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Science of Meditation

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"I actually never believed really in meditation. ... I thought it was a joke," she said during an interview.

That all changed one day back in September. While she was on her computer working and everyone else in her class was meditating, she just fell asleep sitting up. "When I woke up, I was like, 'What happened?' ... It just completely relaxed me."

Ever since then, every day before French class, she grabs a mat, lies on the floor and listens to her teacher, Violaine Gueritault, telling her and her classmates to clear their minds as she guides them through a process of relaxing each part of their body.

"It helps so much. It really does," said Lexxi, 18, who has been diagnosed with anxiety disorders. "I tend to be less anxious afterwards. Let's say I am having a real hard day at school and then I go to French and we meditate for 10 to 15 minutes, I feel so much better. No anxiety, no stress, just relaxed."

The guided meditations are all part of a fast growing trend in education, where more schools are providing mindfulness exercises to students and teachers in response to the enormous pressures students are facing.

The drive to get good grades and gain acceptance into elite colleges, combined with participation on sports teams and other after-school activities, and hours of homework mix together to make teenagers the most stressed group of people in America when school is in session, according to a 2014 American Psychological Association survey.

"A lot of it started when I started off as principal here. We had these forum meetings with the parents, and one of the patterns that came up over and over again was this idea of the great stress that the students were under," said Layne Millington, principal of Marblehead High School.

Gueritault, who is a psychologist and a passionate advocate of mindfulness, started offering morning meditation sessions two times a week before classes. "I thought a lot of students would make fun of the whole thing, and boy was that a surprise," she said. Instead, the kids were very receptive and very eager. "It was incredible how quickly it snowballed," said the mom of two, ages 18 and 21. (Her daughter graduated from Marblehead High School last year.)

Gueritault said teachers spoke up and asked "What about us?" And so she started doing workshops for the teachers last spring -- workshops that are now being offered to teachers throughout the district.

Gueritault also taught mindfulness and meditation discovery to students in freshmen and junior year in three hourlong sessions as part of the school's wellness program. And just last week, the school opened what it calls a Zen Room, which will be offered daily from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., complete with yoga mats, blankets, tranquil music and soft lighting, staffed by teachers trained in mindfulness to guide the students during their study hall breaks.

The cost for all the programs, about $16,000, has been covered through grants from the Friends of Marblehead Public Schools and the Marblehead High School Parents' Council.

Students "are just craving for ways to handle and cope with their stress" in healthy and nondestructive ways, said Gueritault. "It becomes sort of like instinctive and intuitive for them to just search for alternative ways to cope with their stress that have nothing to do with drugs or alcohol or whatever destructive behavior."

Millington, who is in his third year as principal at the school, said the climate at the school is much better after implementing mindfulness. Students who participate seem much more relaxed and easier to talk to, and they can be more precise and more specific if there's something going on that they are concerned about, he said. For many kids today, they don't realize the stress they're under until something comes along and shows them, he added.

"I think that's the reason that the students are latching on to this because when they've had a chance to stop, think, breathe and really kind of feel where they're at, they know how much stress they're under finally and now that they are aware of it, they can try to do something about it," said Millington.

'It's really exploded'

The number of schools offering mindfulness to their students and the number of educators seeking to learn about the concept has "really exploded" over the past five years, said Dr. Dzung Vo, author of "The Mindful Teen: Powerful Skills to Help You Handle Stress One Moment at a Time."

"When I first started giving talks to schools or to doctors or to parents about mindfulness for teens, most people in the audience had never heard the word and now when I give talks, almost everyone has been hearing about it and quite a few people have actually experienced it for themselves, so it's just been phenomenal," said Vo, a pediatrician specializing in adolescent medicine at British Columbia's Children's Hospital and a clinical assistant professor at the University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine.

"It's taking off at schools around the country, public and private, low income, high income, middle income. Across the board, it's growing," said Patrick Cook-Deegan, who works with schools to develop and implement mindfulness programs. He also heads up an organization where he does one-on-one mentoring that includes mindfulness, with males 15 to 24.

"A large part of being a human being is having social, emotional and attention skills and in the majority of schools I visit, we don't actually teach kids how to pay attention or how to deal with their inner states in a healthy way. We just assume that they'll learn them somewhere else," said Cook-Deegan, who is also an education innovation fellow at the K12 Lab at Stanford's Institute of Design, which is known as the d.school.

While the research on the impact of mindfulness on teenagers is still relatively new and not as comprehensive as the research that has been done on adults, the results from preliminary studies are promising, said Vo.

Mindfulness has been shown to help students have better relationships and more positive behaviors and help them perform better at school, he said. A recent study found it can help students improve their memory. Mindfulness has also been shown to improve teens' physical health and their mental health, said Vo.

Gina Biegel is a psychotherapist and founder and director of Stressed Teens, which teaches mindfulness skills and provides tools for children in their preteen years and throughout adolescence. She conducted research on the effect of mindfulness-based stress reduction on adolescents 14 to 18 who were under psychiatric care or who had been so in the past.

What she and her fellow researchers found was a reduction in self-reported anxiety, depression, obsessive symptoms and interpersonal problems when teens were given mindfulness training.

