Research is starting to show that mindfulness is impacting new populations.
But can it help at-risk youth who are exposed to negative role models, experience unstable homes and are getting in trouble with the law?
To look at this issue, Dr. Karen Bluth and her team of researchers from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill designed this randomized controlled trial, published recently in the journal Mindfulness, for the effect of a school-based mindfulness program on at-risk youth.
Researchers assigned 27 ethnically diverse at-risk adolescents in an alternative school setting to either a mindfulness program called Learning to BREATHE, or a substance abuse educational class. The classes met once a week for 50 minutes over the course of an entire semester.
Some of the results were consistent with what we might expect. Youth in the mindfulness class showed a greater reduction of depression symptoms and lower levels of stress than students in the control class.
But one finding was particularly interesting to me.
The researchers measured which class was favored by the students.
At the beginning of the semester, the substance abuse class was thought of more highly than the mindfulness course. By the end of the semester, the opposite was true.
The students actually accepted the mindfulness class more than the control by the end of the study. Not only that, but the students who had participated in the mindfulness classes expressed their desire to continue in the program.
What this tells me is that even when people don’t fully understand mindfulness practice as an intervention strategy, or even if they perceive it as less credible than other approaches, their attitudes can change as they begin to experience its benefits.
Of course, we need to be cautious about generalizing these results because of the small sample size included in the study. I’d be interested in seeing it repeated in other classrooms of varying sizes and in different locations.
Meanwhile, I would like to hear from you.
Have you ever worked with a client who was resistant to mindfulness at first, but over time grew to embrace the practice? Please leave a comment below.
I have taught mindfulness meditation for eight years – to teenagers, young adults and adults – inpatients in hospitals for mental health – as well as inpatient addiction recovery. I have many stories of initial resistance, doubt turned into astonishment. After one session, often most of them- were astonished to find that their troubling minds, aching and/or diseased bodies – were temporarily relieved, void – for that time of practice. One man cried, he said he lived with physical pain all his life – he didn’t know it was possible to be relieved of it – like he experienced after our session.
thank you. where can I find the accurate title and publication information of this reserch, for a quotation in a lecture? thank you,
Nachum Katz, Israel
Nachumkatz@yahoo.com
I suppose I’d be a person who is still “resistant” to how I’ve seen mindfulness taught, although not because I don’t practice it. I find the teachings I’ve seen on mindfulness frustrating in a couple of ways. First, because they have used exclusively the paraphernalia of non-Western faiths instead of allowing learners to legitimize their use of — or learning of — the mindfulness practices of their own faith traditions. Spiritual direction, in the Christian tradition, involves mindfulness as one element, as do such practices as walking prayers, chant, and various forms of contemplation. Second, I have found these teachings frustrating as I have experienced them because they elevate the meditative lifestyles of cloistered contemplatives over the mindful moments that fill the joyful lives of many happy, busy people. Many of us maintain a considerable margin of “white space” for contemplation, while (for example) still using our commutes to plan projects, listen to books, sing, pray, or do almost anything other than be mindful of the feeling of our seat on the seat and our hands on the wheel. I personally still enjoy reading when I eat a solitary meal. I wish the teachers of mindfulness would be mindful of how different their students might be in culture and lifestyle, and open their hearts to teaching accordingly.
Mindfulness works with parenting really well because parents today are really stressed. With parents expressing better focus and more calm in their language with their children, their children may respond with less resistance to parental authority and that may happen even during the teen years. How parents treat their kids is also mimicked in how kids treat their parents. Befriending kids in a difficult world will be good buffers to the social stress that children and teens face. When parents attempt other strategies besides yelling and altercation, then their children may attempt to pay attention. At first children may blow a parent off but over time as they see the parent deal with stress differently they may become curious about what their parent is doing internally. Communicate with kids as parents and tell them how mindfulness is helping you. It has the capacity to re-establish open communication between parents and their kids.
