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Institute for Social & Emotional Learning * SEL Professional Development

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Looking for Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Research?

CASEL provides a fabulous overview of the benefits of SEL with links to some of the studies behind the evidence.

Below is a collection of some of the finding we think are particularly significant.

Follow us on social media for our latest "Research Wednesday" posts:

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325 Sharon Park Dr., Suite 845

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A selection of research articles from across the internet.

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Anchor Text: Family Ghosts in the Executive Suite

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Anchor Text: Family Ghosts in the Executive Suite

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Foster knowledge, skills, and attitudes across five areas of social and emotional competence;

Establish equitable learning environments and coordinate practices across four key settings that support students' social, emotional, and academic development.

Download more information on the framework (available in and Spanish).

Use our reflection protocol to facilitate a discussion on implementation efforts in your school, district, or other setting.

Read more about the 2020 update to our framework, which highlighted the potential of SEL in promoting educational equity and excellence.

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Communities

Communities. Community partners often provide safe and developmentally rich settings for learning and development, have deep understanding of community needs and assets, are seen as trusted partners by families and students, and have connections to additional supports and services that school and families need. Community programs also offer opportunities for young people to practice their social and emotional skills in settings that are both personally relevant and can open opportunities for their future. To integrate SEL efforts across the school day and out-of-school time, school staff and community partners should align on common language and coordinate strategies and communication around SEL-related efforts and initiatives.
Learn more: CASEL Guide to Schoolwide SEL - Community Partnerships

Families & Caregivers

Families & Caregivers. When schools and families form authentic partnerships, they can build strong connections that reinforce students' social and emotional development. Families and caregivers are children's first teachers, and bring deep expertise about their development, experiences, culture, and learning needs. These insights and perspectives are critical to informing, supporting, and sustaining SEL efforts. Research suggests that evidence-based SEL programs are more effective when they extend into the home, and families are far more likely to form partnerships with schools when their schools' norms, values, and cultural representations reflect their own experiences. Schools need inclusive decision-making processes that ensure that families-particularly those from historically marginalized groups-are part of planning, implementing, and continuously improving SEL.

Schools can also create other avenues for family partnership that may include creating ongoing two-way communication with families, helping caregivers understand child development, helping teachers understand family backgrounds and cultures, providing opportunities for families to volunteer in schools, extending learning activities and discussions into homes, and coordinating family services with community partners. These efforts should engage families in understanding, experiencing, informing, and supporting the social and emotional development of their students.
Learn more: CASEL Guide to Schoolwide SEL - Family Partnerships

Schools

Schools. Effectively integrating SEL schoolwide involves ongoing planning, implementation, evaluation, and continuous improvement by all members of the school community. SEL efforts both contribute to and depend upon a school climate where all students and adults feel respected, supported, and engaged.

Because the school setting includes many contexts-classrooms, hallways, cafeteria, playground, bus-fostering a healthy school climate and culture requires active engagement from all adults and students. A strong school culture is rooted in students' sense of belonging, with evidence that suggests that it plays a crucial role in students' engagement. SEL also offers an opportunity to enhance existing systems of student support by integrating SEL goals and practices with universal, targeted, and intensive academic and behavioral supports. By coordinating and building upon SEL practices and programs, schools can create an environment that infuses SEL into every part of students' educational experience and promotes positive social, emotional, and academic outcomes for all students.
Learn more: CASEL Guide to Schoolwide SEL

Classrooms

Classrooms. Research has shown that social and emotional competence can be enhanced using a variety of classroom-based approaches such as: (a) explicit instruction through which social and emotional skills and attitudes are taught and practiced in developmentally, contextually, and culturally responsive ways; (b) teaching practices such as cooperative learning and project-based learning; and (c) integration of SEL and academic curriculum such as language arts, math, science, social studies, health, and performing arts. High-quality SEL instruction has four elements represented by the acronym SAFE: Sequenced - following a coordinated set of training approaches to foster the development of competencies; Active - emphasizing active forms of learning to help students practice and master new skills; Focused - implementing curriculum that intentionally emphasizes the development of SEL competencies; and Explicit - defining and targeting specific skills, attitudes, and knowledge.

SEL instruction is carried out most effectively in nurturing, safe environments characterized by positive, caring relationships among students and teachers. To facilitate age-appropriate and culturally responsive instruction, adults must understand and appreciate the unique strengths and needs of each student and support students' identities. When adults incorporate students' personal experiences and cultural backgrounds and seek their input, they create an inclusive classroom environment where students are partners in the educational process, elevating their own agency. Strong relationships between adults and students can facilitate co-learning, foster student and adult growth, and generate collaborative solutions to shared concerns.
Learn more: CASEL Guide to Effective SEL Programs

Self-Awareness

Self-awareness: The abilities to understand one's own emotions, thoughts, and values and how they influence behavior across contexts. This includes capacities to recognize one's strengths and limitations with a well-grounded sense of confidence and purpose.

Such as:

Integrating personal and social identities

Identifying personal, cultural, and linguistic assets

Identifying one's emotions

Demonstrating honesty and integrity

Linking feelings, values, and thoughts

Examining prejudices and biases

Experiencing self-efficacy

Having a growth mindset

Developing interests and a sense of purpose

Check out this video from PBS Learning Media for more information.

Self-Management

Self-management: The abilities to manage one's emotions, thoughts, and behaviors effectively in different situations and to achieve goals and aspirations. This includes the capacities to delay gratification, manage stress, and feel motivation and agency to accomplish personal and collective goals.

Such as:

Managing one's emotions

Identifying and using stress management strategies

Exhibiting self-discipline and self-motivation

Setting personal and collective goals

Using planning and organizational skills

Showing the courage to take initiative

Demonstrating personal and collective agency

Check out this video from PBS Learning Media for more information.

Social Awareness

Social awareness: The abilities to understand the perspectives of and empathize with others, including those from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and contexts. This includes the capacities to feel compassion for others, understand broader historical and social norms for behavior in different settings, and recognize family, school, and community resources and supports.

Such as:

Taking others' perspectives

Recognizing strengths in others

Demonstrating empathy and compassion

Showing concern for the feelings of others

Understanding and expressing gratitude

Identifying diverse social norms, including unjust ones

Recognizing situational demands and opportunities

Understanding the influences of organizations and systems on behavior

Check out this video from PBS Learning Media for more information.

Responsible Decision-Making

Responsible decision-making: The abilities to make caring and constructive choices about personal behavior and social interactions across diverse situations. This includes the capacities to consider ethical standards and safety concerns, and to evaluate the benefits and consequences of various actions for personal, social, and collective well-being.

Such as:

Demonstrating curiosity and open-mindedness

Learning how to make a reasoned judgment after analyzing information, data, and facts

Identifying solutions for personal and social problems

Anticipating and evaluating the consequences of one's actions

Recognizing how critical thinking skills are useful both inside and outside of school

Reflecting on one's role to promote personal, family, and community well-being

Evaluating personal, interpersonal, community, and institutional impacts

Check out this video from PBS Learning Media for more information.

Relationship Skills

Relationship skills: The abilities to establish and maintain healthy and supportive relationships and to effectively navigate settings with diverse individuals and groups. This includes the capacities to communicate clearly, listen actively, cooperate, work collaboratively to problem solve and negotiate conflict constructively, navigate settings with differing social and cultural demands and opportunities, provide leadership, and seek or offer help when needed.

Such as:

Communicating effectively

Developing positive relationships

Demonstrating cultural competency

Practicing teamwork and collaborative problem-solving

Resolving conflicts constructively

Resisting negative social pressure

Showing leadership in groups

Seeking or offering support and help when needed

Standing up for the rights of others

Check out this video from PBS Learning Media for more information.

Social & Emotional Learning

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is an integral part of education and human development. SEL is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.

SEL advances educational equity and excellence through authentic school-family-community partnerships to establish learning environments and experiences that feature trusting and collaborative relationships, rigorous and meaningful curriculum and instruction, and ongoing evaluation. SEL can help address various forms of inequity and empower young people and adults to co-create thriving schools and contribute to safe, healthy, and just communities.

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Our SEL framework, known to many as the "CASEL wheel," helps cultivate skills and environments that advance students' learning and development.

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Marc Brackett, Ph.D.

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When we're overwhelmed by emotions, we're usually not our best selves. We may blow up, say hurtful things or burst into tears. But what if we had a tool we could use to turn down the temperature at those times? Psychologist Marc Brackett has a helpful strategy.
As founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, psychologist Marc Brackett has devoted the past 25 years to conducting research and developing RULER, an evidence-based approach to social and emotional learning which has been integrated into more than 2,000 schools in the US and around the world. Here, he writes about a particularly useful tactic that all of us can use to defuse potentially destructive responses.
As we all know, our best attempts at calm, thoughtful reflection work only when we feel in control of our emotions. If you're raging with resentment or crushed by disappointment, you're probably not capable of the reasoning required to see a situation in a new light. You first need to bring down your emotional temperature, lower your activation, and give yourself the space required for rational thought. You might take a few deep breaths, a few steps back, a walk around the block.

Or, maybe you're ready for the Meta-Moment. A decade ago, Robin Stern, psychoanalyst and associate director of our center, and I were wondering why so many people in our society are addicted to strategies that derail them from achieving their goals. Robin had worked with hundreds of patients who were unsuccessful even after learning new tactics, and I observed schoolchildren and educators who didn't employ the strategies they were learning - even when they knew they were helpful.

"Pausing helps you refrain from making a permanent decision based on a temporary emotion," says author and consultant Justin Bariso.

Many of us were exposed to destructive responses early in our lives - negative talk, screaming, blaming and so on. They require little cognitive control, and they're often effective at getting rid of negative feelings and providing temporary gratification. But at the time, we fail to realize these strategies also can ruin our relationships and derail us from achieving our goals.

So we developed a tool we call the Meta-Moment - a hitting of the brakes and stepping out of time. We call it "meta" because it's a moment about a moment. It might mean mentally counting, as in 1, 2, 3, or 1 to 10, depending on the severity of the emotion. Taking one or several deep breaths may also be a part of it - anything to give ourselves room to maneuver and deactivate.

