Jessica Noll believes she can help heal families by teaching children mindfulness habits. She does this through The Mindful Toolbox, her business based in Crested Butte, Colorado. Noll partners with local schools and offers out-of-school programming to teach mindfulness lessons that are approachable for young children. The children gain healthy habits that they can call upon at any time and will last a lifetime.

Noll says she was a kid with big emotions. “My mother didn’t know tools to help me,” she says. During her 20s, she found yoga and did yoga teacher training. “This was the first time I found peace in my body,” she recalls. Noll went on to graduate from college with a degree in family studies, human development and special education. After college, she worked for Asanas for Autism, a special needs program that gave her the framework to build The Mindful Toolbox.

Once moving to Crested Butte, she started a kids yoga program at Thrive Yoga Crested Butte and began incorporating mindfulness practices into their lessons. From there she began to grow her own business over the past six years. Today, she teaches all ages — from local preschoolers to middle schoolers — about strategies from The Mindful Toolbox. Noll runs after-school, summer camp and school breaks programs in Crested Butte and Gunnison for youth. “My camps and programming are all about building connections,” Noll says.

In the “Peace Begins With Me” finger meditation, the child holds their hands out and touches their thumb to each finger while saying each word of the phrase “peace begins with me.”

“My goal is to teach a wide range of tools and then let children choose which tool fits well in their toolbox,” she adds. “I’ll take things that I learn from my mindfulness practice and from my everyday life, then translate that into kid land.” She enjoys incorporating fun things the children are into — like Pokémon or animals — into applicable practices. “The tools become a digestible way for kids to interact with yoga philosophy and mindfulness,” she says.

Some key elements to The Mindful Toolbox are practices like balloon breath, which is the first exercise Noll teaches children. She has even taught this tool to children as young as one and a half years old. Another practice that teaches concentration and allows children to slow down their emotions is called “Peace Begins With Me” finger meditation. The child holds their hands out and touches their thumb to each finger while saying each word of the phrase “peace begins with me.” Lastly, a favorite practice by all of Noll’s students is developing their comfy cozy time, which is lying in savasana pose, or supine on one’s back, with a stuffed animal on their belly. Now the students take their stuffy for a balloon ride by controlling their breathing.

Noll suggests mindfulness habits can be brought into the home through simple exercises that use yoga foundations with a childlike twist. For example, doing a sun salutation but calling it a yoga dance. Or walking around with a stuffy on your head and not allowing it to fall. Exercises such as these teach body awareness and balance. “By teaching where their body is in space, they learn mindfulness as a somatic practice,” Noll says.

“The goal is to teach children how good peace feels, and then as adults they will know peace is a non-negotiable to their own practice,” Noll says. “By creating small habits that are implemented in 30 seconds of calm time, they will be able to access that habit during a situation of being scared or hurt.” These tools help children navigate conflict and provide selfregulation skills. “We have to start new from this generation by teaching them these strategies from a young age so they can learn ways to act, not react,” she says.

Noll believes if a generation is empowered to know peace within themselves, they can create a greater world that knows peace.

Originally published in the summer 2026 issue of Spoke+Blossom.

The Mindful Toolbox: Teaching Kids Simple, Lifelong Practices For Peace + Self-Regulation