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Could Children Obtain Benefits by Learning to Meditate Early in Their Life? 

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Could Children Obtain Benefits by Learning to Meditate Early in Their Life? 

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Subject Expertise: The Brain, The Story of You by David Eagleman 

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Subject Expertise: The Brain, The Story of You by David Eagleman 

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David Eagleman takes us on a journey into the workings of the brain. Explaining some of the extensive activities that the brain undertakes.

In chapter one, the development of the brain is brought up. How do we tackle this? Stating that the surroundings and experiences of each individual are what molds their behaviors and personalities. As we grow, we don't have much control over our influences. Especially as children, we can't control what happens to and around us. This could negatively impact who we will be in the future.

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Locked in the silence and darkness of your skull, your brain fashions the rich narratives of your reality and your identity. Join renowned neuroscientist David Eagleman for a journey into the questions at the mysterious heart of our existence. What is reality? Who are "you"? How do you make decisions? Why does your brain need other people? How is technology poised to change what it means to be human? In the course of his investigations, Eagleman guides us through the world of extreme sports, criminal justice, facial expressions, genocide, brain surgery, gut feelings, robotics, and the search for immortality.

"A magical, mystical tour of the brain showing how life shapes your brain and your brain shapes your life." - Parade

"He is a gifted educator with considerable communication skills... Eagleman is a convincing tour guide, and his unstated goal of being an ambassador of neuroscience - a public intellectual taking on subject matter some may consider too esoteric or controversial for widespread dissemination - is laudable in a time when so much new knowldge may prove valuable to society." - Neurology Today

"In the fine tradition of Carl Sagan, Eagleman shows that science is captivating without hyped embellishment, and, if you pay attention, you'll find yourself immersed in it." - Forbes

"An ideal introduction to how biology generates the mind.... structured around crucial and wide-ranging questions, saturated with personal and social relevance. And Eagleman's answers are consistently clear, engaging and thought-provoking." - Nature

"An intellectual thrill-ride. Plus, Eagleman isn't merely a brilliant guide, he can turn a phrase, too." - Newsday

"The show and its companion book by Eagleman, "The Brain: The Story of You," are testaments to the neuroscientist's fervent belief in the relevance of his field to ordinary people." - NY Magazine

"This ranks as the most fascinating and unsettling science series of the year, setting out the state of contemporary research into the human brain in terms that any interested layperson can comprehend." - OC Register

"David Eagleman's wide-ranging roundup of the current state of knowledge about the brain is concise, accessible and often very surprising. It's a strange new world inside your head." - Brian Eno

"David Eagleman's The Brain its an astonishing read. On every page there is a revelation so fantastic as to make one gasp. It would be impossible to take in if we didn't all possess that impossibly extraordinary thing, a brain. Eagleman comes closer than anyone to solving the mystery of how to find the self inside the grey electric mush between our ears." - Stephen Fry

"David Eagleman makes it easy to comprehend the most complex collection of cells in the Cosmos - our brain. If neuroscience had a rock legend this would be him." - Ruby Wax

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Brain and Behavior: A Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective addresses the central aims of cognitive neuroscience, seeking to examine the brain not only by its components but also by their functions. It highlights the principles, discoveries, and remaining mysteries of modern cognitive neuroscience.

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Subject Expertise: Review and Meta-Analysis - Use of Meditation and Cognitive Behavioral Therapies for Students

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Subject Expertise: Review and Meta-Analysis - Use of Meditation and Cognitive Behavioral Therapies for Students

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Many aspects cause children starting at the educational stage to start feeling negative emotions, but meditation helps decrease this feeling and obtain a better way to adapt to hard situations.
"Due to evidence on the emergence of problems at an early age, primary care should be encouraged during early childhood stages to avoid these problems during adolescence and adulthood."

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Use of Meditation and Cognitive Behavioral Therapies for Students (2019)

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Subject Expertise: Twenty-Year in Diagnosed Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Among US Children and Adolescents

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Subject Expertise: Twenty-Year in Diagnosed Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Among US Children and Adolescents

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The prevalence of ADHD on children and adolescents is analyzed. From the year 1997 to 2016. Concluding in a noticeable increase.
"Among US children and adolescents aged 4 to 17 years, the estimated prevalence of diagnosed ADHD was 10.2% in 2015-2016, representing a significant increase in prevalence from 1997-1998."

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Meditation seems like a gateway to a path we did not know we had. Because I am a mother, I want to help my daughters have a good relationship with themselves, so I embark on a journey to learn all I can about this topic.
If this mindful practice has scientifically shown an improvement on the adult brain. What mind-blowing benefits could it have on children?

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Implementing a meditation practice was not easy nor a direct path. We initiated with one type of meditation, but Loving Kindness" seemed like it was more necessary for my daughters at the time

"Picture yourself in a moment when you were struggling, and now we will send this glowing energy of love."