A Meta-Moment is when we stop the action and say, "Am I hearing this correctly?" Or maybe we might say, "I need to pause and take a deep breath right now so I don't blow my top, break down sobbing, or react in some way I will probably regret." This helps us go beyond our first impulse and find a wiser response. As the author and consultant Justin Bariso put it, "Pausing helps you refrain from making a permanent decision based on a temporary emotion."

Pausing gives us the chance to ask two useful questions: "How have I handled situations like this in the past?" and "What would my best self do right now?"

Pausing and taking a deep breath activates our parasympathetic nervous system. This reduces the release of cortisol, a major stress hormone, and naturally lowers our emotional temperature. Pausing also gives us the chance to quickly ask two useful questions: "How have I handled situations like this in the past?" and "What would my best self do right now?"

To tap into their best selves, some people may think of a set of adjectives such as "compassionate", "intelligent" or "conscientious". Other people could picture an image or look at an object. A good friend who is principal of a middle school has a Smurf on her desk to remind her to be her best self. Visualizing our best self can redirect our attention away from the triggering person, words or event and back towards our values.

A couple years ago, a student raised his hand in class and said, "I have a question that I don't think even you'll know how to answer." To say that I was activated is an understatement - arrogance is a trigger for me. I wanted to reply: "I might not know the answer, but remember I grade your papers!" Instead, I reached into my "professor of emotional intelligence" self and asked "How about if I get questions from some of the other students now, and we can chat after class?" Then, I politely informed him that his question could have been worded more diplomatically.

I took myself out of the moment, visualized my best self as 'the feelings master,' and paused. In that small window of time, I calmed myself.

More recently, I was giving a presentation to a large group when someone challenged me on a point. She didn't ask a question or offer a dissenting opinion; she just came at me to put me down. "A lot of us in the room would not necessarily agree with that model," she said. My first impulse was to fire back and embarrass her with a comment like "A lot of us, meaning you and your 30 personalities."

But I didn't allow myself that petty pleasure. Instead, I took myself out of the moment, visualized my best self as "the feelings master," and paused. In that small window of time, I calmed myself. "I'd love to connect with you later to hear your thoughts," I said. Nobody in that room knew how close I came to losing it.

The Meta-Moment is not just for regulating unpleasant emotions. Sometimes our best selves help us to stand up for what's right. Once, during a speech, a colleague bullied me in an unusual way - he joked about the fact that I was bullied as a child. My first impulse was to run onstage and deliver a flying dropkick to his head; I regressed to that middle schooler being pushed around in the locker room. But I took a Meta-Moment and I waited until after the presentation. I went up to him and said, "I have no idea what motivated you to say those words, but it wasn't cool and you can't ever do it again."

What are your go-to strategies when you are triggered or caught off guard? Do you ignore your feelings, act out, or meet them head-on?

I count these as victories for the Meta-Moment.
How skilled are you at taking a Meta-Moment? What adjectives characterize your best self? What are your go-to strategies when you are triggered or caught off guard? Do you ignore your feelings, act out, or meet them head-on?

When your boss criticizes your work and you feel disappointed, devastated or resentful, how successful are you at taking a Meta-Moment and saying to yourself something like "Feedback is a gift, there is always something I can learn"?

When your daughter won't do her homework, do you argue, threaten, plead, grimace in disgust, explode in rage ... or do you take a deep breath, evoke your best self, think about the most effective strategy with this particular child and calmly take action?
Here are the steps to take for a Meta-Moment. 1. Sense the shift.
You are activated, caught off guard, or have an impulse to say or do something you might regret. You feel a shift in your thinking or body or both.
2. Stop or pause.
Step back and breathe. Breathe again.
3. See your best self.
Think of adjectives or an image that helps your best self appear in vivid detail, or look at an object that reminds you. You might also think about your reputation: How do you want to be seen, talked about, and experienced? What would you do if someone you respect were watching you?
4. Strategize and act.
You reach into your tool kit of healthy responses - positive self-talk and reframing are two good options - and choose the path that will close the gap between your triggered self and your emerging best self. This should always be the last step.

There are a few final aspects of this kind of emotion regulation to keep in mind. Because regulation requires brainpower - moving from automatic and unhelpful to deliberate and helpful strategies is hard work - it also depends on factors such as diet, exercise and sleep. When we eat poorly, our minds don't function properly. Too much sugar or refined flour can cause our blood glucose to spike and then plummet, which affects cognitive functioning and self-control.

I think Mike Tyson had it right when he said, 'Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.'

Too little physical activity also has a negative effect on mental capacity and moods, as does poor quality or insufficient sleep. Sleep serves a restorative function. When we don't get enough or get too much, we can show more symptoms of anxiety and depression. Inadequate sleep is associated with reduced connections between the brain regions responsible for cognitive control and behavior and the use of effective emotion regulation strategies.

We can take two other measures to safeguard our overall well-being - the first is to do things we love. Spend time with family and friends, pursue passions and pastimes, get in touch with our spiritual side, immerse ourselves in nature, read a good book, watch a great movie. We build up cognitive reserves that way, which help us when emotional turmoil inevitably strikes.

The second measure is to practice mindful breathing. Daily practice enhances our ability to be present, accept the feelings that arise, and not be overly reactive or overwhelmed by them.

Recently, after an exhausting day of delayed flights, missed connections and other irritations, I felt on the verge of a meltdown. So I asked myself: "If a college professor with a doctorate in psychology has difficulty regulating emotions, what must it be like for a nine-year-old child or an adult under genuinely challenging pressures who have had little to no training in emotion skills?"

That calmed me down in a hurry. I think Mike Tyson had it right when he said, "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." What's true in the boxing ring is true everywhere else. It's easy to say that from now on we'll master all our emotional responses, until our significant other or child or neighbor or boss triggers us with a word or look and all our training goes out the window.

Along with permission to feel, we must also give ourselves permission to fail. When that happens, we can only try again - take a deep breath or two, envision our best selves, and start over. We also need the courage to apologize and forgive ourselves as we'd forgive others. Courage might even mean seeking professional help when all else fails. We'll never stop having to work at being our best selves. But the payoff is worth it: better health, better decision making, better relationships, better everything.

Excerpted from the new book P ermission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help Our Kids, Ourselves, and Our Society Thrive by Marc Brackett. Copyright © 2019 Marc Brackett. Reprinted with the permission of Celadon Books, a division of Macmillan Publishing, LLC.
Watch his TEDxGoldenGateED talk here:

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Feel like you're about to lose it? It could be a good time for a Meta-Moment

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When we're overwhelmed by emotions, we're usually not our best selves. We may blow up, say hurtful things or burst into tears. But what if we had a tool we could use to turn down the temperature at those times? Psychologist Marc Brackett has a helpful strategy.

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Research: How Emotional Contagion among Teachers Affects the Relationship between Transformational Leadership and Team Cohesion

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Research: How Emotional Contagion among Teachers Affects the Relationship between Transformational Leadership and Team Cohesion

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How Emotional Contagion among Teachers Affects the Relationship between Transformational Leadership and Team Cohesion

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Teachers and educators are experiencing turmoil under the drastic changes in educational practices caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to research, transformational leaders effectively facilitate organizational change by fostering teachers’…

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Blog: The Contagious Leader: How Your Emotions Affect Your Team’s Success

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Blog: The Contagious Leader: How Your Emotions Affect Your Team’s Success

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The Contagious Leader: How Your Emotions Affect Your Team’s Success - DILAN Consulting

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In the dynamic world of corporate leadership, the emotional landscape of leaders plays a pivotal role in shaping the success and well-being of their teams. Emotions are inherently contagious, and the emotional tone set by leaders can significantly influence employee morale, productivity, and overall organizational health. As a clinical psychologist and founder of DILAN Consulting […]

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World Economic Forum: Future Of Jobs Report 2025

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World Economic Forum: Future Of Jobs Report 2025

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Learn how global trends like tech innovation and green transition will transform jobs, skills, and workforce strategies in The Future of Jobs Report 2025

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"It’s not enough to establish the foundation for equity in air space; it must be nurtured intentionally throughout the year. For this, I rely on protocols. Yes, they can come with baggage, but I have come to see through my own experience and through the experience of my students that protocols protect participation."

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With some guidance, all students-whether outgoing or reserved-can effectively take part in class discussions.

I once heard someone say, "The person doing the talking is the one doing the learning." This statement carries even more weight as we seek to dismantle systems of inequity in middle and high school classrooms, since it translates to: "The person doing the talking is the person with the power."

Who has the power in our classrooms? How do we ensure equity in access to that power? We do it by ensuring equity to air space.

Changing Ourselves as Questioners

One way we can ensure equity to air space is by minimizing the generic questions that we throw around to anyone who will take us up on answering. These generic and nontargeted questions ensure that students who are confident in their answers and who are outspoken are the only ones with the voice. This convenient default mode is dangerous because it subliminally communicates to students that answering questions is about getting the right answer rather than actively learning. It also undermines the best practice of ensuring wait time so that all students can formulate their thinking.

When I operate from this default mode, it also means that some students feel invisible; I can watch students leave my class after a period realizing I only "noticed" about half of them... the dominant voices. I hate those days. Ultimately, questions that are intentional in their design and target are the questions that ensure all voices are honored.

Changing Our Students as Conversationalists

Our classroom is full of students who have inherent conversational tendencies. Some dominate the conversation. Some are active listeners. Some sprinkle in their thoughts here and there. Some are distracted. Being intentional in creating equitable air space benefits all of these types-and more.

In any healthy working environment that is built on quality collaboration, those who are dominant need to build self-monitoring skills to transition from vocal participation to strategic facilitation. The same is true for students who do not like to participate. Students who are shy need a safe space to build the confidence and courage to share their thoughts and ask their questions. When we create a classroom dedicated to equity of verbal space, we model healthy collaborative practices that build sensitivity and awareness of one another.

Before I continue, I want to be clear about the difference between equity and equality in air space. Equality would mean all students are talking the same exact amount. But, far richer yet more difficult to achieve, equity protects all students' right to be heard. It is not about frequency; it is about presence. This allows for people's natural conversational styles to be honored but still sends the message that every single person's voice in the class matters and is worthy of being heard. Here are some ways to do just that.

Setting Up an Equitable Air Space

In the beginning of the year, focus on building connections through community builders and establishing healthy participation norms. Be redundant and explicit with the messages that verbal processing is a necessary part of learning, that all voices matter and deserve to be heard, that mistakes and questions are welcome and honored, that struggle is messy but collaborative and rewarding.

