekbones (these too have a little groove in them - on my face, they are not very obvious but they are there) and give them a good slow-motion pulse as well. These points are great for stuffy noses and sinus troubles, it just eases the face a little from all the tension of sniffing/nose blowing/blocked sinus.

And then I do various other feather-light fingered traces over her forehead and a super trick to calm the toddler-beast: Make a V with your pointer and middle finger at the hairline, trace it down to a point at the third eye area of the nose between the eyes. I like to infuse my fingers with a little bit of energetic colour as well - usually Electric Blue. A few of those strokes should begin to see a noticeably calmer difference, colour or no colour application.

Whenever I do this, I find myself relaxing into it too. I know that it's no good rushing this and, given I have finally been bestowed with the honour of assisting my young daughter to relax in to sleep (she was previously not one to want us to hang around after lights-out), I'm not about to wish the time away. So I really get into it. Another 10-15 minutes out of my day, bringing peace and deep relaxation to her in this way, while she is willingly requesting it, is the least I feel I can do.

And then there are moments like tonight, ones that I cannot ever actually adequately put into words. When the moment of sleep overcomes my daughter and she suddenly looks so tiny again. And her face softens and her cheeks look somehow like those cherubic baby cheeks again. The pulls and tics at the corners of her delicate lips, denoting deeper and deeper travels into her subconscious. And the tugging down of the corners of her dear little mouth and her chin as it furrows like she's about to whimper. And sometimes she does, perhaps already dreaming.