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Societal Position: VOX - Is Mindfulness Meditation Good for Kids? 

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Societal Position: VOX - Is Mindfulness Meditation Good for Kids? 

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Even though meditation practices sound promising, there is still much to discover.
"Mindfulness is basically harmless, but it is not for all kids."

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Is mindfulness meditation good for kids? Here’s what the science actually says.

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Meditation is meant to help students deal with stress. But the hype is outpacing the evidence.

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Subject Expertise: Three Ways for Children to Try Meditation at Home

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Subject Expertise: Three Ways for Children to Try Meditation at Home

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This article from the NYT is about ways to try meditation, how to introduce it to children in a simple manner.
I used the practice "Elevator Down" as my special experience at first.

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There are many apps, classes and books to guide children in meditation, but it is easy (and free) to start at home. You don't need props like chimes or incense. The more meditation becomes integrated into daily living, the more successful it will be. Here are some exercises to try.

1. Elevator down. Imagine an elevator going down three floors. (Older children may prefer to imagine more floors.) Imagine now that the elevator is in your body. When you are sitting, imagine the top floor is from your head to your chest. The next floor is from your chest to your belly, and the third from your belly to your seat.

Begin at the crown of your head. On your next exhale mentally chant "three" as you imagine the elevator lowering from your crown to your chest. Pause for an inhale. When the doors open, imagine your breath coming in and freshening up the elevator, the way opening a window brings a fresh breeze into the room. On the next exhale, mentally chant "two." Imagine going down another flight to your belly. Continue to the ground floor, chanting "one." Pause and feel your seat on the ground floor and enjoy landing fully.

2. Finger-counting breaths. This is a useful do-anywhere exercise for the middle of the day to calm a child who is having a meltdown at a birthday party or just to re-center. Create gentle fists with your hands, and with each breath, unfurl a finger from your palm. For example, on your first exhale open your left thumb from your fist. Pause and enjoy an inhale. On your next exhale, unfurl your left index finger. Pause and enjoy an inhale. Continue until you have two open palms on your lap.

Sometimes we "om" for each finger unfurled, or use a personal mantra that evokes the feeling we are looking for, like peace, love, quiet, calm or relax. When children make up the mantra, it helps them have self-awareness of what they may need, as well as how they can take charge of how they want to feel.

3. Deep breaths before bed. Take a deep breath in through the nose, and on the exhale chant out loud: "three" (thrreee). Enjoy another deep in-breath, and on the next exhale, chant "two" (twwooo). Take a last deep breath in and exhale, chanting: "one" (onnee). Relax for a few breaths, and enjoy feeling your body sitting or lying on the floor or your bed. Repeat if desired.

To learn why meditation can be so important for children, read The Mindful Child.
Jillian Pransky is the director of therapeutic yoga teacher training for YogaWorks and the mother of a 12-year-old. Her debut wellness book is scheduled to be published in fall 2017.

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Three Ways for Children to Try Meditation at Home

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There are many apps, classes and books to guide children in meditation, but it is easy (and free) to start at home. You don't need props like chimes or incense. The more meditation becomes integrated into daily living, the more successful it will be. Here are some exercises to try.

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Societal Position: VICE - Meditation is a Powerful Mental Tool, and for Some it Goes Terribly  Wrong

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Societal Position: VICE - Meditation is a Powerful Mental Tool, and for Some it Goes Terribly  Wrong

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Can meditation cause harm? This article interviews people who had adverse effects on meditation. The reasons are still unknown but it presents a need to continue investigating on the topic. To have a clearer understanding of its effects.
"More than 75 percent of research studies on meditation aren’t measuring or monitoring adverse effects."

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"I just felt shattered. I had a job, a wife, and two beautiful children, and yet I felt that I would never experience joy again."

The most exciting stories on the internet.

Welcome to Wellness Lies, our list of the most pervasive misfires in the effort to feel and look better. We asked the experts and consulted the best science on all the questions you have about each of these wellness fads. Read the whole list and share with your most misinformed friends and family members.

Last November, on the Monday before Thanksgiving, David* was sitting in traffic on his drive home from work. He was suddenly overwhelmed by the realization that everything he experienced was filtered through his brain, entirely subjective, and possibly a complete fabrication.

"Not a unique or deep thought to be sure, but I felt the world drop out from under me and experienced panic-and a certainty that, if I chose to, I could go insane at that very moment," he tells me. He rolled down the window, turned on the radio, and carefully made his way home.

That night, he couldn't fall asleep. He would get very tired, come close to nodding off, and then a jolt of energy would shock him awake. "I was very shaken, suffering chest tension and nausea," he says. "This continued unabated for six days during which I estimate I slept for a total of six hours. On Sunday evening I went to the emergency room."

David had a hunch about what had caused his panic attack: his meditation practice.