Even more important than these messages is the tone that they are delivered in. When participating in class becomes a punitive grade opportunity ("You'll lose points if you don't contribute"), a healthy verbal space is undermined. Rather, the invitation should be just that: a warm welcome to truly be here, in this community. Another easy action to build equitable air space is to reduce teacher talk; our classrooms should be dominated by the voices of students and only facilitated by ours.

Another essential way to ensure equity in air space early on is to get to know our students as individuals. I do this through several surveys at the beginning of the year. One of them asks students to tell me about their participation style. For those who self-indicate they are dominant, I conference with them about the importance of developing their listening and leadership skills in conversations. For those who are reserved, I conference with them about the importance of verbal engagement and how I can support them in their growth.

Strategy and Design

It's not enough to establish the foundation for equity in air space; it must be nurtured intentionally throughout the year. For this, I rely on protocols. Yes, they can come with baggage, but I have come to see through my own experience and through the experience of my students that protocols protect participation.

More often than not, I build in think time. This means students have quiet time to mentally process and/or write in preparation for our discussion. This encourages students who speak too quickly to add depth and complexity to their thoughts, while also giving the reserved students confidence and courage.

I find that a modified think-pair-share protocol is a great extension of this. Students have time to gather their thoughts, then they share with a partner, and then I ask students to share out not what they said, but what their partners said.

It's important here to point out the difference between a discussion and a share out. Whereas a discussion offers students the chance to spontaneously volley their thoughts among one another, a share out offers more space for students who are reserved to have the chance to offer their voice. Another boost to those students is to give them a heads-up that I will ask them to speak.

Lastly, I always make sure as much as possible that I offer choice and variety. For example, I offer eight to 10 questions that require a variety of thinking strategies but allow students to pick the three that most interest them.

Through intentional design and follow-through, even the shyest of students can feel verbal success. In these classes, everyone speaks. Every voice matters. Everyone has the power.

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Maximizing Student Voice to Achieve Equity in Classroom Participation

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With some guidance, all students-whether outgoing or reserved-can effectively take part in class discussions. I once heard someone say, "The person doing the talking is the one doing the learning." This statement carries even more weight as we seek to dismantle systems of inequity in middle and high school classrooms, since it translates to: "The person doing the talking is the person with the power."

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Article: The Troubling Decline in Conscientiousness

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Article: The Troubling Decline in Conscientiousness

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Transcript of "The gift and power of emotional courage"

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TED Talk Subtitles and Transcript: Psychologist Susan David shares how the way we deal with our emotions shapes everything that matters: our actions, careers, relationships, health and happiness. In this deeply moving, humorous and potentially life-changing talk, she challenges a culture that prizes positivity over emotional truth and discusses the powerful strategies of emotional agility.

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When Emotions Are Contagious | Invisibilia | NPR

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We all have those moments when, all of a sudden, one statement directed toward us sends us into an emotional tailspin. It may be a single word our partner uses to describe us that makes our blood boil. It may be an offhand, teasing remark from a friend that ignites a deep feeling of hurt. It may be a comment from our boss that floods us with embarrassment and self-doubt. Have you ever wondered why certain interactions or exchanges impact us more than others?

The key to understanding our triggers is to look deeper than the words or circumstances themselves and ask, "What do these things make me feel?" In her book Hold Me Tight, emotionally focused therapist Dr. Sue Johnson poses a list of descriptive words that describe the deeper emotions being stirred in us when we feel triggered. People who complete this exercise find certain feeling words resonate with them far more than others. This helps them identify the deep, often primal feelings that are underlying their oversized reactions.

For instance, one person who did this exercise found himself identifying with the words "unwanted-dismissed." He noticed that whenever his spouse disagreed with his opinion without considering it, even about small things, he felt instantly that he wasn't being heard or valued. This often sparked a big reaction in him, where he felt deep hurt and anger. His emotions would quickly escalate, with him raising his voice and repeating himself. He felt a desperate need to be accepted and understood. His spouse had trouble making sense of his reaction, and this usually led to conflict between them. She felt attacked for no reason and would lash back.

Another person picked out the word "overwhelmed." Any time her kids would come to her feeling upset, she would instantly feel overpowered and have a hard time calming down and responding. Instead, she'd often shoo them away or ask her partner to step in. In moments of stress, she found it very hard for her to regulate her emotional response enough to address her kids' emotional needs.

Many people have trouble making sense of their reactions and, therefore, feel like slaves to them. As soon as they feel thrown into an old, familiar emotional response, their defense systems activate. They no longer respond to what's happening but to a whole set of old feelings being stirred up inside them. For example, one person I spoke to described feeling distraught any time his partner suggested a different street to take when driving somewhere. He knew intellectually that her suggestions didn't mean she thought he was incompetent. Yet, that specific action would set off a slew of attacks in his head. "She thinks you're an idiot. Why doesn't she trust you?" These thoughts were usually accompanied by a feeling of humiliation and inadequacy. No matter how logical he tried to be about the situation, the emotional reaction inside him was powerful.
Where do our triggers come from?
Our intense emotional responses are heavily shaped by our past. The feelings or words that trigger us have direct connections to the ways we were seen and treated, as well as the attitudes to which we were exposed. Triggering events tap into early, often implicit, memories of painful experiences. For the man mentioned above, he grew up feeling constantly corrected and criticized by his parents. This gave him a deep feeling of shame and inadequacy. Thus, harmless suggestions or advice, be it from his partner, a friend, or a co-worker, frequently fueled an exaggerated feeling of shame and embarrassment in him.
How can we deal with our emotional triggers?
We all have our own set of triggering feelings or words and stories that accompany them. To learn a new way of relating and reacting, it's helpful to explore what our words are and where they may come from. Naming our emotions helps tame them, and understanding where they come from helps us feel self-compassion. By noticing the triggered emotion we experience in a given moment, we can then dig deeper to reveal a primal emotion from our past.

How can we learn to identify our triggers and calm ourselves before we overreact? We can start with the help of these three exercises.
1. Name it to tame it
In those moments when we feel overwhelmed with emotion, simply naming what we're feeling can be helpful. Daniel Siegel recommends the exercise " name it to tame it" as a means to make sense of our feelings and find balance. The process is exactly what it sounds like: when emotions arise, we try to describe our internal state without having to explain or rationalize whatever we're feeling. This process promotes integration by strengthening our brain's language capabilities and connecting them to the spontaneous and raw emotions in other parts of the brain. This neurological process helps us calm down and feel more balanced.
2. SIFT
When describing our internal state, it's helpful to remember an acronym developed by Siegel known as "SIFT." SIFTing the mind involves taking time to sit with the emotion and try to identify any sensations, images, feelings, and thoughts we're experiencing. In those intense instances when we're triggered, we can pause to ask ourselves one by one what sensations, images, feelings, and thoughts are arising. This straightforward exercise can offer a surprising amount of insight into any underlying stressors. For example, there may be an image from our childhood, a phrase, a sensation, or a feeling that arises that helps us connect our current-day reactions to difficult experiences from our past. This process helps us understand ourselves and develop insight.
3. RAIN
Psychologist Jack Kornfield has recommended an ancient Buddhist practice, The Rain Approach, as an empowering tool to help us feel centered and resolve any unresolved traumas or triggers with which we're struggling. The steps are:

R ecognize the trauma or loss.

A cknowledge/Allow/Accept that it occurred and may not be resolved.

I nvestigate the nature of the experience in your past and present life.

N on-identification - Resist over-identifying with what happened or allowing it to define you.

These mindful practices all work together to help us make sense of what's going on inside us. They may bring up insights into impactful events from our past. Yet, they also work to orient us in the present by helping us calm down and meet our current emotional state with curiosity and compassion. This awareness makes it easier for us to separate our triggered reactions from whatever is going on in the moment. We then have the space to make choices about how we want to act as opposed to falling victim to our immediate emotions. In this way, becoming aware of our triggers is an empowering effort, one that benefits us as well as our relationships with others.

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Name It to Tame It: The Emotions Underlying Your Triggers

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Why do certain words or interactions spark particularly strong emotions inside us? Getting to know our triggers can help us calm down and control our reactions.

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The acronym RAIN is an easy-to-remember tool for practicing mindfulness and compassion using the following four steps:

Recognize what is happening;

Allow the experience to be there, just as it is;

Investigate with interest and care;

Nurture with self-compassion.

You can take your time and explore RAIN as a stand-alone meditation or move through the steps whenever challenging feelings arise.

Visit RAIN: A Practice of Radical Compassion for a full description of the steps of RAIN.
* Download a new free printable guide here: RAIN: A Practice of Radical Compassion.

Radical Compassion, Tara's guidebook to RAIN, addresses in depth the many applications of RAIN, and how to work with an array of challenges that arise.
* Download the free Study Guide for her book, Radical Compassion.

The RAIN of Self-Compassion includes the steps of RAIN, as well as some translations to other languages.

Resources for RAIN Partners: Once familiar with the steps, you may wish to explore RAIN in co-meditation.

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Resources ~ RAIN: Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture

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The acronym RAIN is an easy-to-remember tool for practicing mindfulness & compassion using four steps: Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture.

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Rediscover our kindness

Kindness is not something to be wished for, mimicked, or developed in some future time. It is readily accessible, always with us, and waiting to be tapped as an innate quality of the mind. At first, it might not be immediately obvious how sitting in isolation and focusing on the breath can benefit other people, but when we're training the mind to be kinder, less judgmental, and more understanding, it makes sense that meditation can have a positive effect on our relationships and the world around us.

This reserve of kindness often gets obscured by mental chatter: thoughts, hopes, fears, worries, frustrations, and possibly anger, judgment, or resentment spilling over from the past. As a result, our kindness tends to get squeezed to make room, to the extent that we might forget we possess such a quality. We might even scoff that it's a part of us at all.

The more we meditate with loving-kindness in mind, the more we foster compassion and let go of judgment and hostility. The more we familiarize ourselves with our own pain and suffering, the more we understand the quiet suffering in others.

Kindness towards others starts with kindness towards ourselves

People mistakenly assume that a meditation rooted in compassion begins with a deliberate focus on other people. Not so: compassion for others begins with self-compassion. And so, we must first cultivate a sense of loving-kindness toward ourselves with the intention of being kinder and more forgiving toward others.