Helping students let thoughts 'come and go'

"Mindfulness is another way of looking at life skills. It's really being present to what we're doing," said Biegel, who created an app for teens called Take a Chill and a "Be Mindful" card deck for teens, with 50 ways to be present in your life as it is taking place. What mindfulness does is it helps teens build "from the forces they already have within" and this can boost self-confidence and self-esteem, and lead them to be less focused on judgment, she said.

"If you look at how teens perceive things, perceive and appraise them as stressful, that shifts and changes" with mindfulness, she said.

For instance, something that might feel so stressful and important at that moment, such as "Oh my boyfriend and I broke up and we were going out for four weeks and that is the end of the world," may feel less important and stressful as they learn impermanence and how things change when they sit with them, and how they don't always have to react and respond, she said.

Over a semester of mindfulness training or during a retreat with teens, Cook-Deegan, the educator and speaker who is helping design a new purpose-based high school, said teens begin to notice their thoughts.

And then, you see them come to the realization of "'Oh, you can actually let thoughts come and go, you don't have to cling and hold on to them'," he said. "It's really powerful to watch students realize sometimes for the first time that they don't have to believe every thought that comes into their head."

When people started teaching mindfulness to teens, there was a lot of skepticism, said Vo, the pediatrician and author who teaches an eight-week mindfulness program for teenagers with depression, anxiety and other chronic illness, including chronic pain.

"People thought, 'Oh teenagers are too immature or they're not capable of learning something like mindfulness,' but my experience has been the complete opposite," said Vo.

He tells the story of a teenager who was around 16 and who was missing quite a bit of school and sports because of stomachaches. Through mindfulness, she learned that her stomachaches had a lot to do with her own stress and that she could actually practice mindfulness including short breathing exercises to help cope with her stress and anxiety. One day, when she started to feel sick and her stomach started to hurt, she practiced breathing for three minutes and she started to feel better.

For the rest of the course, she didn't miss a single day of school, which was a "real life-changing experience" for her, said Vo, who is also a board member of the Mindfulness in Education Network, which will be convening a conference in March for educators who are interested in bringing mindfulness to schools.

Today's teens, growing up in a social media world, also don't often realize how much stress all the technology and nonstop noise can cause, said Biegel, who will be taking her mindfulness curriculum to a different state each month beginning in April.

She tells the story of how after one session with teens, one girl had tears in her eyes. When she asked her if she was OK, the teen said, " 'I couldn't stand it. It was so silent in here.' And that was so powerful for me because I realized teens are really never in silence," said Biegel, who also works as a counselor with the Center for Developing Minds in Los Gatos, California.

"They never have this moment just to be with their thoughts, be with who they are and actually what that feels like, to learn how to be comfortable by yourself."

Helping schools be proactive, not reactive

At Woodrow Wilson High School in Portland, Oregon, a course on mindfulness, in conjunction with the nonprofit Peace in Schools, started being offered as an elective last year, said principal Brian Chatard. The school has experienced two suicides by students in the past four years, he said.

"It's just the reality of dealing with the mental and emotional health of teenagers is sort of a missing piece of high school curriculum, and, really, I think, is ... a mission of mine as a high school principal," said Chatard. "My job is to do more than to provide a strong academic program. The lives of these kids are in my hands and so finding outlets for them to know themselves better, to feel good about themselves, to learn strategies for dealing with stress and anxiety is superimportant to kids navigating high school well."

What mindfulness practices do, said Chatard, especially at a school such as Wilson that is very high-achieving, is it allows educators and counselors to give kids the tools to deal with issues such as body image, mental illness and the academic drive for success before those issues take on a dangerous dimension.

"What it has enabled us is a proactive approach to dealing with the issues that we only end up dealing with reactively, where kids are in crisis and we learn about it because they've attempted suicide or they've stopped coming to school for two weeks or a month or they're cutting themselves," said Chatard, who said he is committed to continuing to offer the program.

Malachi Rosen, another senior at Marblehead High School, started doing the mindfulness and meditation exercises this year, and has done them for about 10 minutes every day before the start of French class since the start of the year.

"Over time, despite being skeptical at first, I started to realize and notice the benefits," he said via email. "I have been a lot less stressed, my level of anxiety has gone down and my ability to focus becomes easier," which he said is "saying something" since he has a ton on his plate with school work, rehearsals for two a capella groups and a drama production, and working at a local coffee shop and at his temple.

"So to become less anxious and stressed on a daily basis is pretty awesome," wrote Rosen, who is 17.

Gueritault says her goal at Marblehead High School and now throughout the district is not to make the teens "expert meditators" but to expose them enough to mindfulness so that on their own, they can go and explore it further.

"What I'm interested in is for this experience to be a springboard for them, some sort of catalyst, just to open a door, to just make them aware that this exists and just to kind of like pique their curiosity," she said. "It's a lifelong skill."

Seay, the student who is suffering from anxiety disorders, said that when she starts college in the fall, she will either learn how to do mindfulness herself or find a class near her school.

"This has helped me so much in these five months that if I don't do it in college, I might explode," she said. "It's so nice."

Do you think more schools should incorporate mindfulness to help teens cope with stress? Share your thoughts with Kelly Wallace on Twitter @kellywallacetv or CNN Health on Twitter or Facebook.

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calming the teenage mind in the classroom  - cnn

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Calming the teenage mind in the classroom - CNN

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"I actually never believed really in meditation. ... I thought it was a joke," she said during an interview. That all changed one day back in September. While she was on her computer working and everyone else in her class was meditating, she just fell asleep sitting up.