He had begun meditating in August 2017. His gateway was a book, The Mind Illuminated by John Yates, and then Daniel Ingram's Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha. He took to it easily. In the first week, he could meditate for about 30 minutes a day, and a month later had a regular practice of two 60-minute sits a day-once in the morning, and once in the evening.

"One thing that I did notice-and this is much clearer in retrospect-is that I was becoming withdrawn," he says. "I started to lose interest in life a bit. I stopped playing guitar, I stopped listening to music, and cooking for my family started to feel more like a chore."

David stopped meditating almost immediately, but he didn't get better. His insomnia was barely manageable with medication, and he continued to struggle with generalized anxiety during the day.

"I would have nausea, stomach and chest pain, and a feeling of existential dread," he says. "My emotional world essentially shut down. I just felt shattered. I had a job, a wife, and two beautiful children, and yet I felt that I would never experience joy again."

Isn't meditation supposed to be the old practice that's going to cure us of our modern woes? Aside from offering a somewhat secular way to engage in spirituality, meditation is also said to be rooted in science, with empirical evidence backing up its benefits to health. There are mindfulness-based interventions being applied to stress, addiction, chronic pain, mood disorders, psychiatric disorders, and other medical conditions, all with promising results. iTunes is filling up with meditation and mindfulness apps. Mindfulness could even fix your sex life.

Amid all the-often legitimate-hype, sometimes meditation goes wrong. For a minority of people who try it, meditation can lead to enduring changes in personality and mood. As mindfulness meditation and other varieties seep into many areas of life and health, and especially as more people do it on their own, a small group of experts and civilians are pointing out that it does not always do good for the human psyche.

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Willoughby Britton, the director of the clinical and affective neuroscience laboratory at Brown University, runs a support group for people like David-people for whom meditation has caused a psychological and physical crisis. Each week, she gets more emails from people who are struggling, asking for her help. "I'm seeing a lot of casualties," she says.

The group connects online, where people of all ages and backgrounds across nine time zones come together and find solace in the company of others who are also suffering from the negative side effects of meditation.

More than 75 percent of research studies on meditation aren't measuring or monitoring adverse effects, Britton tells me. Last year, she published the largest study on meditation-related problems, interviewing 100 meditation teachers and other meditators who had personal knowledge of such issues.

In that study, and a followup study she's working on now, she tells me there were some common symptoms. There's hyper-arousal: Increases in anxiety, fear, panic, insomnia, trauma flashbacks, and emotional instability. There can also be sensory hypersensitivity, or sensitivity to light and sound. At first, it might be pleasant. Colors get brighter. A person starts noticing more things. "When that keeps going, then suddenly sounds are really irritating, or you can't leave your house because you hear everything and it's really distracting," she says.

The pendulum can swing the other way, and a person can experience hypo-arousal. This can look like dissociation or disembodiment. A person will feel like they're outside of their body, or that they can't feel their body, or that they don't have a body at all. "People describe a loss of emotion beyond what they wanted, and loss of motivation or enjoyment of things," Britton tells me.

Around ten years ago, she started Cheetah House, which specializes in taking care of meditators in distress. (Its name is a play on the Pali and Sanskrit word citta, which means "mind.") Britton gets referrals from meditation centers, meditation teachers, and now apps as well, which she describes as "the new frontier of completely unsupervised meditation in mass quantities." (Headspace and Calm did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.)

Needless to say, Britton feels wary about our growing tendency to dole out meditation like a generic multivitamin. "I don't see that the programs or the apps or people who are teaching it are taking responsibility for these people," she says. "If they're calling me, then they're not getting the help they need from the people who are teaching them."

It's been well-documented that meditation can lead to troubling sensations-Buddhist traditions have often referred to the varying effects of meditation. "The term nyams refers to a wide range of 'meditation experiences'-from bliss and visions to intense body pain, physiological disorders, paranoia, sadness, anger and fear," Britton writes in a 2017 paper. "Zen traditions have also long acknowledged the possibility for certain practice approaches to lead to a prolonged illness-like condition known as 'Zen sickness' or 'meditation sickness.'"

Some meditators refer to it as " The Dark Night," though the phrase is co-opted from the Roman Catholic meditative tradition, wrote Shinzen Young, a mindfulness teacher and neuroscience consultant who works with universities.

"It is certainly the case that almost everyone who gets anywhere with meditation will pass through periods of negative emotion, confusion, disorientation, and heightened sensitivity to internal and external arisings," he wrote on his blog in 2011. "This phenomenon, within the Buddhist tradition, is sometimes referred to as 'falling into the Pit of the Void.' It entails an authentic and irreversible insight into Emptiness and No Self. What makes it problematic is that the person interprets it as a bad trip. Instead of being empowering and fulfilling, the way Buddhist literature claims it will be, it turns into the opposite. In a sense, it's Enlightenment's Evil Twin."