For many people, it can feel strange and perhaps even indulgent to spend a meditation directing kindness inward. But the more we notice how it feels to take time out for ourselves and the more we enjoy how good that feels, the more easily we are able to share it outward.

"If a really close friend was having a tough time, there's no way we'd speak to them the way we speak to ourselves in our mind," says Headspace co-founder and former Buddhist monk, Andy Puddicomb. "If we can start approaching our own thoughts and feelings with that same soft and gentle approach, then all of a sudden meditation starts to flow and feel so much easier. And so it becomes a part of our everyday life much more quickly."

Research shows that meditation has a positive impact on our mental health and happiness, including an individual's sense of compassion for others. In a 2013 study that explored whether meditation affected people's behavior in terms of lending a helping hand to a stranger, participants were assigned 3 weeks of meditation for 10 minutes a day using the Headspace app (although the company was not involved). Afterward, participants were told their cognitive abilities were to be measured, unaware their "compassionate responding" was, in fact, being assessed in a mock waiting room.

Participants each walked into the room to sit down in the one remaining unoccupied seat. A woman on crutches then entered, in apparent discomfort, to find no seats available - a ploy to see who would surrender their seat. The result? Those who had meditated gave up their seat 23% more frequently than non-meditators. The study concluded that meditation promotes prosocial behavior that benefits others.

If compassion is indeed infectious in this way, the potential benefits of meditation are obvious. If just 3 weeks of 10-minute meditations can lead to an increase in friendly, helpful behavior, it's not difficult to imagine what mindfulness on a massive scale could mean for relationships and communities.

Learn how to be nicer to yourself in this free mindfulness video

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Meditation for compassion (aka loving kindness) - Headspace

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If more compassion is something we wish to foster, loving-kindness meditation can help. Learn how to train the mind to be kinder with Headspace.

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Take a break and show yourself some self-compassion. Discover the power of self-compassion to transform your mindset and achieve success.

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Time Required

5 minutes, three to six days per week. Research suggests that people who practice the body scan for longer reap more benefits from this practice.

How to Do It

The body scan can be performed while lying down, sitting, or in other postures. The steps below are a guided meditation designed to be done while sitting. You can listen to audio of this three-minute guided meditation, produced by UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC), in the player; if it doesn't play, you can find it here or download it from MARC's website.*
Especially for those new to the body scan, we recommend performing this practice with the audio. However, you can also use the script below for guidance for yourself or for leading this practice for others.

1. Begin by bringing your attention to your environment, slowly looking around and noticing that you are safe in this moment.

2. Bring your attention into your body.

3. You can close your eyes if that's comfortable for you or maintain a soft gaze, with your eyes partially closed but not focusing on anything in particular.

4. You can notice your body seated wherever you're seated, feeling the support of the chair or the floor beneath you.

5. Take a few deep, long breaths, within the range of what is comfortable for you.

6. And as you take a deep breath, bring in more oxygen, enlivening the body. And as you exhale, you might experience a sense of relaxing more deeply.

7. You can notice your feet on the floor, notice the sensations of your feet touching the floor. The weight and pressure, vibration, heat.

8. You can notice your legs against the chair, pressure, pulsing, heaviness, lightness.

9. Notice your back against the chair, supporting you. If you are not able to notice sensations in all areas of the body, that is OK. We are more connected to certain areas of the body than others, at different times of the day.

10. Bring your attention into your stomach area. If your stomach is tense or tight, can you allow it to soften? Take a breath.

11. Notice your hands. Are your hands tense or tight? See if you can allow them to soften.

12. Notice your arms. Feel any sensation in your arms. Do your best to allow your shoulders to be soft.

13. Notice your neck and throat. Try to allow them be soft. See if you can invite a sense of relaxation in.

14. Try to soften your jaw. Do your best to allow your face and facial muscles to be soft.

15. Then notice your whole body present. Take one more breath.

16. Be aware of your whole body as best you can. Take a breath. Slowly open up the eyes, without focusing on anything in particular. Allow the head and neck to gently rotate, taking in the space you are in. When you feel ready, you can return to your normal gaze.

* You can also listen to a 45-minute version of the Body Scan that the UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness uses in its trainings in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction.

Why You Should Try It

This exercise asks you to systematically focus your attention on different parts of your body, from your feet to the muscles in your face. It is designed to help you develop a mindful awareness of your bodily sensations, and to relieve tension when possible. Research suggests that this mindfulness practice can help reduce stress, improve your well-being, and decrease aches and pains.

Why It Works

Our body can sometimes be a source of pain and negative emotions, whether they are caused by injury or disease, or experiences of discrimination and prejudice. The body scan provides a rare opportunity for us to experience our body as it is, including any difficult feelings that come up, without judging or trying to change it.

It may allow us to notice and release a source of tension we weren't aware of before, such as a hunched back or clenched jaw muscles. Or it may draw our attention to a source of pain and discomfort.

Our feelings of resistance and anger toward pain often only serve to increase that pain, and to increase the distress associated with it. According to research, by noticing the pain we're experiencing, without trying to change it, we may actually feel some relief. Even if the pain doesn't go away, we can take steps to shift our relationship to pain and our relationship to our body in general.

The body scan allows us to work with these types of negative feelings. This practice may also increase our general attunement to our physical needs and sensations, which can in turn help us take better care of our body and make healthier decisions about eating, sleep, and exercise.

Evidence That It Works

Carmody, J. & Baer, R. A. (2008). Relationships between mindfulness practice and levels of mindfulness, medical and psychological symptoms, and well-being in a mindfulness-based stress reduction program. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 31(1), 23-33.

Body Scan is one of the practices included in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). Developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn and based on Buddhist teachings, MBSR is a six- to 10-week program that teaches various mindfulness techniques through weekly sessions and homework assignments. More information about this program is available in Kabat-Zinn's book Full Catastrophe Living.

People in Massachusetts who attended an MSBR program showed increases in mindfulness and well-being, and decreases in stress and symptoms of mental illness, at the end of eight weekly sessions. Time spent engaging in the Body Scan was associated with increased psychological well-being and greater levels of two components of mindfulness-non-reacting to stress and observing thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations.
Who Has Tried the Practice?
Additional studies explore how the Body Scan benefits people outside the U.S.:

Research suggests that MBSR, which includes the Body Scan, benefits the mental health of various groups, including the following:

People in different cultures and countries, such as bilingual Latin-American families, university students in China, disadvantaged families in Hong Kong, low-income cyclo drivers in Vietnam, males with generalized anxiety disorder in Iran, Indigenous people in the Republic of Congo, and Aboriginal Australians.

Women around the world, including pregnant women in China, rural women in India who experienced still-birth, at-risk women in Iran, Muslim women college students in the United Arab Emirates, American survivors of intimate partner violence, and socioeconomically disadvantaged Black women with post-traumatic stress disorder.

People with certain diseases, such as New Zealanders with rheumatoid arthritis, male patients with heart disease in India, patients with diabetes in South Korea, cancer patients in Canada, breast cancer survivors in China, and HIV-positive individuals in Toronto, San Francisco, Iran, and South Africa.

More research is needed to explore whether, and how, the impact of this practice extends to other groups and cultures.

Keep in Mind

A 2015 study found that MBSR "improved depressive symptoms regardless of affiliation with a religion, sense of spiritually, ... sex, or age." However, other studies suggest that MBSR may not benefit everyone equally:

References

Adelian, H., Sedigheh, K. S., Miri, S., & Farokhzadian, J. (2021). The effect of mindfulness-based stress reduction on resilience of vulnerable women at drop-in centers in the southeast of Iran. BMC Women's Health, 21, 1-10.

Fogarty, F. A., Booth, R. J., Lee, A. C., Dalbeth, N., & Consedine, N. S. (2019). Mindfulness-based stress reduction with individuals who have rheumatoid arthritis: Evaluating depression and anxiety as mediators of change in disease activity. Mindfulness, 10(7), 1328-1338.

Gallegos, A. M., Heffner, K. L., Cerulli, C., Luck, P., McGuinness, S., & Pigeon, W. R. (2020). Effects of mindfulness training on posttraumatic stress symptoms from a community-based pilot clinical trial among survivors of intimate partner violence. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 12(8), 859-868.

Gayner, B., Esplen, M. J., DeRoche, P., Wong, J., Bishop, S., Kavanagh, L., & Butler, K. (2012). A randomized controlled trial of mindfulness-based stress reduction to manage affective symptoms and improve quality of life in gay men living with HIV. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 35(3), 272-285.

Greeson, J. M., Smoski, M. J., Suarez, E. C., Brantley, J. G., Ekblad, A. G., Lynch, T. R., & Wolever, R. Q. (2015). Decreased symptoms of depression after mindfulness-based stress reduction: Potential moderating effects of religiosity, spirituality, trait mindfulness, sex, and age. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 21(3), 166-174.

Hecht, F. M., Moskowitz, J. T., Moran, P., Epel, E. S., Bacchetti, P., Acree, M., Kemeny, M. E., Mendes, W. B., Duncan, L. G., Weng, H., Levy, J. A., Deeks, S. G., & Folkman, S. (2018). A randomized, controlled trial of mindfulness-based stress reduction in HIV infection. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, 73, 331-339.

Ho, R. T. H., Lo, H. H. M., Fong, T. C. T., & Choi, C. W. (2020). Effects of a mindfulness-based intervention on diurnal cortisol pattern in disadvantaged families: A randomized controlled trial. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 117, 7.

Hoffman, D. M. (2019). Mindfulness and the cultural psychology of personhood: Challenges of self, other, and moral orientation in Haiti. Culture & Psychology, 25(3), 302-323.

Jung, H. Y., Lee, H., & Park, J. (2015). Comparison of the effects of Korean mindfulness-based stress reduction, walking, and patient education in diabetes mellitus. Nursing & Health Sciences, 17(4), 516-525.

Kabat-Zinn, J., De Torrijos, F., Skillings, A. H., Blacker, M., Mumford, G. T., Alvares, D. L., & Rosal, M. C. (2016). Delivery and effectiveness of a dual language (English/Spanish) Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program in the inner city - A seven-year experience: 1992-1999. Mindfulness & Compassion, 1(1), 2-13.

