Despite our best intentions, the holidays can be demanding . . .
. . . so it’s probably not surprising that levels of anxiety, stress, and depression tend to ramp up around this time of year.
Now imagine living at a high level of stress year round (and trying to learn at the same time). For many of the
kids attending public schools, especially in the inner cities, it’s largely become a way of life.
But mindfulness could change that.
No, it can’t cure poverty, but it can transform the brain, and it can help with self-regulation.
So what if we could bring mindfulness into schools and teach it to children while they’re young?
Tara Brach, PhD, told me about a special project doing just that. It is designed to equip students with tools that can help them face a lifetime of challenges and difficult emotions . . .
. . . so they can reduce the anxiety and stress in their lives . . .
. . . and improve their chances for success.
A few days ago, I told you we’d be choosing a charity that will receive half of the proceeds from our Holiday Special.
This year, we will give one half of everything we take in, between now and Tuesday, to that special project.
It’s called Minds, Inc., and it’s a new non-profit organization that is currently working with schools and communities in poverty-stricken Washington, DC, areas to teach mindfulness skills to students, teachers, and parents.
This year, we’re offering the Making Mindfulness Work webinar series at a discounted price as our Holiday Special. And half of everything we take in will be given to Minds, Inc.
Here’s a look at what’s included in this special:
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- Dan Siegel, MD – The Neurobiology of Mindfulness: How Being Present Can Change the Brain
- Jack Kornfield, PhD – Shifting Focus Through Mindfulness: How to Grow Love and Compassion out of the Seeds of Suffering
- Tara Brach, PhD – Mindfulness and the Gateways to Refuge: Finding the True Self
- Ram Dass, PhD – How to Help People Connect to Loving Awareness: Expanding Our Capacity to Give and Receive Unconditional Love
- Marsha Linehan, PhD – Dialectical Behavior Therapy – A New Approach to Treating Distressing Emotions
- Joan Halifax, PhD – Deconstructing Death: Using Mindfulness to Manage Life’s Ultimate Transition
And these three bonus webinars:
- Mark Epstein, MD – Meditation and Psychotherapy: A Dual Approach that Can Speed Healing
- Kelly McGonigal, PhD – Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity: How Mindfulness Can Boost Willpower, Awaken Compassion, and Change the Brain
- Kristin Neff, PhD – Practicing Kindness Toward Oneself: Mindfulness and the Science of Self-Compassion
Last year, we were gratified to be able to donate $46,000 to the One Acre Fund. But we want to beat that with this year’s Holiday Special.
Your support will help give kids the lifelong tools that can boost their learning, self-regulation, and compassion, and increase their chances of success.
If you’d like to know more about the kind of work that Minds, Inc. does, please check out this video from their October 2013 fundraiser (it’s just about 2 minutes).
And, tell me about your experience. What impact has mindfulness had in your life? Please leave a comment below.
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I do trust all the ideas you’ve presented for your post. They’re very cncivnoing and can certainly work. Still, the posts are too quick for starters. May just you please extend them a little from next time? Thanks for the post.
Mindfulness meditation and tools of awakening allow me to live life in a very new space. I’ve gone from living in total dependency on psychiatric medications (16 yrs.) to the ability to make my own choices. When I screw up, and I do, instead of shaming myself I can be curious and seek threads of meaning. There is an awareness of deeper connection and meaning in my life. When there is an experience I don’t like, I can hold onto it now. It’s all ok. Dark clouds are part of life. And when the same dark cloud keeps returning, well that’s the opportunity to wake up and see the deeper meaning. Then when I see, maybe the dark cloud moves on and/or I learn just to see without attaching. Psychiatric medications never allowed much space for me to learn and grow. Mindfulness is like my best buddy always inside waiting for me to come back home.
Hi everyone. These are great and thoughtful comments. I agree that mostly all we have so far that supports mindfulness with children is evidence-based. With that in mind (no pun) I created a little program called FocusedKids TM. We work with preschoolers ages 3-5, children of immigrants, and from homes with lots of instability, trauma, and poverty. I used concepts from Goldie’s program, MindUP, Susan Kaiser Greenland’s program InnerKids., Dan Siegel’s Whole Brain Child, Dan Goleman’s new book Focus, and the brilliant work at Momentous Institute in Dallas. We are teaching these kids about their brain using puppets as brain parts, and what happens when the “guard dog” (amygdala) gets upset, and how to help it calm down. We teach them in their classroom, a mobil preschool bus, and then we teach their parents with the kids’ help. They receive a “tool kit” that includes a workbook, a chime, a hoberman sphere, and a pinwheel and small teddy, with instruction on how to use it at home. The classroom also gets a kit, accessible to the children at all times. The school day starts with circle time, and it starts with the chime. We ask them only to listen to the chime until they can’t hear it anymore. They love it, as well as, the sphere as a visual queue for breathing, and they are not only using the tool kit at will in the classroom to calm themselves (self-regulation), but they are also helping their parents to remember to breathe! We will begin to try to measure outcomes this coming semester. This is certainly a modified version of mindfulness with children, but our goal was to help them to self-regulate, and to be in a better place to learn. This is a small piece of the whole program, but kindergarten teachers of kids who complete it, see a positive behavioral and academic difference in kindergarten readiness.