Young argues that for most people, the experience is manageable through guidance from a competent teacher, and though it might take months or years to get through, the end result is "almost always highly positive." But for those who pick up the practice casually, "falling into the Pit of the Void" isn't necessarily what they signed up for.

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31-year-old Patrick* from Tennessee read Wherever You Go, There You Are, by Jon Kabat-Zinn, and borrowed the accompanying audio-guided meditations from his local library. He listened to the CDs, which guided him through breathing and body-scan meditations.

"I would say probably four or five days a week I was doing half an hour to 45 minutes, and I was almost never not meditating for a day," he tells me. "I hit almost every day for like seven weeks."

Sometimes while he was meditating, he would feel a vertigo-type feeling, or like he was looking at one of those Magic Eye posters. He says he was feeling overall less stressed -about everything. "It's like I figured out how to get around living and having problems," he says. "So it was really positive at first."

Then, when his girlfriend would tell him about problems at work, he'd look down from, what he calls, "cloud nine" and think, "Well, I can't really relate to this." He started to worry that if he kept meditating, he would become a zombie. "Am I not going to be able to relate to people and their stresses?" he asked himself.

Around March 2018, things started to change. He began feeling highly emotional, crying a lot, and dealing with intrusive thoughts. He developed an obsession with the idea of trauma, and the idea that he had a repressed memory. He thought if he felt this terrible, there must have been something in his past that he didn't remember making him feel this way.

He began to catalog everything he had ever done that he was ashamed or embarrassed about, revealing any secret he'd ever held close. "I was looking for the meaning of why I felt so bad," he says. "Why did I feel so unlike myself? Why did I feel so upset, or guilty, or negative?"

The thoughts didn't feel like his own, and yet he couldn't release them. He started to see doctors after finding Britton's support group. The first therapist he saw told him that meditation couldn't possibly have caused his problems. He sought out alternative clinicians, and more than $1,000 in medical expenses later, he found some relief doing cognitive behavioral therapy, and is currently seeing an acupuncturist. He has given up meditation completely.

Nick*, a 25-year-old from Minnesota, got into meditation after he read Waking Up: A Guide To Spirituality Without Religion, by Sam Harris. He downloaded the app Calm and began doing guided meditations at home. In the fall of 2016, he went on a ten-day meditation retreat. "Ultimately, I made it through and it was a really life-changing experience," Nick tells me. Last summer, he began to volunteer at the retreat, meditating three to four hours a day. Earlier this year, in March, he decided to go on another ten-day retreat. "I didn't see how it could ever go wrong because I'd been on one before," he says.

Rebecca Semmens-Wheeler, a psychology lecturer at Birmingham City Unity in the UK who studies hypnosis and meditation, thinks that contemporary trends seem to have led to a cherry-picked approach to the meditation tradition. The purpose of mindfulness is not to make you dissociated, she argues, and our over-focus on one type could be what's leading to complications.

"It's very confusing to the consumer, but it's also really problematic from a research perspective when you're trying to figure out what mindfulness does to the brain, or what kind of psychological effect mindfulness has," Britton says. "There are a lot of different types of practices, sometimes with the same name."

Richard Davidson, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the founder and director of the Center for Healthy Minds, is widely known for his work on the benefits of meditation and other contemplative practices. He emphasizes to me at the outset of our phone call that he respects Britton both as a scientist and a practitioner. "I believe that she is doing a useful service by calling attention to these potential issues," he tells me. "I think they've done a good and careful job."

But, he also thinks that many people who have adverse effects had a pre-existing vulnerability that was exacerbated by their meditation practice. "I think that it underscores the importance for individuals who have had struggles with mental illness, and are interested in meditation, to do it in the care of a mental health practitioner who also is a meditation practitioner," he says. "There aren't that many of those people, unfortunately."

If you were interested in learning another complex skill, like playing the violin, he asks me, wouldn't you seek out a teacher? Perhaps. But we live in an age where people turn to the internet for everything. I could probably learn the violin through YouTube videos and apps. Nonetheless, he says, when it comes to meditation, a practice that alters your mind, it's time to be more cautious.

"I certainly understand the disposition to want to find a shortcut, or get there quickly, but the fact is that if you really want to undertake the learning of a new skill, a particularly complex skill, having an expert guide you is really important," he says.

When people have bad side effects from meditating alone, Davidson says, it's hard to know what they were doing that caused the harm. "I think that many of the people who are having difficulty and who are reporting that their problems are exacerbated by meditation are not meditating correctly, to put it simply and coarsely," he says. "Some might even say that they're not meditating. That they think they're meditating, but they're not really meditating."

Britton tells me that Davidson's position is a common one: That this only happens to people with pre-existing vulnerabilities. Maybe David was practicing too much, incorrectly, or Patrick was doing it incorrectly without supervision.