Kabat-Zinn, J., & Hanh, T. N. (2009). Full catastrophe living: Using the wisdom of your body and mind to face stress, pain, and illness. Delta.

Lavrencic, L. M., Donovan, T., Moffatt, L., Keiller, T., Allan, W., Delbaere, K., & Radford, K. (2021). Ngarraanga giinganay ('thinking peacefully'): Co-design and pilot study of a culturally-grounded mindfulness-based stress reduction program with older First Nations Australians. Evaluation and Program Planning, 87, 12.

Le, T. N. (2017). Cultural considerations in a phenomenological study of mindfulness with Vietnamese youth and cyclo drivers. International Perspectives in Psychology: Research, Practice, Consultation, 6(4), 246-260.

Li, J., & Qin, X. (2021). Efficacy of mindfulness‐based stress reduction on fear of emotions and related cognitive behavioral processes in Chinese university students: A randomized controlled trial. Psychology in the Schools, 1-17.

Majid, S. A., Seghatoleslam, T., Homan, H. A., Akhvast, A., & Habil, H. (2012). Effect of mindfulness based stress management on reduction of generalized anxiety disorder. Iranian Journal of Public Health, 41(10), 24-28.

McIntyre, T., Elkonin, D., de Kooker, M., & Magidson, J. F. (2018). The application of mindfulness for individuals living with HIV in South Africa: A hybrid effectiveness-implementation pilot study. Mindfulness, 9(3), 871-883.

Neto, A. D., Lucchetti, A. L. G., Ezequiel, O. S., & Lucchetti, G. (2020). Effects of a required large-group mindfulness meditation course on first-year medical students' mental health and quality of life: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 35(3), 672-678.

Noh, S. & Cho, H. (2020). Psychological and physiological effects of the mindful lovingkindess compassion program on highly self-critical university students in South Korea. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 2628.

Parswani, M. J., Sharma, M. P., & Iyengar, S. S. (2013). Mindfulness-based stress reduction program in coronary heart disease: A randomized control trial. International Journal of Yoga, 6(2), 111.

Roberts, L. R., & Montgomery, S. B. (2016). Mindfulness-based intervention for perinatal grief in rural India: Improved mental health at 12 months follow-up. Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 37(12), 942-951.

Samuelson, M., Carmody, J., Kabat-Zinn, J., & Bratt, M. A. (2007). Mindfulness-based stress reduction in Massachusetts correctional facilities. The Prison Journal, 87(2), 254-268.

SeyedAlinaghi, S., Jam, S., Foroughi, M., Imani, A., Mohraz, M., Djavid, G. E., & Black, D. S. (2012). Randomized controlled trial of mindfulness-based stress reduction delivered to human immunodeficiency virus-positive patients in Iran: effects on CD4⁺ T lymphocyte count and medical and psychological symptoms. Psychosomatic Medicine, 74(6), 620-627.

Speca, M., Carlson, L. E., Goodey, E., & Angen, M. (2000). A randomized, wait-list controlled clinical trial: The effect of a mindfulness meditation-based stress reduction program on mood and symptoms of stress in cancer outpatients. Psychosomatic Medicine, 62(5), 613-622.

Takahashi, T., Sugiyama, F., Kikai, T., Kawashima, I., Guan, S., Oguchi, M., . . . Kumano, H. (2019). Changes in depression and anxiety through mindfulness group therapy in Japan: The role of mindfulness and self-compassion as possible mediators. BioPsychoSocial Medicine, 13, 10.

Thomas, J., Raynor, M., & Bahussain, E. (2016). Stress reactivity, depressive symptoms, and mindfulness: A Gulf Arab perspective. International Perspectives in Psychology: Research, Practice, Consultation, 5(3), 156-166.

Tsang, S. C., Mok, E. S., Lam, S. C., & Lee, J. K. (2012). The benefit of mindfulness‐based stress reduction to patients with terminal cancer. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 21(17-18), 2690-2696.

Vinesett, A. L., Whaley, R. R., Woods-Giscombe, C., Dennis, P., Johnson, M., Li, Y., Mounzeo, P., Baegne, M., & Wilson, K. H. (2017). Modified African Ngoma healing ceremony for stress reduction: A pilot study. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 23(10), 800-804.

Waldron, E. M., & Burnett-Zeigler, I. (2021). The impact of participation in a mindfulness-based intervention on posttraumatic stress symptomatology among Black women: A pilot study. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 14(1), 29-37.

Williams, J. M., & Kabat-Zinn, J. (2013). Mindfulness: Diverse perspectives on its meaning, origins and applications at the intersection of science and dharma. Routledge.

Zhang, J., Cui, Y., Zhou, Y., & Li, Y. (2019). Effects of mindfulness-based stress reduction on prenatal stress, anxiety and depression. Psychology, Health & Medicine, 24(1), 51-58.

Zhang, J., Zhou, Y., Feng, Z., Fan, Y., Zeng, G., & Wei, L. (2017). Randomized controlled trial of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) on posttraumatic growth of Chinese breast cancer survivors. Psychology, Health & Medicine, 22(1), 94-109.

The Body Scan Meditation helps us become more aware our bodies, an awareness we often neglect. Are you attuned to the present moment? Take our Mindfulness quiz to find out:

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Body Scan Meditation (Greater Good in Action)

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Feeling tense? Feel your body relax as you try this practice.

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Mindfulness 360 - Center For Mindfulness

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The UDL Guidelines are a tool used in the implementation of Universal Design for Learning, a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn. Learn more about the Universal Design for Learning framework from CAST. The UDL Guidelines can be used by educators, curriculum developers, researchers, parents, and anyone else who wants to implement the UDL framework in a learning environment. These guidelines offer a set of concrete suggestions that can be applied to any discipline or domain to ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities.

Reenvisioning the UDL Guidelines

Because the UDL Guidelines are meant to be informed by feedback from the field as well as new research, they have been updated several times in the past. We are in the process of updating the Guidelines once again in our UDL Rising to Equity initiative.

This update will focus specifically on addressing systemic barriers that result in inequitable learning opportunities and outcomes. CAST aims to develop a transparent, inclusive, and community-driven process. If you are interested in collaborating and staying updated on our progress, we invite you to complete a brief survey.

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The UDL Guidelines are a tool used in the implementation of Universal Design for Learning, a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn. Learn more about the Universal Design for Learning framework from CAST. The UDL Guidelines can be used by educators, curriculum developers, researchers, parents, and anyone else who wants to implement the UDL framework in a learning environment. These guidelines offer a set of concrete suggestions that can be applied to any discipline or domain to ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities.

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Welcome to the SEL 3 Signature Practices Playbook, your on-ramp for integrating social and emotional learning (SEL) into classrooms, schools, districts and offices.

Weave the signature practices throughout the day, every day, as a regular part of planning and facilitating lessons, meetings, and professional learning. These research-based practices can be part of a systemic approach to SEL. They help us build and practice social and emotional skills and create a climate of belonging for everyone, building strong, equitable, effective learning and working environments.

Inclusive Welcome

EXAMPLES

An inclusive welcome is culturally and linguistically respectful, builds community, and connects to the work ahead. When planning and facilitating activities, educators are always thinking, "What's my purpose?" The inclusive welcome is an opportunity to bring that purpose to life. What to a casual observer might appear to be an icebreaker or time-filler can be an intentional, effective educational strategy.

Engaging Strategies

EXAMPLES

Engaging strategies offer opportunities for participants to more fully grasp content and to connect learning to their own contexts. Build in a balance of interactive and reflective experiences that vary in complexity and style to meet the needs of all participants and your intended outcomes for the time together.

Intentional Close

EXAMPLES

An intentional close highlights an individual and shared understanding of the content and purpose of the engagement, illuminates the intellectual and emotional experience just shared, can provide a sense of accomplishment, and supports forward-thinking. The closing activity may be reflective of the process or the content, help identify next steps, make connections to one's own work, or show appreciation for one another.

What does SEL look like? How can we start doing SEL right now?
The SEL 3 Signature Practices were developed in response to these frequently asked questions. Grounded in CASEL's SEL framework and focal constructs of SEL , these practices are an accessible starting place for do-able, effective systemic SEL. While they can appear simple, they provide opportunities for influencing complex systems in significant ways.

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The Signature Practices can provide a common starting point for do-able, effective SEL implementation. While they may appear simple, the Practices serve as an on-ramp for developing a rich and productive systemic approach to SEL.

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Appreciation, Apology, Aha (intentional close)

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Appreciation, Apology, Aha (intentional close)

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60-Second Strategy: Appreciation, Apology, Aha!

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What do we do when the things that help some people in the team feel psychologically safer don't work for everyone? Perhaps one person says they need time away from the main meeting group to reflect on how they feel about something, but the person leading the meeting would rather hear 'gut reaction' responses in the moment? Or maybe you want to have a 'crack down' on excessive email traffic, but there's someone in the team who primarily uses written communication because they struggle with verbal communication?

In our workshops, when we're working on ways to improve psychological safety for everyone in teams and groups, we very often get asked about how to manage these conflicts of preference or need.

And we often need to remember the uncomfortable truth, that psychological safety is not comfortable. In fact, fostering psychological safety often means greater discomfort, particularly for those of us accustomed to the privilege of status, power, or leadership roles.

This is where we need to clarify the difference between "comfort" and "need".

Comfort is Optional, Needs Are Not

Comfort: A preference or convenience, often subjective, flexible and negotiable.

Need: A fundamental requirement, usually objective, non-negotiable, often linked to health, safety, or basic dignity.

As an example, we may feel far more comfortable seeing everyone's faces on screen in a video call, for example. My personal preference is to have cameras on: it helps me see if people are engaged, I can observe reactions and I can see if someone wants to speak up or is trying to get my attention. I can also much more quickly and easily tell if my internet connection has dropped! I will often express this preference, and invite people to have their camera on if possible, and hope that they are able to. It makes for a more enjoyable and potentially more productive meeting or online workshop.

But this is not a need. Yes, it helps me feel more comfortable, and it's my strong preference, but I also recognise that for various reasons, many people may not be able to have a camera on. This may be due to neurodiversity and sensory processing differences, managing health conditions, or using a shared family space to work from. It may also be that their internet connection is poor and they need to prioritise good audio over the visual connection. If we insist on universal camera use, we may be unintentionally prioritising our comfort over another's need.