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A couple of months ago, I arrived early to pick up my son at preschool. A few of his classmates were acting especially rowdy that day, and their teacher was trying to calm them down before handing them over to their parents. She rang a little bell and said, "Deep breath, everyone." They inhaled. They exhaled. It worked.

In another time I wouldn't have thought much of this. But these days, when meditation is increasingly being seen as way to gain a "competitive edge," a deep breath isn't always benign. Was my son being taught mindfulness?

My colleague Michelle Goldberg has written about the way mindfulness meditation morphed from a spiritual to a self-help practice, one that businesses use to make workers more productive and boost profits. In recent years, schools have increasingly turned to mindfulness as well, in order to improve children's behavior and ability to pay attention. When my son's teacher instructed those children to breathe, it revealed to me just how inescapable the great mindfulness monster's blubbery grip on our culture has become. I decided to look into how exactly schools are using mindfulness and whether I could free myself of the worry that this cult would shape my son into a shiny, corporation-ready humanoid.

Mindfulness is a secularized approach to Buddhist meditation in which practitioners learn to observe their thoughts and feelings and, if things go according to plan, achieve more control over them. In order to teach children mindfulness, teachers will instruct their classroom to spend a short amount of time sitting quietly and observing their breath and the pitter-patter of their minds. Later, the children might share these observations with their classmates. Many mindfulness curriculums also include lessons on cultivating gratitude and appreciation of one's senses; one popular method involves giving children two raisins and encouraging them to observe the differences between them-how they feel, smell, sound, and, eventually, taste.

Because there is no single group or institution overseeing mindfulness in education, nobody knows exactly how many teachers have incorporated these techniques into their classrooms or how they're doing it. The nonprofits MindUP and Mindful Schools say they've seen a steady increase in the number of teachers seeking their guidance in recent years; MindUP says it's reached 500,000 students around the world over the last decade, and Mindful Schools says it reached 300,000 in the U.S. in the past five years. These groups-along with the dozen or so other curriculums from other mindfulness-in-education startups that have sprouted up in recent years-say that mindfulness is a useful tool for counteracting rising levels of anxiety and depression among children. A number of studies, albeit small and often advocate-funded ones, back them up. One of the largest to date looked at the effectiveness of the Mindful Schools program on around 400 low-income, mostly minority elementary-school students. It found that after five weeks of regular mindfulness sessions, teachers reported that students became more focused, participatory, and caring. Another study from the United Kingdom found improvements in the mental health of students enrolled in a mindfulness program.

It's fairly intuitive that a moment of quiet and reflection during the day would provide some benefit to stressed-out children. Still, I suspected that mindfulness was just a symptom of how we overprogram our kids, not a corrective to it. We should be subtracting things from our kids' days before we start adding things in. Also, while some children might eagerly await an opportunity to observe their minds, others are bound to resist it. And another thing-what is the distinction between helping children to be "mindful" and simply getting them to sit still and behave?

When I talked to experts, though, I realized that at least some of my skepticism is misplaced. "Mindfulness is a way to stop the bleeding, and sometimes a Band-Aid does help," said Denise Pope, a senior lecturer at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education and co-author of Overloaded and Underprepared: Strategies for Stronger Schools and Healthy, Successful Kids. "This is something teachers can do immediately and isn't that difficult to implement. You get a lot of bang for your buck, and anyone who is against it isn't thinking clearly." While Pope concedes that mindfulness does add yet another item to teachers' and students' endless to-do lists, it's also something that teachers actually have control over, as opposed to extending recess or reducing standardized testing.

Many advocates share my concern that mindfulness can provide cover for controlling or disciplining children rather than providing them with relief from stress. In the recent undercover video from the Success Academy charter school, a teacher angrily commands a first-grader to "Go to the calm-down chair and sit"; at one Baltimore high school, teachers can send disruptive students to the "Mindful Moment Room." "Unfortunately, more schools are focusing on performance and grit rather than moral character," said Vicki Zakrzewski, education director of University of California, Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center. Zakrewski said that good programs balance the self-control side of mindfulness with its more prosocial aspects.

"What we don't want is for people to think of this as a way to shut kids up or get them to produce-that's how corporations are framing mindfulness' benefits, but it's not what we are trying to do," said Billy Bicket, director of strategic development at Mindful Schools. "What we want to do is give children tools to live more considerately."

So if one day my son comes home and tells me about the new mindfulness program at his school, I'll be fine with it. Although the evidence on mindfulness remains relatively scant, there's enough of it to suggest that some school-based meditation is far more likely to help my son than hurt him. Ultimately, I realized that it isn't mindfulness that scares me but the way in which its promises resemble those of unstructured moments-how easy it would be to see mindfulness as a replacement for unscripted activities like resting, daydreaming, and improvisation. It's not.

No matter how my son responds to meditation, I'm going to make sure his day affords him enough free time to figure out whatever it is that will bring him feelings of calm or grace. Maybe it's walking to the corner store with his dad. Maybe it's sitting on my lap and watching the sky turn to night. Maybe it's playing with Legos. Maybe it's meditation. Providing him with a chance to discover it is something I promise to be mindful about.

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Is Teaching Mindfulness in Schools Just a Way to Mold Shiny Corporate Humanoids?