"I hear that all the time, sometimes even describing my research," she says. "I want to make very clear that that is not what we're finding. We have found exceptions to all of these things. People in our study were meditation teachers themselves and were doing the practices correctly, under supervision of other very, very well-known teachers, and many of them, almost half, did not have a psychiatric or trauma history."

For more advice on how to deal with anxiety and other mental health stuff-plus stories from real people's lives-sign up for our weekly newsletter,_ Coping_ .

The people who reached out to me from Britton's support group all asked for their identities to be protected. They didn't want their peers, bosses, teachers or families to find out they had suffered so intensely from a practice most consider healing. "Mindfulness is really seen as a positive end-all/cure-all," Sofia** tells me. "A panacea. Everyone who does it boasts about its benefits. Having it be public that for me it actually exacerbated my symptoms would bring a lot of shame and guilt. It makes me feel like an outsider."

Sofia was 22 when her friend told her about a meditation retreat that was going to "change her life." She had dabbled a little in meditation before, and had a healthy yoga practice, so decided to go in the summer of 2016.

It felt like being on the edge of insanity. "My nervous system was tied in knots, completely losing touch with self and reality and very caught in this nihilistic void where things were happening and I couldn't discern boundaries," he says. "I was terrified to tell anybody because I was terrified to find out what it might be. I was also terrified that I might get locked up if I was truly honest about my experience."

When Mike came across Britton's research and connected with her, he was able to change his perspective. Instead of viewing his symptoms as a step in the path towards ultimate enlightenment, he started to think about how his nervous system was responding to the practice. As a science student, this resonated with him. It helped him realize how crucial personal connections were to him.

"That's what's most important to me, is my experience of two separate beings connecting in that special kind of way," he says. His symptoms improved a lot when he stopped meditating and started taking his need for social interaction seriously again, rather than noting them and letting them go.

I've been told to seek out meditation or mindfulness for nearly every medical problem I face- Generalized anxiety, insomnia, gastrointestinal issues, OCD-and plenty of non-medical ones too, like mindful eating or mindful running. In many cases, it has helped. I meditate before going to sleep; acknowledging anxious thoughts, and then letting them go can, can make anxiety feel a lot better. How do we grapple with when this type of practice works, when it doesn't, and when it will hurt?

"I do realize these practices remain beneficial to people," Mike tells me. "Some people will do this their whole life and just experience the positive aspects and the fleeting experiences of no self and they don't get into this kind of territory. But I do worry about spreading a technology of mind that is designed to deconstruct the self."

What all the researchers and meditators can find common ground in, perhaps, and what's ignored by the deluge of meditation apps and casual recommendations is this: Meditation is powerful. It's a skill not to be taken lightly, and in the right circumstance can provide incredible benefit, and in others, harm.

Because meditation types are grouped together without discrimination, we don't know enough about each type and its effects on the brain. "There are literally hundreds of different kinds of meditation practices," Davidson says, "only a very small variety of which have been seriously studied scientifically, and have been championed in Western popular culture. One of the important challenges and tasks in modern research is to be able to specify with more precision what kinds of practices may be best for which kinds of people."

In Britton's perfect world, mindfulness could be a tool that people use to get a sense of what their baseline levels are. I tell her about how I have OCD, and one of my obsessions leads to hyperawareness of my body. I definitely don't need to turn the dial up on my attention to what's going on with me physically. Does that mean I can't meditate? Not at all. But it might mean that if I do a specific kind of meditation that increases interoception too much-like, say, the kind where you scan your body and take stock of every little sensation going on from head to toe-I might end up with adverse side effects. Instead, I could look for a practice that trains exteroception, which is noticing what's around me and outside of me.

"That would be my ideal sort of mindfulness program, would be to have multiple dimensions of different processes; use your own mindfulness or your monitoring skills to understand where you are, and then know which practices are going to get you to a more optimal level of each one," Britton says. "Everybody's going to be different."
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The Wellness Trend That Can Cause Psychological Damage

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"I just felt shattered. I had a job, a wife, and two beautiful children, and yet I felt that I would never experience joy again." The most exciting stories on the internet. Welcome to Wellness Lies , our list of the most pervasive misfires in the effort to feel and look better.

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Societal Position: The Guardian - One of San Francisco's Toughest Schools Transformed by the Power of Meditation

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Societal Position: The Guardian - One of San Francisco's Toughest Schools Transformed by the Power of Meditation

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"In the first year of Quiet Time suspensions at Visitacion Valley ... were reduced by 45%"
This article from The Guardian shows that implementing meditation at school has had great success. Improving the kids' behavior towards each other as well as their grades. Meditation proves that it helps overcome challenging situations, not by fixing the problems themselves, but instead by not allowing hardships to take too much space in the brain.