Photo By: Kaboompics.com

Remote and flexible working is another example. While working in-person as a default may indeed feel more comfortable, familiar, or even productive, to some, it can be inaccessible to others. For many folks, remote or flexible working isn't merely convenient, it's essential. If we insist that our team meeting starts at 9am and everyone must be in the office for that time, we may make work extremely difficult or even impossible for the parent who has to fit in a school drop-off, or the person using a wheelchair who has to navigate public transport to the office at the busiest, least accessible time of day. The converse applies too, of course: some people can't work from home because they don't have the environment, facilities or space to do so - they may need to come to the office because it's the only place they can work.

Then there's identity-related needs, such as a team member asking us to use pronouns such as they/ them. This might initially make us feel awkward or uncomfortable because it's outside our usual habit or social experience, but respecting someone's pronouns addresses a fundamental need for recognition, identity, and dignity. And experiencing minor, short-term discomfort while we adjust to remembering this detail is a small price to pay to meet that need.

Our comfort doesn't trump someone else's needs.

Psychological safety is supported by people feeling that they belong in the group, that they're included, and that they matter. This means acknowledging their needs, and doing what we can to fulfil them, even if that causes us some discomfort.

Of course, there's a spectrum between comfort and need. It's not possible to draw a definitive line between the two, and we do need to make informed professional judgements about where to draw that line, which will depend on context, person, or situation. For instance, while we might usually give people time to process information before sharing any concerns, it is perfectly reasonable to expect people to speak up directly and straight away if they spot something that is dangerous and needs addressing urgently.

What we need to remember is that not every discomfort indicates a need; we should consciously differentiate between what makes us personally comfortable and what others genuinely need. We should be explicit about our own needs, whilst being careful to reflect on whether it truly is a need, or a strong preference. Misinterpreting our own comfort as a necessity can inadvertently create exclusionary practices and erode psychological safety for those around us, for instance if we tell people that we "need" them to be direct with us or to look us in the eye. Conversely, dismissing someone else's genuine need as a mere desire for comfort can foster misunderstanding and resentment.

Comfort and Needs in Practice

In practice, this also means recognising where we're part of a power gradient. It's all too easy for leaders or those with more power in the group to unintentionally impose their comfort as standard practices. We might not even realise how much more challenging this makes it for individuals lower in the power structure to voice their needs. As an example, we might see this when a manager strongly prefers face-to-face working, and expresses to their team that they "need" them in the office at certain times. Those who struggle to get to the office at those times, or experience sensory overload in the noisy, shared space may feel pressured to compromise their needs (or leave the team) in order to align with the preferences of their boss. It's hard to speak up when your boss has told you they "need" you to do something.

Whatever type of power we possess, we could ask ourselves:

Is this truly a need, or is it a preference shaped by my own comfort?

Have I taken time to understand what others might genuinely need, rather than assuming?

Could prioritising my own comfort unintentionally come at the expense of someone else's psychological safety or inclusion?

How can I clearly express the difference between a preference and a need - and stay open to hearing the same from others?

What can I do to create space for others to articulate their needs, especially when they differ from my own?

One way to facilitate this in practice could be through co-created, always evolving personal user manuals, social contracts and team charters. It's through these opportunities to foster shared norms and language, agree on inclusive and high-performing behaviours and practices, and define what we value as a group, that we can establish both what people in the team prefer, and what we need.
Further Reading:
Psychological Safety in Practice

The Lundy Model

Developed by Professor Laura Lundy, the Lundy Model provides a clear, structured approach to ensuring that children and young people are genuinely heard, not just given tokenistic 'student voice' opportunities. It brings Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to life by focusing on four key elements:

Space - How do we actively create inclusive, safe spaces for children's views, rather than only reacting to children's voice when it appears?
Voice - How can we support children to form and express their views voluntarily and in modes of expression that work for them?
Audience - How do we ensure their views are actively listened to by the people who can create change?
Influence - How do we make sure these views shape decisions, lead to meaningful change and are responded to with transparency and openness?

Lundy's frames this not as a 'gift' from adults but as a fundamental right of the child in line with Article 12. This isn't about generosity, it's about responsibility.

Too often, 'student voice' initiatives stop at Voice without ensuring Audience or Influence. But listening alone isn't enough. Children's perspectives must be acted upon in ways that respect their rights and agency.

Image source: National Framework for Children and Young People's Participation in Decision-making, Government of Ireland

This model has huge implications, not just for education but for any context where we need to centre the voices of those with less power, which is so much of our challenge in working on psychological safety in all contexts.

The academic article that formed the basis of the Lundy Model, 'Voice is not enough', is now available open access: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01411920701657033

Thanks to Jade Garratt for this write-up.

"WASTE"

Whilst we usually share things that are useful and/or interesting, sometimes I feel the need to share "bad" ideas or concepts to raise awareness of how harmful they can be.

This "WASTE" image has been circulating on various social platforms. While (hopefully) well meaning, they're often written from a one-sided and privileged perspective and it's worth being very careful about the messages they send out. Is it never ok to express our ideas in an email when we're upset or emotional? And do we always need solutions to express concerns or raise problems? (a la " Don't bring me problems, bring me solutions", which is terrible advice.)

Many of us relate to feeling overwhelmed by emails at times, and we'd always recommend talking to colleagues about how and why we use emails to make sure they are as effective as possible. But part of that discussion needs to recognise that written communication is far easier for many than verbal, especially around something personal or sensitive, if we have a speech difficulty or difference, or simply if we have different work patterns.

These messages are potentially hugely damaging to psychological safety and may well silence important voices.

Practices for Psychological Safety & Autonomy In Teams
Thanks to Helen Sanderson for inviting Jade and I to speak about psychological safety, team agreements, social contracts, conflict, lived vs espoused values, and much more! Listen here.
Can Germany rein in its academic bullying problem?
This is a great article in Nature about how Germany's academic system is under scrutiny for widespread bullying and abuse of power, enabled by rigid hierarchies, legal protections for tenured professors, and a culture that often normalises coercive behaviour. I would argue that this is certainly not limited to only German academic institutions - we see the same academic dynamics in UK, Europe and the US.

Psychological Safety Stickers

If you'd like to show your dedication to fostering psychological safety, what better way that plastering your laptop, phone, mug, car, and other inanimate objects with some of these great stickers?

Available as packs of 4 or 12, or larger orders if required. You can choose which ones you want at the checkout, or leave it up to us for a random surprise selection! Available at the psychsafety.com shop.
This week's poem:
I Am Somebody, by Reverend William Holmes Borders Sr.

I may be Young
but I am
Somebody.
I may be on Welfare
but I am
Somebody.
I may be on Small
but I am
Somebody.
I may make a Mistake
but I am
Somebody!
My clothes are different,
My face is different,
My hair is different,
but I am
Somebody.
I am black, brown, white.
I speak a different language.
But I must be respected,
protected,
never rejected.
I am God's child.
⁣I am
Somebody!

'I Am - Somebody' was written in the 1950s by Reverend William Holmes Borders Sr., an African American minister and civil rights leader, and ⁣was adapted and popularised by Reverend Jesse Jackson who recited this poem with a group of children on the stoop of 123 Sesame Street.

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Comfort vs Need by Tom Geraghty What do we do when the things that help some people in the team feel psychologically safer don't work for everyone? Perhaps one person says they need time away from the main meeting group [...]

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Psychological Safety Doesn’t Mean Feeling Comfortable

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Psychological Safety Doesn’t Mean Feeling Comfortable By Jade Garratt There are many misconceptions about psychological safety. One is that if we “achieve” psychological safety, it means that people will feel comfortable all the time. It’s understandable to see how that […]

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Join Peabody Institute faculty, Jen Graham, as she leads you through a gentle movement series to promote mind-body connection and well-being.

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In this highly acclaimed best seller, Priya Parker argues that the gatherings in our lives are lackluster and unproductive - and they don't have to be. At a time when coming together is more important than ever, Parker sets forth a human-centered approach to gathering that will help everyone create meaningful, memorable experiences, large and small, for work and for play.

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The Art of Gathering Book - Priya Parker

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The Art of Gathering is a highly acclaimed best selling book by Priya Parker on how to transform our gatherings from lackluster and unproductive to ones full of connection and purpose.

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When you've got a few minutes left before the period ends, it's only normal to wonder: Do my students really understand what we covered? Do they remember what we started with, as well as what we just discussed?

While cleaning up and going over homework assignments often take up those final moments of class time, effective closing activities allow you to make better use of them by checking for understanding, correcting misunderstandings, and putting a little fun into the process to motivate your students to make sense of what they've just learned.

Closing activities don't need to happen every day, and they don't always require lots of advanced planning. They can occur at the end of a chapter, or even at the end of a large learning unit, and can also take various forms-incorporating movement, technology, and even components of social and emotional learning to build a stronger classroom community.

Here are 10 creative and fun closing activities we sourced from experienced teachers that you can try in your classroom.

1. Two-Dollar Summary: Ask students to write a two-dollar (or more) summary of the lesson they've just learned. Each word they use is worth 10 cents. For extra scaffolding, ask students to include specific words in their statement. For a twist on this, ask students to explain something as if they were teaching it to a first grade student. This will also push them to simplify complex ideas for themselves and therefore understand them better.

For a different spin on this, try educator Sarah Frisby Cook's "six-word summary" of the most important idea or concept. On Facebook, Cook told Edutopia that because students are limited in word choice, "they really have to think about what is most crucial to say."

6. Video Journals: Educator John Thomas uses the free app ChatterPix to get students creating and sharing video journals describing what they've learned. Because this can take a little time to create, this strategy might be best suited as a wrap-up activity at the end of a unit. The videos are playful and fun, and can easily be posted to classroom platforms like Seesaw.

8. Quiz the Next Class: Nikki Cobb-Struzynski gets her students to use the free platform Kahoot! to come up with quiz questions and multiple choice answers to give to their peers studying the same material in other classes. Recent research suggests that generating good questions promotes deeper engagement with content and improves retention. When a person formulates a question, "One has to reflect what one has learned and how an appropriate knowledge question can be inferred from this knowledge," University of Kassel researcher Mirjam Ebersbach told Edutopia.