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A couple of months ago, I arrived early to pick up my son at preschool. A few of his classmates were acting especially rowdy that day, and their teacher was trying to calm them down before handing them over to their parents. She rang a little bell and said, "Deep breath, everyone."

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James Woodcock, Billings Gazette/AP Photo

Each year, meditation becomes more of a trend. Celebrities like Jerry Seinfeld and Goldie Hawn, businessmen like Bill George of Goldman Sachs and Exxon Mobil, and News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch, have publicly discussed practicing it. Techies and others in the corporate world have begun using mindfulness, a type of meditation, to combat the stress and overstimulation of their jobs. Even the Marines have used it to "improve mental performance under the stress and strain from war."

At the same time, more and more studies are showing direct links between meditation and health benefits. A study led by researchers at John Hopkins found that just eight weeks of meditation training was as effective as medication in treating depression, anxiety, and pain. At Harvard, scientists using neuro-imaging technology showed how meditation positively affected the brain activity of the chronically stressed, a condition that the Benson-Henry Institute reports is related to more than 60 percent of all doctor's visits.

Schools have also begun experimenting with the practice and discovering that its techniques can help its students. When a school in New Haven, Connecticut, required yoga and meditation classes three times a week for its incoming freshman, studies found that after each class, students had significantly reduced levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, in their bodies. In San Francisco, schools that participated in Quiet Time, a Transcendental Meditation program, had twice as many students score proficient in English on the California Achievement Test than in similar schools where the program didn't exist. Visitacion Valley Middle School specifically reduced suspensions by 45 percent during the program's first year. Attendance rates climbed to 98 percent, grade point averages improved, and the school recorded the highest happiness levels in San Francisco on the annual California Healthy Kids Survey. Other studies have shown that mindfulness education programs improved students' self-control, attentiveness and respect for other classmates, enhanced the school climate, and improved teachers' moods.

These results did not surprise me. As a former teacher who now practices meditation myself, I've often wondered how I could have used the practice in my own classroom. The stress level of teaching seemed to bring out my already-existing anxiety in the worst kind of ways. I slept poorly, unable to stop rehearsing my lessons in my head. I got irritable with loved ones. I felt obsessed with saving time when there was so much to do and so much to teach to students who I feared were behind. My students noticed, too. On a survey, one wrote, "It seems like you're really tense"; another, "You can get easily frustrated with yourself."

Now looking back, Michael agrees that mindfulness practice was useful and appreciates the quiet environment the class provided: "Just having a good 45 minutes to not hear any noise and keep to yourself mentally actually helped me prepare for the next class periods. After yoga class, I would feel pretty rejuvenated."

Headstand's curriculum also tries to stay true to the original purpose of yoga and meditation by framing each class around positive character traits, like compassion and gratitude. Recently, some critics have coined the term "McMindfulness" to criticize the mindfulness movement's tendency to only focus on reducing stress while ignoring the practice's other key goals of compassion and social awareness. Critics want to ensure that programs emphasize being mindful not only for your own benefit, but for the benefit of others. This makes the character education aspect of Headstand's curriculum significant. Each unit focuses on a certain trait. A unit on "responsibility" is framed around questions like "What does it mean to accept personal responsibility?", "How does being irresponsible affect the people around you?" and "How are responsibility and power related?" A unit on gratitude discusses the idea of "taking something for granted." A unit on "curiosity" asks how curiosity can encourage social justice.

Kelly Knoche, a yoga teacher helping to develop social-emotional curricula in Oakland, thinks this emphasis on character is imperative to providing true education: "We think we're teaching kids how to thrive by focusing on academics. But we often miss teaching them the skills they need for daily life: how to build relationships with compassion, how to support each other, how to cope with trauma. Those are the kinds of skills that will eventually keep them going."

Headstand's emphasis on character education follows a trend that has gained momentum in urban education circles, particularly after the popularity of journalist Paul Tough's book How Children Succeed, based on his popular New York Times article. After dismal graduation statistics showed only nine percent of low-income students who enter a four-year college actually graduate, Tough's book theorized that the character traits of college students, even more than their academic skills, could predict whether they succeeded or not. Headstand's curriculum builds off of the seven traits that Tough argues are crucial for future success: grit, curiosity, self-control, social intelligence, zest, optimism, and gratitude.

Knoche thinks bringing a program like Headstand to her school district would help accomplish this: "Headstand has a beautiful way of redefining what we believe public education should be and blending yoga, mindfulness and character education into those beliefs."

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Each year, meditation becomes more of a trend. Celebrities like Jerry Seinfeld and Goldie Hawn, businessmen like Bill George of Goldman Sachs and Exxon Mobil, and News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch, have publicly discussed practicing it. Techies and others in the corporate world have begun using mindfulness, a type of meditation, to combat the stress and overstimulation of their jobs.

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Infographic: Meditation in Schools Across America | Edutopia

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As a growing body of research points to positive outcomes from meditation in schools, programs are spreading across the country.

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The state "This is a brilliant free resource."
Suitable for schools, teachers and parents to use.
Start to bring mindfulness, meditation and calm into your students/child's life.