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here was a time when Visitacion Valley middle school in San Francisco could have featured in a gritty US crime drama. Surrounded by drugs and gang violence, the kids were stressed out and agitated. One day children came in to find three dead bodies dumped in the schoolyard. "In 2006 there were 38 killings in our neighbourhood," says Barry O'Driscoll, the school's head of physical education (PE). He says the lives of students were infected by violence in the community, and several fights would break out every day.

In 2007 a meditation programme called Quiet Time was brought in to meet some of these challenges. "When I first heard about it I thought it probably wasn't going to work," says O'Driscoll. "We get thrown a new thing every couple of years so I didn't put too much faith in it." But in April, just a month after meditation began, teachers noticed changes in behaviour. "Students seemed happy," says O'Driscoll. "They worked harder, paid more attention, were easier to teach and the number of fights fell dramatically."

In the first year of Quiet Time suspensions at Visitacion Valley - which has 500 students aged 11-13 - were reduced by 45% (pdf). By 2009-10, attendance rates were over 98% (some of the highest in the city), and today 20% of graduates are admitted to the highly academic Lowell high school - before it was rare for even one student to be accepted. Perhaps even more remarkable, last year's California Healthy Kids Survey from the state's education department found that students at Visitacion Valley middle school were the happiest in the whole of San Francisco.

A lot has changed over this period, including three principals coming and going, but O'Driscoll puts the turnaround down to the one constant: the calming influence of the meditation programme. "It's provided a lot of stability to our school, helping staff and kids get through the stress they have in their lives."

The impressive results have led to more schools in the city introducing the programme. But Quiet Time took years to develop. Its origins are in the 1990s when two Silicon Valley investors - Jeff Rice and Laurent Valosek - developed a programme to teach meditation in public schools, inspired by the tragic Columbine high school massacre. "After the shooting, the usual culprits were blamed: guns, violent movies and video games," says Rice. "But no one touched on the real problem - stress."

So the privately funded non-profit Center for Wellness and Achievement in Education (CWAE) was set up. When they started everyone said it would be impossible to get 12-year-olds to sit for even a minute, but through transcendental meditation (TM) they proved critics wrong.

The programme, introduced to all ages, sees students sit for 15 minutes of meditation twice a day. Classes take place at students' desks after the qualified TM teacher rings a bell. Students then repeat a personal mantra (a word from Sanskrit, the ancient Indian language) in their heads until they reach a deep feeling of relaxation. Sometimes the whole school meets to meditate in assemblies.

Before the students learn to meditate, the Quiet Time programme requires all staff to be trained in TM. O'Driscoll was sceptical at first about mediating himself, but since giving it a try he can concentrate better and feels less stressed.

The teacher has also seen dramatic transformations in his students. Eighth grader Stacy* has been meditating since she joined the school three years ago. "She used to have trouble at home and get into fights with her family," says O'Driscoll. "Once Quiet Time started, she mellowed out and started getting along with people." Stacy's academic performance has also improved - she's in the top 5% of the class.

But adopting the programme isn't without it's challenges. To do it properly Visitacion Valley middle school made the day 30 minutes longer. Other schools have taken a few minutes off lunch and tutorials.

As for getting the children to start meditating, O'Driscoll says the biggest hurdle was getting them to feel comfortable with their eyes closed. "They thought their classmates would be making fun of them, staring at them, maybe possibly even hitting them," he says. Once the students got over that, they were open to trying to meditate.

O'Driscoll also says that leadership buy-in is essential for the programme to work as there needs to be support in terms of time and resourcing. It's also important to start small. "Don't just throw it into 2,000 schools," he says. "Start with one class or year and let it grow from there."

The UK has already started experimenting with meditation: 400 secondary schools offer programmes like the Dot B mindfulness meditation programme, which tends to take place once a week in personal, social, health education (PSHE) class. An all-party parliamentary group has also recommended the Department for Education designate three schools to pioneer mindfulness teaching, and set up a £1m fund to allow more schools to benefit from support in the practice.

In the outside world, TM has been criticised for the price-tag it comes with; the programme at Visitacion Valley costs $280,000 (£185,128) a year - paid for mainly through private donations to CWAE. That funds four and a half (full-time equivalent) Quiet Time staff on site to teach the classes and support students. Rice says they use TM because it takes those who do it to a deep level of relaxation, and it's easy for children to learn. But he admits that "it takes a big time commitment in resources and attention commitment to do this. And that's one of the challenges."

However, Swarana Patel, a teacher in a north London secondary school where behaviour is often an obstacle, can see the benefits of a more intensive programme like this. "A lot of the kids have deep anger issues or problems focusing," she says. "Maybe having half an hour just to focus on themselves so they get awareness and grounding, might have some impact."