I am an adolescent medicine pediatrician, and I teach mindfulness to youth. I completely agree with the observation, “Negative attitudes toward mindfulness change as one experiences it and realizes its benefits.” In my experience, young people are willing to experiment with mindfulness, and once they start to find ways to use it in their lives and share it with their peers, it spreads like wildfire. Also, we as adults don’t always see the ways that youth use mindfulness, so it’s important for us to plant seeds with an open heart, without being too tied up in expectations of certain outcomes, and allow ourselves to be surprised. I know that I’ve been surprised (and inspired!) often by the youth that I work with. Some of the youth stories are in my book, in their own words. The Mindful Teen: Powerful Skills to Help You Handle Stress One Moment at a time. My website, mindfulnessforteens.com, has lots of free resources for mindful teens.
I was just thinking that sometimes reading the replies gives me better information that the article (not that I didn’t like the article) when BAM! I got to your comments. Thank you for the link to your site. I work with at-risk students (year 33) and look forward to exploring your site.
Try preceding it with 10 minutes of activity like active stretching and or yogic exercise of some form, progressive muscular relaxation before one settles into mindfulness /meditation.
I had a co therapist who believed that the mindfulness practices took too long in group unti he saw the benefits.
I presented 2 one hour “Mindfulness” workshops at a private Middle School. The girl who kept interrupting me and could sit or stand still for more than a few minutes told me she practiced. She said she would practice her mindfulness meditation when she was bored and when she finished she would think of something to do so she wasn’t bored.
I teach mindfulness to most of my community-agency clients, adults dealing with anxiety, depression, stress, substance dependence. I offer them copies of a practice CD that I downloaded from free sights — mindful breathing, body scan, kindness meditation. I also give them a resource list including how to get mindfulness apps. Sometimes I give them a practice log to record in. All of this seems to increase the liklihood of them taking the practice home. When they do, they often report very positive results, sometimes after an initial doubtfulness that something so simple can have such an impact. I am grateful for this wonderful resource. Plus mindfulness has made such a difference in MY life. Can’t imagine life without it!
A couple of young incarcerated women in our initial attention training , mindfulness, and self regulation class in the Fall of 2013, held at the Indiana Women’s Prison, stated in the end of term feedback that they attempted to exit the class initially, however were very happy they were not allowed to drop out by the staff. While they had no idea what they had gotten themselves into, they reported great benefit and were able to build a continuing practice. They were surprised and grateful for the new,for them, life-skills tools.
Engaging young children from housing projects to learn mindfulness is difficult. It is a challenge to get them to stay in one place long enough to experience stillness and focus. At one time NICABM presented a video of a program using music and movements with youth that I am trying to introduce with the group I work with. My group is significantly younger than those in the video which means I need to rethink my teaching techniques.
Hard to say what produced the effect in this study. The content, the facilitator, the new-ness of the ‘mindfulness’ idea?
I encounter resistance to mindfulness and meditation pretty regularly in my practice as a therapist. I spend time in each session doing something called 5,4,3,2,1 which focuses on sensory awareness and starts the process of telling the brain that I/we are safe.
I would love to hear more about how this is done.
I also would like to hear more about this.
My experience of mindfulness practice was also “Negative attitudes toward mindfulness change as one experiences it and realizes its benefits.”
I recently read a column in the Guardian that both criticized and misunderstood mindfulness.
I think it is important for acceptance as an intervention that the pieces of brain science that have been developed over the last 15-20 years is included in a Mindfulness description. I think particularly of Candace Pert’s initial findings about the physicality of emotions intersecting with cognition.
Love all your good work
Jane
In my practice, I use mindfulness as a relaxation exercise. Clients, on the whole, are skeptical, but appreciative. However, they have difficulty repeating the exercise on their own.
I taught mindfulness to my clients in a domestic violence batterer’s program and while many if not most thought in the beginning it was ridiculous almost all by the end of a year long program where they practiced mindfulness in class at least once a week and were encouraged to practice daily found it quite helpful. I met with their wives and girlfriends often at the end and they thanked me for giving them the husband they married back. The men and women who went on to continue practice say their relationships improved as well as many things in their lives. They still got angry but now were aware when they were angry so they could calm themselves down and those that denied their anger and aggression in the beginning became aware of the negative behaviors they denied in the past. All in all I found that teaching mindfulness to “abusers” helped them not only stop their abuse but improved many aspects of their lives.