A new wonderous sense of connectedness and belonging. Accepting who I am right now. Much less judgments and a great increase in compassion for self and others. Actively addressing and reducing suffering in self and others. Have started many new projects that increase my and others happiness.
Am grateful beyond measure. I am especially grateful for what i have learned and used from this site.
Thank you Ruth,
Namaste
Mike Kotar
Thank you all for your relevant and inestreting words. Kunzang always relevant comments from you that give me good food for thought. BigHappyBuddha thanks for the support! XD Oh, and I’m sorry I missed the tag perhaps I’ll do it soon, anyway, even though it’s way out of date. Sorry, y’all it’s been an adventure in normalcy lately .
Thank you for your post and for including a link. I am excited to learn about Dr. Brittons research. However, it is not quite published and she is paying for the current research (always an important factor when evaluating the purpose of results). Anecdotal evidence exist of negative experiences yet, current researchers overwhelmingly support positive change – including in neural structures – as a result of mindful practices. I am prompted to respond to your stance of “knowing” (knowing who experiences trauma….knowing mindfulness triggers…). Even the most well designed research cannot ever prove for sure, 100% of anything! We can support, provide evidence for and suggest – but to say we absolutely Know something-especially based on unpublished research is somewhat inauthentic. Particularly through the lense that reality IS constructed-so to truly Know another individual’s reality would be quite challenging, if at all possible.
So, I guess what I am thinking centers around the notion of perception. One could perceive that mindful meditations can trigger negative events. Or, one could perceive that during mindful meditations there is a part of an individual that may finally feel safe enough to work through some “unfinished business”. I would hesitate to throw the baby out with the bathwater in terms of teaching class-room application of mindfulness based interventions. Results of current researchers overwhelmingly support the practice as an effective way for children to learn self-regulation. Learning self-regulation in academic environments promotes academic performance, reduces test anxiety and enhances overall wellness.
(Al Sawa, Rimiwa, Chusid, Battaglia, 2013;Bowlin & Baer, 2012; Feldman, Greeson, Senville, 2010; Glasshouwer, DeJong, & Pennix,2011; Groch, Wilhelm, Diekelmann, & Born (2013)Lo, Dijk, & Groeger, 2014;van Mulukom, Schacter, Corballis, & Addis, 2013)
Good that you made this point Gina, Mindfulness has been so helpful to me personally and to individuals I work with. I work in Community Mental Health and Substance Use Services and people report many, many positive outcomes and explorations from mindfulness. Clients have never reported feeling worse for it, except as you point out, to provide a safe place where with support they can perhaps be with and process their experiences. Suppressing and distracting can only provide temporary relief, in my humble opinion.
Apart from our best intents the holidays can be challenging so it’s perhaps not amazing that levels of worry, anxiety, and despair incline to rise around this time of year. Can you think that by living at a high level of stress year round and try to learn exactly at the same time. How can we use superiorpapers properly? For most of the kids who are attending public schools in the inner cities, it has become a pattern of life.
I teach the a 6 week curriculum here in schools in BC, Canada. It’s well recognized and was developed in the USA. I have just finished taking a grade 8 class though a 6 week mindfulness curriculum adapted for their age group. I lead the class for twenty minutes twice a week. I do it for free in the middle of my work day while also raising a small family.
We are planting seeds. We are introducing new ideas and ways of being. Some kids may find it useful. Some may not. Some may use it only when they need it. Some may never use it. Some children quite clearly have family, personal or social circumstances that make it hard for them to absorb what is being taught. But at all times we offer them the power, the encouragement, to trust their own experience in that moment, and meet it with a quality of kindness or curiosity that makes sense to them. We do not encourage engagement with difficult or painful emotions and thoughts. They are only encouraged to try what they feel comfortable with.
… we allow the children to know that just who they are right now can be met with a sense of openness, loving kindness, acceptance or curiosity. First by the facilitator and then hopefully, somewhere along the way – by themselves. Is there any other place to start? For many young children to offer them that kind of psychological and social space to be with themselves (and each other) in that way, is a quiet revolution of it’s own kind.
What is the name of the curriculum you use and where can I learn more about it? Thanks.
I have been teaching for 30+ years and I am noticing more children with self-regulation challenges than ever before. They cannot control their hands, their mouths and they find it difficult to say nice things to each other.
I am so grateful to have taken a full day seminar at the University of British Columbia with Goldie Hawn. She was here in Vancouver when her son played hockey for the Richmond Sockeyes and while she was here she worked with Educators and Psychologists at UBC and they developed a program called MindUP.
I was given a chime and the students sit quietly and listen to it. Some of the most challenged students in my class as me for a ‘brain break’ and then they say, “Ms. Newton, my brain said thank you”! There are many activities in the program that help to develop mindful tasting, mindful smelling, mindful listening and learning to recognize the difference between begin mindful and not.
I really want to learn more and teach other teachers to help the kids. Please let me know if there are programs I can participate in.
This is where mentors come in to facilitate and volunteer their service