What is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is a way of training our minds to be present. It allows us to turn down the mental noise. Our mindfulness practice loosens the control our thinking has on how we react, and therefore how we react to our experiences in our day to day lives.

It involves learning to direct our attention to our experience as it unfolds, moment by moment, with a gentle, non-judgmental acceptance. With practice, we gradually train ourselves to respond more skilfully to what is happening right now, such as sensations, thoughts and emotions.

Simply put, we begin to see more clearly and hence can respond more wisely.

By cultivating mindfulness as a skill, we develop more self-awareness, enabling us to become more joyful, empathic and more resilient. We can create a space within what we may describe as our inner life, which helps provide more clarity on how we relate to what is happening.

Mindfulness for Young People

Mindfulness provides young people a real opportunity to slow down and understand the connection between their own thinking, their feelings and their actions.

By using direct experiences, mindfulness helps children and young people access what they already have at this age, an expansive awareness. Mindfulness nurtures their flexible and infectious curiosity, enabling them to explore their inner self and responses to things.

These natural abilities are often drowned out either by over stimulation or the added pressures of social and academic life experienced by the 21st Century child.

Mindfulness builds the social and emotional intelligence of our young people teaching them how to focus and manage their emotions and to relate to their stress differently and resolve conflicts.

Instead of simply telling children to do these things, we show children how, through direct experience. It allows children to make wiser decisions in the heat of the moment, rather than in retrospect.

Research

The Neuroscience Summery

Neuroscience is rapidly joining the body of other scientific evidence, which is demonstrating that noticeable changes occur in our brains, as a result of meditation.

Changing our Brains
Brain imaging studies support the neuroplasticity theory, that mindfulness meditation can profoundly alter the structure and function of the brain and produce, for example, greater blood-flow to and a thickening of, the cerebral cortex in areas associated with attention and emotional integration.

The Amygdala
Is the emotional centre of the brain. When stressed or over stimulated, (chaotic lunch break, row with friends or family etc) it prevents regions of the brain, such as the Hippocampus, from doing its job, that of memory. Studies have shown that bare attention of the stressful experience, through mindfulness meditation, deactivates the Amygdala from switching to this primitive response.

REST & DIGEST
A study by UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles), showed by simply introducing an intentional and mindful pause between spells of receiving information, you significantly increase retention and memory recall in students. The mindfulness classes act as a vehicle to support this principle.

Chemical Control
Many studies in endocrinology have showed that when stressed, hormones and chemicals are released into the brain and body (fight or flight), which naturally disrupt our ability to learn and to recall information we’ve stored in our memory. This chemical imbalance can be affected by the practice of mindfulness meditation, such as moments before an exam or test.

As important as addressing how and what children are taught, is ensuring they are indeed prepared to learn.

Executive Function
The Pre Frontal Cortex is the area of the brain where our Executive Function (E.F) occurs and is controlled (visceral experiences, social intelligence, concentration etc). Studies show that students with low E.F show greatest improvements from meditation practice and that stress again, has detrimental effects on the Pre Frontal Cortex. Children with less stress in their lives and those who can focus and handle stress, outperform their peers time and time again. This is one cause of the achievement gap, which grows exponentially as they mature.

Other Evidence
There is a growing body of evidence, both empirical and anecdotal, which shows how mindfulness in schools can help children and young people respond more skillfully with difficult emotions, raise their self awareness and improve focus and engagement within the classroom.

Below are abstracts from several key studies and references for further reading.

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Anecdotal Summery

Room to Breathe
The first mainstream (and award winning) documentary about bringing mindfulness into education, developed in partnership with Mind Schools. It’s an authentic representation of what it’s like to teach mindfulness in a truly challenging environment. By providing a raw and realistic look at the process, it shows how even the most difficult classrooms can be turned around with patience, teaching skill, and partnership with school staff.

Other anecdotal evidence includes testimonials from teachers and children who have benefitted from learning & using mindfulness.

You can watch the trailer online here.

Teachers & Parents Testimonials
Watch it here.

Research Summery

There are a growing number of studies exploring the field of mindfulness with school children in particular. In 2012, the University of California conducted the largest randomized-controlled study to date, using the Mindful Schools Curriculum, involving 937 children, 47 teachers in 3 Oakland schools. The Mindful Schools Curriculum was used in the study and produced statistically significant improvements in behavior versus control groups.

The mindfulness teachers in the  studies had a strong mindfulness background, a key determinant of success in teaching mindfulness to others and showed a significant improvement in Paying Attention, Self Care and Showing Care for Others.

View the research here.

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