And it could help reduce costs later. "Young people are incredibly stressed," says Michael Matania who teaches mindfulness meditation to young people in London through a programme called Mindkit. "There's an explosion of mental health problems among young people and it's going to be incredibly expensive to treat in the future. It's much cheaper to focus on prevention and building resilience, and mindfulness is the single best tool that you could possibly give them."

As for Visitacion Valley middle school, the area around it is still violent, but now the children are not as affected by it. "We might get verbal disagreements, but the kids are able to talk through it and move on instead of punching each other," says O'Driscoll, adding that the last fist fight at the school was three years ago. "It's very peaceful here now."
*The name of one student has been changed.
This article was amended on Wednesday 25 November to clarify that Visitacion Valley middle school funds Quiet Time mostly through private donations to CWAE.

The international lessons in education series is sponsored by eTwinning, which is managed by the British Council in the UK. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled "brought to you by". Find out more here.

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One of San Francisco's toughest schools transformed by the power of meditation

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here was a time when Visitacion Valley middle school in San Francisco could have featured in a gritty US crime drama. Surrounded by drugs and gang violence, the kids were stressed out and agitated. One day children came in to find three dead bodies dumped in the schoolyard.

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"Loving Kindness" is a meditation practice that works on the value of love and empathy. It involves sharing love mentally with anyone you chose. Enforcing qualities like compassion.
"guides children to send their positive and healing energy to people and kids in other places. It cuts across all cultural barriers, economic statuses, educational backgrounds and geographic locations."

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With the advent of the recent tragedy in Japan, and now military involvement in Libya - children often feel powerless and sad hearing about other kids in such situations. This is a healthy response. One way to nurture kid's positive emotional health and sense of power in this situation is to teach them how to use their mind.
Loving-kindness Meditation
One way to teach kids about the power of their mind is through meditation. Meditation is no longer reserved for monks on mountaintops but can be a tool to use in everyday parenting. Some meditations are designed to calm a child's mind, raise their sense of mindfulness and expand their heart to others.

Specifically, a loving-kindness meditation is a certain type of meditation that guides children to send their positive and healing energy to people and kids in other places. It cuts across all cultural barriers, economic statuses, educational backgrounds and geographic locations. Kelley, a mother of two girls, guides her children nightly in a loving-kindness meditation. It goes something like this:

[Read by parent to child]

"Today, we are going to do something new. It's called a loving-kindness meditation where we send love and positive energy to parents and kids in other places.

You may leave your eyes open or closed - whatever is more comfortable for you.

First, think of something you REALLY love. It may be a puppy, playing on the swings, singing your favorite song or playing on the WEI system. Make sure you really FEEL that feeling. It is the feeling of a happy heart. Do you feel it? [Wait for a YES] Great!

Now, let's send that loving energy - picture it like a ball of light - to other living beings to help them feel loved and lift their spirits. Do you want to start with your friends? [Wait for a yes] Great! Let's name them, Kayla, Peter, Joey, Suzy, Sam and so on. Now, let's send this feeling of love to your family members like Grandma and Cousin Charlie. Let's name them together: Dad, Maria, Sister Sally, and so on... Great Job! Now, let's send those feel-good feelings to people in our community like teachers, and neighbors. Would you like to start? [Wait for YES, or get the "ball rolling" with teachers]. Name them...

You are so powerful and great at doing this that we can also together send our loving energy to other parents, kids and animals all over planet earth especially to those kids and people who need it most.

Let's send this loving and healing energy to: Kids all around the planet! Specifically, let's send love to kids that are hungry, sad, have tummy aches, are upset and need a friend - especially the kids in Japan where there was a tidal wave or tsunami. We can now do the same thing for parents everywhere - let's send our love to parents in the mountains, in the desert, in the valleys and on the beach. Specially, let's name places - like Egypt, China, Africa, Europe, United States, and especially places like Japan and Libya. These are where parents need extra love right now.

Wow, you are great at this! The last beings we will send love to tonight are the animals on planet Earth. Would you like to do this? [Wait for yes] Great! Let's start with dolphins, whales, hawks, butterflies, ladybugs, praying mantises, turtles and what else? Name them...

All of this loving energy you "put out" into the world through your mind is AMAZING. It has great power. You are full of light, love and power!

Good night."
Additional Suggestions
Guiding your child to use their mind as a "force for good" is a powerful lesson for them. The loving-kindness meditation helps them direct their mind, and simultaneously empowers them. It says that you are strong, capable and have power to send positive wishes - wishes that are as real as the chair you are sitting in - to other kids, parents, and animals around the globe. It is a good way with consistent practice (daily, weekly) to nurture your child's sense of inner power. Some other important points about making this part of your parenting program are:

Give your child a choice. It is important to never coerce or force your child to do this meditation after they learn it - but simply offer it as a choice, and if they say "not tonight" because they are cranky or sleepy, just kiss them and say good night.