9. Make Your Classroom a Beach: This activity will get students out of their seats and sharing with the whole class. Educator Eman Bekheet told Edutopia that she writes reflective questions on a beach ball using dry erase markers. Questions might include things like: "What is one thing you learned during today's lesson?" or "What was challenging about today's lesson?"

As the ball bounces around the room, you can come up with a mechanism for deciding which question they have to answer out loud-such as the question their left thumb is touching, or the very first question they see. Use the responses to generate further discussion about the day's lesson.

The Human Bar Graph is another twist that gets students moving. Label points along a line drawn on the floor or across a wall that show different levels of mastery: I'm confused, I'm okay, I got this. Ask students to stand where they feel most comfortable. This exercise requires a certain level of vulnerability, so it's best to try it once you built some trust with students.

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Instead of cleaning up or going over homework assignments, try these creative activities that can help students make sense of new material-and have fun in the process.

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Breathing With Ghosts 2025: Davenport EARCOS.pptx

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This is part of a special series, We're Reemerging What Does the World Look Like Now?, which considers in real time how we cope while living through a historic time. It's also in the latest VICE magazine. Subscribe here.

Gwen Clarke's pre-pandemic days started at 5:45 in the morning. She went to the gym near her apartment in Astoria, Queens, then commuted 40 minutes to her job as a digital content producer. She often worked late into the weekday evenings, and at least one weekend day. After work, she would grab a drink-or several-with co-workers, before returning, exhausted, to her apartment.

The past year has been different. Because of COVID-19, the 26-year-old moved home to Southampton, New York, and the pace of life slowed down.

"I wake up in the morning and I don't have to get right out of bed," Clarke said. "I used to close my eyes, count to three, and jump out of bed before I could talk myself out of it. Now I can sit and be cozy and scroll on my phone and do whatever the hell I want for nearly two hours before I get up and start my day." Her work-from-home days are easily interrupted with midday walks or yoga.

In a nutshell, she's been freed from the tyranny of busyness. Busyness is not only about packing each day with as much as possible, but also the value placed on doing so: Being busy makes people feel good about themselves, and they use busyness, voluntarily, to signal their worth to others. "Working in TV production, I have always thought that being busy is a good thing," Clarke said. "It means that the people around you trust you. I definitely have this feeling that being busy means you are important."

Busyness is a powerful social signal, though a somewhat counterintuitive one. At the turn of the 20th century, economists predicted that the ultimate symbol of wealth and success would be leisure-showing others that you were so successful that you could abstain from work. Instead, the opposite occurred. It's not free time, but busyness, that gestures to a person's relevance.

"Being busy made me feel like a valuable resource with abilities that were in high demand," said Robbie McDonald, a 53-year-old from Vancouver who worked long hours at a nonprofit before the pandemic. "It fueled my insecurity and impostor syndrome. The busier I got, the more I would take on, for fear of seeming irrelevant. I definitely wore the busy badge of honor, complaining about it to colleagues and friends, but I was secretly proud that so many people relied on me to get things done."

Yet there are indications that people don't want to slingshot themselves back to a world that determines their value based on how busy they are. A rash of articles has recently expressed a sense of foreboding at returning to the veneration of an overloaded life. In April, New York Magazine wrote about " The People Who Don't Want to Return to Normalcy," quoting a man named William who felt that during the past year, for the first time, he "had a great excuse to do nothing... It was the best. I feel guilty saying it."

In an advice column for the Cut, one reader wrote, "I'm not ready for isolation to end." The Wall Street Journal announced that the pandemic's end means the " return of anxiety." "Many are relieved by the lack of choices and the ability to engage with others almost entirely on their own terms. And they're not sure they're ready for it all to end," the psychologist Peggy Drexler wrote for the Journal. In the last year, McDonald told VICE she has grown blissfully accustomed to her new routine, which "doesn't include 5 a.m. Teams chats or emergency Saturday meetings about Facebook comments."

The pandemic offered a rare window of opportunity for some people to become literally less busy, and perhaps more importantly, to get perspective on their cultural beliefs about busyness. Instead of being caught up in the inertia of always projecting a busy life, they had time to reflect on how they used busyness to define themselves-and how it led to stress and the conflation of productivity and self-worth.

Of course, experiencing this slowing down of life in order to gain these insights reflects a certain amount of privilege-but that's kind of the point. Research has found that busyness is most often assumed as a status symbol for higher-paid workers. The people who value and signal busyness are not typically hourly or gig workers, sociologists told VICE. Busyness in the lower classes is less a symbol of success and more a byproduct of a lack of time autonomy, overwork from low wages, and a lack of social safety nets.

It's higher-paid workers who were more likely to reap the benefits of the status of busyness, and they are also the ones more likely to have recently tasted a slower, less busy kind of life. If the past year could change the way they glorify being busy, could it help to knock down busyness for everyone as the aspirational state to strive for and maintain?

"I can't go back to the frenetic pace," McDonald said. She recalled one recent morning when she found herself sitting on a log at the beach, watching a crow drop sealed clams from the air and swoop down to pick out the meat. "It seemed so simple and so easy. I started to question if my life could look like that."

In 1840, it was briefly cool to walk a turtle on a string around the Parisian arcades. "You did that to signal time abundance, to signal quite how little you did or how much leisure you had, because that was a sign of status," said Tony Crabbe, a business psychologist and the author of Busy: How to Thrive in a World of Too Much.

The turtle walker's "leisurely appearance as a personality is his protest against the division of labor which makes people into specialists. It was also his protest against their industriousness," the philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin wrote.

This is what Thorstein Veblen, a 19th century economist, wrote about in his book The Theory of the Leisure Class. Veblen thought that elites of the future would participate in "conspicuous leisure," as a signal to others of their success. This idea was epitomized in Downton Abbey, when Maggie Smith's character, Violet Crawley, asked, "What is a 'weekend'?" "The joke, of course, is that the dowager countess is too aristocratic to even recognize the concept of a week divided between work and leisure," wrote busyness researchers in the Harvard Business Review.

Veblen wasn't the only one predicting a future of leisure as a status symbol. In 1928, the economist John Maynard Keynes gave a lecture, later published as Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, in which he foresaw that people in the year 2028 would work only 15 hours a week thanks to a productive economy and technological innovation. With so much leisure time, "man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem-how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won," Keynes wrote.

Well-off people in the western world are nowhere close to working just three hours a day, nor do they parade around reptilian symbols of how much free time they have. They boast of their busyness instead. "Just as being leisurely around 1900 was a status claim, being unmanageably busy at the turn of this century was a status claim based on the fact that the busiest people also tended to be the richest," said Jonathan Gershuny, a professor of economic sociology at University College London and a co-director of the Center for Time Use Research.

Silvia Bellezza, an associate professor of business in marketing at Columbia Business School, studies how busyness replaced leisure as the form of "conspicuous consumption." By being busy, a person signals to others how they themselves are a scarce resource on the market. Not having time to rest indicates that you're in demand, and that your intellectual capital is highly valued. As a result, others consider you to be higher status.

This form of status signaling can even be found in personal relationships that have nothing to do with "work." Over the last 20 years, Ann Burnett, a retired professor of communication and women and gender studies at North Dakota State University, has collected letters that families send out over the holidays. As Brigid Schulte, author of Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time, described, "Words and phrases that began surfacing in the 1970s and 1980s-'hectic,' 'whirlwind,' 'consumed,' 'crazy,' 'constantly on the run' and 'way too fast'-now appear with astonishing frequency." People were consistently bragging to others about how busy they are. Bellezza and her colleagues have similarly documented celebrities on social media complaining about their busy schedules and lack of time.

This is a crucial component of signaling busyness: Most people don't earn enough money to have increased leisure time; "busyness" is more often a badge of honor for those with salaried jobs, Wajcman said.

Bellezza's work has shown that these busyness signals make other people think you're important. In one of Bellezza and her colleagues' studies, they found that people who get groceries delivered were perceived as busier and higher class, and a woman wearing a Bluetooth headset had a higher status than another wearing headphones. When people were asked to read imaginary letters from a friend, one letter described how "crazy busy" a person was, while the other said his life was "relaxed." The participants thought the busy letter writer to have more money, have better skills, and have a higher social status.

But the paradox and masochism of busyness is also laid bare: the study found that while people aspire to be more like a busy person, they also con- sider the busy person to be less happy. An obsession with busyness also taints how people spend what little leisure time they have, Bellezza said, by wanting leisure to accomplish as much as possible in as little time as possible-called "productivity orientation."

This phenomenon is stronger in American culture. In an Italian sample, people thought the reverse: that the relaxed letter writer must be better off since, after all, his life was so relaxing. "I noticed that in the U.S. that wasn't the case," Bellezza said. "Instead, people brag about how much they work. It's almost like a badge of honor-the fact that you never take holidays, even if you could afford to."

This ethos can be found in a 2014 Super Bowl commercial for Cadillac, a luxury car: A well-off man with a nice house and suit brags about not taking his vacation time. "Other countries, they work," the actor said. "They stroll home, they stop by the cafe, they take August off. Off. Why aren't you like that? Why aren't we like that? Because we're crazy, driven, hard- working believers, that's why."

Another reason why Keynes' vision of a shorter work day hasn't come true is inequality, according to Judy Wajcman, a professor of sociology at the London School of Economics and a fellow at the Alan Turing Institute in London.

"There's a class of managerial and professional workers who have done very well and whose wages sort of increased phenomenally," she said. "But there's been a huge increase in low-paid service jobs, where the minimum wage has absolutely not kept up."

This is a crucial component of signaling busyness: Most people don't earn enough money to have increased leisure time; "busyness" is more often a badge of honor for those with salaried jobs, Wajcman said. "People that are paid by the hour may be more likely to define busyness in terms of, 'I have to have this job-in fact I have to have two jobs in order to pay the bills,'" Burnett said.

Past research has found that those people who lament being busy the loudest haven't actually experienced a huge increase in working hours-busyness is more of a feeling and state of mind than a reflection of labor. The Swedish economist Staffan B. Linder came up with the phrase the "harried leisure class," which means that as people accrue wealth, they have more consumption available to them, and pack their day with more activities.

"What we've had over the last year is a global workshop in slow."