To enrich your experience, we can also provide a live speaker to deliver a session in your school, conduct an assembly or engage a series of workshop with your students. Request training .
We can introduce teachers to these Mindfulness and Meditation resources and how to integrate in their classroom. You can also learn how to Mindfulness and Meditation. for more details.
RESOURCES
Download the MindSpace App and use the meditations in your school.
Listen to a 20 minute presentation to Year 7 and 30 minute presentation to Year 11.
5 Minutes to a Calmer Classroom
Mindfulness Meditation Script
Your Mindful School - One Minute Mindfulness Resource
15 Minute Mindfulness Relaxation Exercise
Mindfulness and the Art of Chocolate Eating
Mind Space tips for Dealing with Exam Stress
Metaphorical Educational Story for teaching meditation to 6-7 year old children
A Ten Step Guide to Mindful Listening

Take a look at videos of students engaging in and talking about Meditation

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5 Minutes to a Calmer Classroom

Our most popular and well used resource gives you ten, top tips on how you can deliver a simple breathing meditation that students of any belief system - or none - can use. It works best when students opt in to the meditation session. You could offer it as a taster and if the students enjoy and engage, then offer more. It doesn't need to be a long session - just 5 minutes can have a wonderful effect.

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Mindfulness Meditation Script

This resource has been designed to give you the opportunity to guide your students to a heightened level of Mindfulness whilst relaxing both the body & mind. At the beginning we recommend also downloading the the audio recording of this Meditation.

Download: Mindfulness Relaxation Exercise Script
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Your Mindful School - One Minute Mindfulness Resource

Short of time? We're here to help your school become more Mindful with the One Minute Mindfulness series. There are ten separate practices that you can try out in your classroom.

Download: Your Mindful School
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15 Minute Mindfulness Relaxation Exercise

This Mindfulness Relaxation Exercise is 15 minutes in length. Designed to help students increase Mindfulness and to have the ability to relax both body and mind. We recommend downloading the resource and playing the audio at the beginning of a lesson. This will help to focus the students' minds.

Download Heal the Body and Mind

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Mindfulness and the Art of Chocolate Eating

We have practiced this with many schools and the students have loved it. Its a creative, fun way to bring Mindfulness to life in the classroom. It can be used as a good, practical introduction to Mindfulness.

Download Mindfulness and the Art of Chocolate Eating Resource

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Mind Space tips for Dealing with Exam Stress

This resource has been designed to help students reduce stress through practicing Mindfulness & Meditation around exam time. We recommend also downloading the 15 minute audio

Download Mind Space Tips for Dealing with Exam Stress

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Metaphorical Educational Story for teaching meditation to 6-7 year old children

Invite children to pretend they are one of the children in the story and imagine being in the story inside their minds. Encourage children to close their eyes and relax gently, breathe through their noses as they watch the film in their mind's eye.
This story is a great way to Introduce children to Meditation.

Download Story for teaching meditation to 6 yr old children

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A Ten Step Guide to Mindful Listening

This particular practice is suitable for children aged between 5-9 years. It is one of the first Mindfulness practices to help your class experience the benefits of this training. The resource can be adapted for older children and also adults

Download here

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Mind Space has featured many times on the Guardian website. Here is a report by one of the Mind Space Trainers, Liese on her experience delivering meditation to schools.

Click here to access the teaching resource on the Guardian website...
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The state "This is a brilliant free resource." Suitable for schools, teachers and parents to use. Start to bring mindfulness, meditation and calm into your students/child's life. To enrich your experience, we can also provide a live speaker to deliver a session in your school, conduct an assembly or engage a series of workshop with your students.

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Mindfulness in the Classroom - Child Mind Institute

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Learn how mindfulness in the classroom can help kids regulate their behavior. Child Mind Institute shares mindfulness techniques to improve focus.

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Join 250,000+ teachers bringing mindfulness to the next generation

Join the movement

"If every 8 year old is taught meditation, we will eliminate violence from the world within one generation."

- Dalai Lama

Discover what's possible if every school day began with a few moments of mindfulness. Together let's equip students with tools for resilience, self-care, and stress management.

Join the movement

Age-specific resources to help you bring mindfulness into the classroom

A self-care guide to support you during the school day and beyond

A free sampling of meditations, music, Sleep Stories, breathing exercises and more

Get Started

Get Started

Just as we put on our oxygen mask first, we can best support the health and happiness of others by taking care of ourselves first.

Meditate regulary to reduce stress, prevent burnout and improve your relationships with students, parents and colleagues.

Listen to Calm Music and Sleep Stories at the end of a busy day to help you wind down and fall asleep with ease.

Start today

Lauren Daly Clark

@msdalyLST

When given a choice today, this kiddo wanted to hear more from @KingJames himself on "managing emotions". Thank you @calm for opening this door for us. This was truly a special moment today ❤️✨

Miss Epstein

@MissEEpstein

I often use @calm during writing sessions at school. There are lots of relaxing instrumentals that help my children to focus (they also know that if I can't hear my music, they're too loud). They love it. Today I'm using it as relaxing background noise whilst reading. 😌

Feeling stressed or anxious? I encourage you to take time to breathe and meditate. @calm is a wonderful resource that I've used by myself and with students for years. Free for educators. #meditate

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Join 250,000+ teachers bringing mindfulness to the next generation.

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Written by Cassie (Teach Starter)
Posted Tuesday August 29, 2017

Put simply, mindfulness is "to pay attention, on purpose, to the present moment" (Grossman, 2016).