This is useful information – thank you.
What isn’t so useful, however, is the equation of “domestic violence batterers” solely with the male gender, and their victims solely as “wives and girlfriends”. Violence is committed by everyone and anyone regardless of race, age, sex, gender, religion, etc… The statistics are there in abundance for anyone willing to see. It is in no way a ‘male’ issue – it only appears that way because we so often blind our eyes to the truth about violence and paint such an unbalanced, unjust, and unfair picture.
Meditation should help people un-blind themselves to the truth about their lives. For some, I would imagine this might heighten their anger: the truth of some of these men’s lives (not all, but some) is that they are being held solely responsible for what is almost always a two-way ‘dance’ – a violence pas-de-deux. And, far too often, the male in treatment is not the most violent, nor the instigator, in the relationship. Regardless, treatment should be for both sides of the equation.
The fact that these men received so much benefit, despite the arbitrary and unjust way programs like this shame and penalize all men in violent relationships and gives a ‘free violence’ pass to the women, speaks well of your methods.
You seem to feel males are unjustly blamed for violence, while female’s are getting away with something. And you say the stats make it true but you don’t site anything. You also suggest that the program this person used mindfulness with was shaming and penalizing to men. I think your comments do a great dis-service to the programs that are doing their best to reduce violence. And quite likely the men that are in a program have proven clearly they need help or more people will suffer. Why do you have to throw your doubt into something that is reducing violence? That’s not helpful at all in my opinion.
In my experience, there is a little fight between those who defend women and those who are defending men. I believe that there are a lot of different cases and you cannot generalize, and many sides of different stories are true. There are women being abused, there are men being abused, and there are cases in wich both create -in equal share- an abusive dinamic.
Lets not criticize each other, and let´s be thankful that there are people helping and creating consciousness in all cases.
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i have been actively self studying meditation, nutrition, weight control, spirituality, money, positive intention,energy medicine, adrenal thyroid fatigue, religion. I found two things; 1. EVERYTHING is enhanced by meditaion, 2. EVERYTHING worthwhile takes practice. These are two difficult comcepts to teach troubled youngsters,but
with meditation, even the practice improves awareness.
One of my clients was a highly qualified design engineer. He suffered from high anxiety levels and agitation due to ‘Imposter’ syndrome sporinging from a ‘worthless’ schema.
He doubted the efficacy of mindfulness. But practised it anyway. After a few weeks he said that mindfulness in the morning was sometimes the only thing that helped him go into work.
for a lot of people ‘meditation’ practise is difficult, we use (to start with) a new form where you listen 5-10 min/day to special mp3 files using 21th century divices…Once the y love the impact next steps are practices of mindfulness etc. – everybody can check what it does
Hi there Ruth, we met once in N Carolina at one of your super conferences featuring my friend David White. Besides teaching Mindfulness Yoga and Meditation at UConn for 37 years i am now beginning the third year of grant to bring it in to a Hartford inner city school. my MA is in SPED hence the interest in your comments above.
Ive been enjoying your posts since Jeff came on line and have always thought it would be lovely to chat. Now may be the time. What say you?
Nick
Oh yes! Youngsters are usually “allergic” to things that adults promote. I don’t call mindfulness “mindfulness”. I teach them first about how their brain works (Segal) and why we dream (Human Givens College) and tell them that they have special knowledge that is not widely known. Then I introduce mindfulness techniques or whatever other kind of technique that I feel/think suit the client.
AnaMaria, thank you! I teach mindfulness adults and I am planning to introduce it to local school, we already set first steps (introduction for parents…) Could I contact you, Thank you. (darjabl@siol.net) I have noticed resistance to mindfulness with my clients too, actually the ones that comes to courses are ones that already knows me, more difficult it is to invite others.