In their studies, Bellezza said that when they told people that a person was busy or working all the time, participants assumed that it was for a white collar job. If they were told it was a blue collar job, the boosting in status a person got from being "busy" wasn't as strong as for a white collar job.

"It's so class specific," Wajcman said. "Gig workers don't talk about this. There's no status from the busyness of an Uber driver or an Amazon worker in a warehouse. It is completely an upper middle class managerial notion that busyness is a good, positive thing." When it comes to gig work or lower-paying forms of labor, Wajcman said that the experience of busyness is not experienced as a signal of high status, but of a lack of control over their own time.

The pandemic may push people, especially the privileged, to recognize that the ways they've wielded busyness is a construct, and one they may try to resist in the future. A small behavioral shift that Burnett recommended, even pre-pandemic: When people ask you, "How are you?" Resist the temptation to say, "I'm so busy."

"We have to think about our basic interactions with people and think about how you're portraying yourself and responding to these basic questions. You have to be intentional." There are many downsides to the culture of busyness, Burnett said. "And honestly, the upside of it being something to brag about is just not worth it."

A small but passionate resistance against the dominance of busyness existed before the pandemic, said Carl Honoré, the author of The Power of Slow, and one of the leaders of the global Slow Movement-a crusade to slow life down. The Slow Movement, as Honoré has written, urges people to live life by "savoring the hours and minutes rather than just counting them. Doing everything as well as possible, instead of as fast as possible. It's about quality over quantity in everything from work to food to parenting."

Honoré first realized he was rushing through the moments too fast when he noticed himself speeding through bedtime stories with his son. "I had a lightbulb moment," he said. "I thought, is this really what I want my life to be? Where I'm racing through it, instead of living it? What a life of speed, busyness, distraction, multitasking, stimulation, impatience does is that it walls you off from who you are. You become your to-do list. You become a 'human doing' instead of a human being."

When the pandemic began, Honoré said many people wrote to him asking if he was pleased that the world was grinding to a halt. "At no point have I ever been over the moon," he said. "A pandemic is a total nightmare for everybody, in lots of different ways. But I do think that there can be a silver lining. What we've had over the last year is a global workshop in slow."

The Slow Movement is part of a larger trend to "decelerate." Giana Eckhardt, a professor of marketing at King's College London who studies deceleration, said she noticed that even pre-pandemic there was a rise in deceleration-type activities, like meditation or yoga retreats, pilgrimage routes, and " slow travel," where the focus isn't on cramming in sightseeing activities, but staying in one place for a longer period of time and experiencing the quotidien lifestyle. One extreme example comes from South Korea, where some overworked and busy people check into a fake prison, called Prison Inside Me, which opened in 2008. Shut into a cell, people reduce their stress by removing all forms of outside busyness.

If deceleration becomes the more dominant signal of well-being, social status, and "making it," rather than busyness, it could set the standard for what we try to help others achieve as well.

The phrase "deceleration" is an attempt to seek relief from " social acceleration," a phrase coined by a professor of sociology and political science named Hartmut Rosa. He defined social acceleration as an "increase in episodes of action or experience per unit of time"-essentially more things per minute on average per day: more things made, more emails sent, more friends to go out to drinks with, more activities to bring children to.

Acceleration leads to busyness in and of itself, which is also called "time sickness," or "a sense of urgency; time is running out, there is not enough of it, and we must run faster and faster just to keep up," Eckhardt wrote in a paper on deceleration.

In response, people seek out oases of deceleration, which is not the same as just flopping down on the couch and watching Netflix. Eckhardt and her colleagues went to the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage in Spain, where they interviewed people and asked them what they were getting out of it. More than 300,000 people from 161 countries completed the trek in 2017-and many were not there for religious reasons, Eckhardt said, but rather to find a way to slow down.

Her work describes three elements that create an experience of deceleration: embodied deceleration, technological deceleration, and episodic deceleration. Embodied deceleration is the physical slowing down of your body: walking or riding a bike versus moving your body around in cars, planes, or buses. Technological deceleration is not giving up technology, but feeling like you have a sense of control over it. And episodic deceleration is having fewer episodes of action per day. "Not feeling like you're running from meeting to meeting at work, and then you have to run to pick up your kids and drive them to three different activities at the same time as you're trying to cook dinner," Eckhardt said.

Episodic deceleration isn't just about lowering the number of activities, but also the number of activities you have to pick from. If someone achieves all three things-say when walking a pilgrimage-then much of the stress and overwhelm from living a socially accelerated life tends to drop away.

The irony is that deceleration can often be a refuge predominantly for the privileged. After all, who has the means for retreats or slow vacations? Eckhardt argued that because of this, there was a slight shift before COVID in which deceleration was becoming a signal of wealth and status-more in line with Veblen's theory of the leisure class. For example, take Arianna Huffington's rest and relaxation brand, or Tim Ferriss' Four-Hour Work Week, which promises to teach how to "Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich."

During the pandemic, more people, albeit still privileged, have had access to at least one of these modes of deceleration in their everyday lives. Any increase in the number of people accessing deceleration is a good thing, Eckhardt said. If deceleration becomes the more dominant signal of well-being, social status, and "making it," rather than busyness, it could set the standard for what we try to help others achieve as well. Eckhardt thinks it may be a turning point when the status symbol of busyness finally has some meaningful competition.

"I think in terms of an overall rhythm of life, what people do, will they want to go back to commuting on a subway for an hour to an office five days a week? No, they don't," Eckhardt said. "Do they want to go back to getting up at 5 a.m. to go to an exercise class before then doing an hour-long commute? No. I think there are a lot of things about the rhythms of daily life of this past year that people are going to work hard to maintain."

Eckhardt said that if we want to maintain deceleration after COVID, we should try to maintain the three specific facets of deceleration. But it may be more crucial for us to try to value deceleration as a desirable social signal.

"Try to remember the feeling of making your own food and sharing it with your household, rather than running back to eating many meals out and on the go," she wrote in the Conversation. "As you emerge from lockdown, try to maintain practices like stopping work to eat your lunch in the middle of the day, and take tea breaks, preferably with others and outdoors when you can. There is much value to be gained from having the rhythm of your daily life be one that you can savor."

Kevin Roose wrote in April in the New York Times about the "YOLO economy"-the observation that mid-career adults are "abandoning cushy and stable jobs," to pursue remote work, slower and more easygoing living locales, and fewer daily obligations. But as the journalist Anne Helen Petersen pointed out, many people who are changing careers aren't just doing it because YOLO, but because the past year has traumatized, exhausted, and pushed them to the edge. Busyness status as a reward just doesn't cut it anymore.

Emphasizing the pleasure and social benefits of deceleration can help shift attention away from busyness. In Post-Growth Living, the philosopher Kate Soper describes an alternative form of a pleasurable life as a release of "the work-dominated, stressed-out, time-scarce and materially encumbered affluence of today." She writes that leisure and slowing down is not always about fun or biking in the park. It's about having time for mental health and grieving too.

Beyond an individual pace of life, slowness can be a way to advocate for others. The slow food, slow fashion, slow design, or slow city movements have emphasized not only a slower pace, but a pace that's paired with ethical consumption and production-including better living wages, minimal environmental impact, and better quality of life.

Honoré has neighbors who have had the time to volunteer during the past year, and have told him that it's an activity they're going to continue. "A big part of slowing down is about creating the time and the space and the patience to build up relationships," Honoré said. "And not just friends, but also to be of service to other people."

And while those who were able to slow down the most remained the most privileged, the pandemic gave others the ability to access the kinds of social services that give people more autonomy over their time and busyness. There were larger and more substantive safety nets-like increased unemployment and eviction bans. (Petersen has framed this kind of support as a "permission structure.")

Other kinds of top-down policy approaches could maintain these revelations about busyness, so that individuals don't have to act on their own. Brunello Cucinelli, an Italian entrepreneur, mandates a sit-down hour and a half lunch, and requires his employees to leave at 5 p.m. Or take "right to disconnect" laws in France, where workers don't have to respond to work emails on weekends, or after a certain time on weekdays. If policy enables (or forces) people to slow down, then it doesn't matter if busyness is overhauled completely as a social signal-the system will demand it.

Will these changes stick? Or will we go right back to worshipping busyness at the cost of everything else? Bellezza isn't as optimistic about deceleration replacing busyness as the leading social status signal, but she acknowledged that when she started studying busyness, there wasn't any discussion about deceleration at all. She's glad it's entered the conversation, and tries to practice deceleration in her own life.

Steven Taylor, a senior lecturer in psychology at Leeds Beckett University who studies post-traumatic growth, said that because the pandemic brought death and mortality to the fore, it made people reevaluate their relationships, and what they wanted out of life. Taylor feels hopeful that if enough people change their value systems, that will enact larger change.

"Social systems can change," he said. "They're influenced by the people who live within that system. Changes in attitudes lead to changes in behavior. And both attitudes and behavioral changes lead to changes in social structures." If leisure and shorter workdays were once valued, it's possible we could value them again.

And during post-traumatic transformations, one change that Taylor has observed is that people are less interested in work. "They love to spend their time doing nothing in particular, just enjoying being in the moment and being alive in the world," he wrote in the Conversation.

Clarke said she's soon moving back to New York City after a year of being away. She said that while she's excited to be closer to friends, restaurants, and city life, she wants to hang onto the good parts of slow. "I enjoy my slow mornings, and some slower work days that allow me to escape to the grocery store or for a walk outside," she said.

"Don't get me wrong-I still have days where I am booked solid from 9:30 a.m. through 6:30 p.m.," Clarke said. "But I have a whole new perspective on being busy, and I understand now that you don't have to be slammed to be considered valuable."
Follow Shayla Love on Twitter.

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A life of leisure was once the aspiration of the upper class. But now, bragging about busyness is how people indicate their status. Could a pandemic change the way busyness is glorified?

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Article: How Busyness Became the New Status Symbol

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Article: How Busyness Became the New Status Symbol

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"All of this has helped usher in an environment where long work hours have become a status symbol; a way for individuals to demonstrate their worth. In the past, working hard in economic systems that were mostly based on less-skilled agriculture and manufacturing may have been perceived as virtuous; but it may not have implied an individual was in high demand. But long hours of work and busyness today do."

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How Busyness Became the New Status Symbol

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Historically, working long hours didn’t generate admiration. So what gives? And are we nearing a “leisure renaissance”?