The positive benefits of teaching mindfulness to children have been proven across a number of studies. Incorporating mindfulness into everyday classroom activity is becoming more and more common. A five or ten-minute daily mindfulness practice can see students reduce stress and anxiety, increase concentration and engagement, sleep better, improve social skills, and develop problem-solving and decision-making skills.

5-10 Minute Mindfulness Activities for Children

Here are 18 quick and effective mindfulness activities you can do with your class. These activities are also available as a printable teaching resource, Mindfulness Activity Task Cards.

If you have never practised mindfulness before you may like to:

Breath Awareness Activities

These are the first stop on your students' journey to mindfulness. Their breath is the one thing that will always be with them.

Explicitly teaching mindful breathing is providing students with a skill that will be with them for life, in every situation they will ever encounter.

Is that not one of the most powerful lessons you can ever teach?

Students can stand or sit for this activity.

Ask students to put both hands on their belly.

Students should close their eyes, or look down to their hands.

Guide students in taking three slow deep breaths in and out to see if they can feel their hands being moved.

You may like to count "1, 2, 3" for each breath in and "1, 2, 3" for each breath out, pausing slightly at the end of each exhale.

Encourage students to think about how the breath feels, answering the following questions silently, in their mind.
- What is moving your hands? Is it the air filling your lungs?
- Can you feel the air moving in through your nose?
- Can you feel it moving out through your nose?
- Does the air feel a little colder on the way in and warmer on the way out?
- Can you hear your breath?
- What does it sound like?

If you'd prefer not to wing it, download and print our Mindful Breathing Guided Meditation Script.

#2 Pinwheel Breathing
(5 minutes)

Providing students with an object to focus on is a great way to encourage concentration during mindfulness lessons. Use pinwheels in conjunction with the mindful breathing exercise above, making the pinwheel spin with every exhale.

We have created a beautiful, free pinwheel template that combines mindfulness colouring with this simple craft activity.

#3 Belly Buddies
(10 minutes)

Ask students to bring in a small stuffed toy, or provide a class set of small, light-weight objects such as small bean bags or wooden blocks.

Students lay on their backs and place the toy or object on top of their belly buttons.

Take students through the guided breathing activity above, asking them to watch the object as it moves up and down with their breath.

#4 Shark Fin
(2 minutes)

Coined by former Mindful Schools co-founder Laurie Gossman and Mr Musumeci's Grade 5 class of the book "Master of Mindfulness: How to Be Your Own Superhero in Times of Stress" fame, the Shark Fin is a fantastic tool that you can use during any quick moment in your day. It will help to calm your class, or individual students, when their minds and bodies may be fighting against them.

Place the side of your hand on your forehead, with your palm facing out to the side.

Close your eyes.

Slide your hand down your face, in front of your nose.

Say "shhh" as you slide your hand down your face

If you are sitting down, you do the 5 S's while you move your hand: Sit up straight, sit still, sit silently, soft breathing, shut eyes.

If you are standing do the same but you are standing straight, still, silently, using soft breathing and shut eyes while you move your hand down your face.

"Master of Mindfulness" (Grossman & Alvarez, 2016)
This activity is similar to the first mindful breathing activity, however it uses visualising colours as a means to increase focus and awareness. You may like to download our printable Breathing Colours Guided Meditation Script.

Ask students to think of a relaxing colour. It can be any colour they like, as long as it is one that makes them think of relaxation.

Ask students to think of a colour that represents stress, sadness or anger. Whichever of those emotions is most relevant or suitable for your class group to explore.

Students imagine breathing in the relaxing colour and visualise it filling their lungs.

Students then imagine breathing out the stress, sadness or anger colour.

Your spoken instructions may be along these lines:

1. Imagine you are surrounded by the relaxing colour. No longer is the air clear, it is the relaxing colour.

2. You can still make out shapes, but your world is now a different colour.

3. Imagine that as you breathe in, you breathe in this colour too.

4. See the colour filling up your lungs.

5. Imagine as you breathe out, that your breath is the colour of stress.

6. See the stress colour mix into the relaxing colour around you. Watch the stress colour slowly disappear.

7. Breath in your relaxing colour.

8. Breath out the stress colour.

#6 Breathing Hands
(2 minutes)

Spread one hand out like a star.

Use the index finger on your other hand to trace the outline of your star hand.

Take a deep breath in as you move to the top of your thumb.

Breathe out as you move down between your thumb and first finger.

Take another breath in as you move to the top of your first finger.

Breathe out as you move down between your first and second finger.

Repeat until you have taken five slow, deep breaths.

#7 Back-to-Back Breathing
(10 minutes)

Students work in pairs for this partnered breathing activity.

Sitting tall, with their back resting against their partner's back, begin the mindful breathing from activity #1.

Encourage students to notice their partner's breath.
- Is it shallow or deep?
- Fast or slow?
- Can they feel their partner's back moving as they breathe?

After a little while, students may find that their breath falls into sync with their partner.

Or it may not! These are all talking points for bringing awareness to the breath, in the present moment.

You could incorporate your Mindfulness Pinwheels into this activity too.

(Jennifer Cohen Harper, Little Flower Yoga)
This is a fantastic activity that students can "take home" with them. It can be particularly useful to do a body scan to help relax before sleep. Download our printable Body Scan Guided Meditation Script to use with your class.

Students lay on the floor, with their eyes closed if they are comfortable (or they may prefer to look at the ceiling).