Practice it yourself first. Become comfortable generating a feeling of loving-kindness in yourself, and sending it to others. Loving-kindness is the feeling and thought of unconditional love and compassion for all beings. By being able to do this yourself, it will help you genuinely and authentically guide your child to do the same.

Customize it for your child. Every child is different and making it powerful for your child is your role. You may do it as a bedtime ritual, Sunday morning practice, or something more creative with drawing love going to all the people, places and animals on planet Earth that need it. It really depends on what you think will "light up" your child and help them internalize a sense of their power.

Conclusion
The more we guide children to develop their internal qualities like love and compassion then send them to other kids around the globe - they develop a sense of their powerfulness versus powerlessness. The loving-kindness meditation shared above is one way that parents, teachers and adults can develop this deeper strength on a daily or weekly basis.

By Maureen Healy, founder of Growing Happy Kids

More information: www.growinghappykids.com, or www.twitter.com/mdhealy (to follow)

© 2011 All Rights Reserved. Please contact author for permission to reprint or use in any form ( contactus@growinghappykids.com)

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With the advent of the recent tragedy in Japan, and now military involvement in Libya - children often feel powerless and sad hearing about other kids in such situations. This is a healthy response. One way to nurture kid's positive emotional health and sense of power in this situation is to teach them how to use their mind.

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Subject Expertise: How MindfulnessChanges the Emotional Life of Our Brains

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Subject Expertise: How MindfulnessChanges the Emotional Life of Our Brains

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Neurologist Richard Davidson explains that scaling mental health issues and offers advice on having a healthier mind.
One of them is meditation. Showing promising data in adults' brains.
"This can be incorporated in routines of our daily life. So we can nourish our mind, and through it, we can change the world."

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How mindfulness changes the emotional life of our brains | Richard J. Davidson | TEDxSanFrancisco

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Subject Expertise: Dalai Lama Presentation: Mind and Life XXIV

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Subject Expertise: Dalai Lama Presentation: Mind and Life XXIV

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"In order to carry it objectively, we must know all the negative things and all the positive things. If we just talk about nice things and create illusions, those ordinary people have too many expectations. This way, they will completely lose their hope in this practice."

Britton brings up the results of her research for the negative effects of meditation in practitioners and teachers to The Dalai Lama. He acknowledges that it is necessary to be studied more before implementing it.

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Dalai Lama Presentation: Mind and Life XXIV

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Subject Expertise: The Dark Side of Meditation

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Subject Expertise: The Dark Side of Meditation

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Adults practicing meditation have had negative effects. The science behind the negative side of meditation is still missing.

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Subject Expertise: How The Brains of Master Meditators Change

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Subject Expertise: How The Brains of Master Meditators Change

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The augmentation of distracting factors is causing our ability to focus to decrease. Davidson explains how meditation is an urgent need to work the abilities to be attentive and fully present.
"attention is really absolutely fundamental to all other forms of learning and the fact that we don't normally teach this to our children is just unconscionable."

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Richie Davidson has spent a lifetime studying meditation. He's studied it as a practitioner, sitting daily, going on retreats, and learning under masters. And he's pioneered the study of it as a scientist, working with the Dalai Lama to bring master meditators into his lab at the University of Wisconsin and quantifying the way thousands of hours of meditation changed their brains.

The word "meditation," Davidson is quick to note, is akin to the word "sports": It describes a huge range of pursuits. And what he's found is that different types of meditation do very different things to your brain, just as different sports trigger different changes in your body.

This is a conversation about what those brain changes are, and what they mean for the rest of us. We discuss the forms of meditation Westerners rarely hear about, the differences between meditative and psychedelic states, the Dalai Lama's personality, why elite meditators end up warmhearted and joyous rather than cold and detached, whether there's more value to meditating daily or going on occasional retreats, what happens when you sever meditation from the ethical frameworks it evolved in, and much more.

Listen to the full interview and subscribe to The Ezra Klein Show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts:

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How the brains of master meditators change

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Richie Davidson has spent a lifetime studying meditation. He's studied it as a practitioner, sitting daily, going on retreats, and learning under masters. And he's pioneered the study of it as a scientist, working with the Dalai Lama to bring master meditators into his lab at the University of Wisconsin and quantifying the way thousands of hours of meditation changed their brains.

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Subject Expertise: The Single Most Important Skill Needed Today

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Subject Expertise: The Single Most Important Skill Needed Today

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What if we did have control over our brains, and we were just never shown how to? Dr. Shyam Bhat sparks a curiosity in my mind when he mentions that we can connect to our subconscious.
He acknowledges, "The breath can connect us to the subconscious. A part of the mind we don't have much access to" meaning that meditation is the bridge between consciousness and subconsciousness.

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Meditation -  The Single Most Important Skill Needed Today | Dr. Shyam Bhat | TEDxLavelleRoad