Encourage students to pay attention to their feet for 5 or 10 seconds.
Questions to ask during a body scan:
- How does this body part feel?
- Is it cold or warm?
- Does it feel tight or relaxed?
- Is all or part of that body part touching the floor?
- Or clothing?
- What does that feel like?

Move on to their toes, then ankles, then calves and knees. Continue body part by body part until you reach the head.

Question how each part of the body feels to bring students' awareness to their body in the moment.

If there is tightness or stress, imagine breathing the stress out of that part of the body with each exhale.

Practising Active Mindfulness

Mindful breathing is arguably the most important skill you can teach your students when it comes to mindfulness. However, being able to incorporate into everyday activities the calm and focused state of mind that the breathing activities practise can be viewed as a more tangible end-goal.

The following 'active' practices help to hone the skill of mindful action. Some students who struggle with the 'still' mindfulness activities may be more likely to feel successful during active practices.

#9 Mindful Eats
(5 minutes)

This is a great activity to bring attention to how mindlessly we sometimes eat! Whether sitting in front of the tv, chatting to friends at lunch, or scrolling through something on the internet or social media, we often "switch off" when eating because it is such a familiar action.

Mindful eating can combat over-eating, it helps bring our attention to the flavours and tastes of different foods and helps us to realise what effects different foods have on how our bodies feel.

Students need something small to eat for this activity. Often a square of chocolate is a fun "challenge", although you could provide a piece of fruit or any food item that you feel will work with your class. Be sure to take any allergies into consideration!

Begin this practice with three deep breaths, or the Shark Fin activity (#4 above).

Direct students to take small nibbles or bites of the food.

Bring awareness to the sensations of eating.
- What is the taste like? Is it sweet or savoury?
- What does the food feel like on your tongue?
- Do you need to crunch it between your teeth, or can you slowly dissolve it in your mouth?
- Try taking a slightly smaller or slightly larger bite.
- How does this change the way eating this food feels?
- Notice which muscles in your mouth, neck and body move as you swallow the food.
- Pause between each bite and notice any changing sensations in your mouth or body.

#10 Mindful Steps
(10 minutes)

This activity is best completed outdoors and if suitable, students may like to walk barefoot.

Give students a clear boundary for where they can walk during this activity.

Each student selects a small area where they can walk in a line for about 5 or 6 steps and back then back to where they started without getting into another person's way.

Begin this practice with three deep breaths, or the Shark Fin activity (#4 above).

Take 5 or 6 steps in one direction, turn slowly and then take 5 or 6 steps back to where you started.

While walking, students bring their awareness to their breath and their body.
- What does the ground feel like under your feet?
- Which part of your foot touches the ground first when you take a step?
- Does your body feel heavy or light today?
- Are you slouching when you walk?
- Or, is your back up quite straight?
- Try not to change the way you walk, but instead just notice how your body naturally moves.

#11 Mindful Sounds
(2 minutes)

For this mindfulness activity, you will need something that makes a bell sound. There are some great meditation apps that have recorded bell, meditation cymbal and singing bowl sounds, however, if you can have one of these small instruments in real life, the sound is much better!

Begin this practice with three deep breaths, or the Shark Fin activity (#4 above).

Give the following instructions before ringing the bell:
- When I ring the bell concentrate on the sound that you hear.
- Pay attention to whether you hear it louder in one ear than you do in the other.
- Keep your eyes closed until the sound is completely gone.
- If you notice your thoughts wandering, just bring your attention back to the sound of the bell.
- After you open your eyes, remain silent until you hear my voice again.

Students close their eyes, while the teacher rings the bell.

The activity is finished when the sound has completely dissipated.

#12 Spidey Senses
(5 minutes)

Karen Young from Hey Sigmund has a beautiful collection of mindfulness activities for kids on her blog. Spidey Senses is a fun way to frame this traditional mindfulness exercise. Our five senses poster and graphic organiser can be useful resources for teaching the senses to younger students.

Ask students to switch their senses up to a superpower level, just like Spiderman.

In this moment,
- What can they hear?
- What can they see?
- What can they taste?
- What can they smell?
- What can they feel?

Guide students as they stay in this Spidey state for 2-3 minutes.

#13 Gratitude Practice
(5-10 minutes)

Students use a notebook or a folder and paper to make a Gratitude Journal.

Practise gratitude journaling at a regular time each day, perhaps first thing in the morning, after lunch or just before the end of the day.

Take five minutes to think of something that you feel grateful for today. Here are some topics or ideas you can use to guide your students:
- Something that someone else did for you that day.
- A person in your life that you appreciate.
- An activity or hobby you are grateful to be able to do.
- A positive quality of someone that can sometimes be hard to get along with.
- A skill or ability you have.
- A part of your body you are grateful for and why.
- An item that you love.
- Something that made you laugh.
- What you have learnt from something that was hard.

Another beautiful idea is for each student to put their day's thanks into their own Gratitude Jar, or to create a Gratitude Tree where each day's thanks is written onto a 'leaf'. This could either be on a notice-board or be hanging on a string from the limb of a real plant or tree branch. (Mayuri Gonzales, Little Flower Yoga)

#14 Glitter Bottle
(5 minutes)

Use this familiar sensory bottle concept as a mean to explicitly teach how mindfulness can help to calm us when we are feeling stressed, anxious, sad or angry.
Preparation

Fill a bottle or jar with water, leaving 2-3 cm of space at the top.

Add a generous amount of glitter glue to the bottle (or a combination of PVC glue and regular glitter).

Seal the bottle well!

You may like to make one large bottle to use as an example for whole-class instruction, or a set of bottles that can be used by individuals or for small group rotations.

Directions

Shake the bottle well to mix the glitter, water and glue.

Share the following words with your students:

"'Imagine that the glitter is like your thoughts when you're stressed, mad or upset. See how they whirl around and make it really hard to see clearly? That's why it's so easy to make silly decisions when you're upset - because you're not thinking clearly. Don't worry this is normal and it happens in all of us (yep, grown-ups too).

[ Now put the jar down in front of them.]

Now watch what happens when you're still for a couple of moments. Keep watching. See how the glitter starts to settle and the water clears? Your mind works the same way. When you're calm for a little while, your thoughts start to settle and you start to see things much clearer."
(by Karen Young of Hey Sigmund)
#15 Mindful Safari
(10-30 minutes)

Another beautiful child-friendly reframing of a traditional mindfulness practice is to take your students on a Mindful Safari.

Instruct students to remain quiet, calm their thoughts and move slowly while on safari.

Ask students to turn their sense of sight, touch and sound onto high.

Search for beautiful natural objects to explore.
- What does it look like?
- What colour is it?
- What does it smell like?
- Can I touch it?
- What does it feel like?

Search for mini-beasts and other creatures that move.

When they find a creature, encourage students to watch the creature in silence for as long as they would like to.
- What does it look like?
- How does it move?
- What colours can you see on its body?

#16 Sense Countdown
(5 minutes)

A great one for older students, this is an extension of the Spidey Senses activity that can be used to help calm a busy mind and bring our awareness to the present moment.

Think of:

5 things you can see

4 things you can touch

3 things you can hear

2 things you can smell

1 thing you can taste

#17 Heartbeat
(5 minutes)

Our heartbeat is an amazing representation of our emotions. Like our breath, it is always with us. So, we can use our heartbeat to connect with the present moment in times of difficulty or stress.

You might like to begin this practice with three deep breaths, or the Shark Fin activity (#4 above).

Students place their fingers or hands over the part of their body where they can best feel their pulse.
- on the side of their neck, under their jaw
- inside their wrist
- or, over their heart

Ask students to close their eyes and notice how quickly or slowly their heart is beating.

Encourage them to think about their current state of emotion and consider if this might be connected to how quickly or slowly their heart is beating.

Direct students to stand and jump up and down on the spot ten times.

Students return to sitting and feel their heartbeat again, noticing any changes.

Students may like to close their eyes and focus on their heartbeat until it slows back down.

#18 Add a Touchy Feely Focus
(5 - 10 minutes)

Saving the best for last, Shakti Burke gives these great tips for helping wiggly kids begin to master mindfulness. Burke suggests:

Restless minds are magnetised by the sensation of touch: we can't think and feel at the same time. The stroking and feeling itself (when using a prop to help children focus) becomes the meditation, in place of the breath awareness focus.

You might like to begin your class journey towards mindfulness with some of these more tactile activities.
Provide students with a prop to hold, touch, balance or focus their eyes on during one of the above activities.

small soft toys

small bean bags or beany pillows

stress balls

pieces of furry fabric

There you go! 18 amazing activities to help teach mindfulness in your classroom. Mindfulness truly is a skill that will benefit your students as individuals, long after they leave your classroom for the final time.

Check out our beautifully illustrated Mindfulness Activity Task Cards that you can use to support mindfulness practice with your students.

Whole Class Daily Mindfulness Activity Tracker

Track your class' progress to superhero status with these beautiful Mindfulness Activity Tracker Charts can be used to note each day of whole-class practice.

The charts are available in three formats:

Each download comes with a page of illustrated markers that can be stuck onto the chart. The black and white downloads of these trackers are also fantastic for students to use for their personal mindfulness practice.

If you are new to mindfulness for children, take a look at our post "Why You Should Be Teaching Mindfulness to Improve Student Learning" for practical tips and tricks to begin your class mindfulness practice routine. You can also download our free Mindfulness Information Sheet for Teachers with eight succinct and actionable tips.

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5 Minute Classroom Mindfulness Activities | Mindfulness for Children

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Written by Cassie (Teach Starter) Posted Tuesday August 29, 2017 Put simply, mindfulness is "to pay attention, on purpose, to the present moment" (Grossman, 2016). The positive benefits of teaching mindfulness to children have been proven across a number of studies. Incorporating mindfulness into everyday classroom activity is becoming more and more common.

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Many educators are introducing meditation into the classroom as a means of improving kids' attention and emotional regulation.

A five-minute walk from the rickety, raised track that carries the 5 train through the Bronx, the English teacher Argos Gonzalez balanced a rounded metal bowl on an outstretched palm. His class-a mix of black and Hispanic students in their late teens, most of whom live in one of the poorest districts in New York City-by now were used to the sight of this unusual object: a Tibetan meditation bell.

"Today we're going to talk about mindfulness of emotion," Gonzalez said with a hint of a Venezuelan accent. "You guys remember what mindfulness is?" Met with quiet stares, Gonzalez gestured to one of the posters pasted at the back of the classroom, where the students a few weeks earlier had brainstormed terms describing the meaning of "mindfulness." There were some tentative mumblings: "being focused," "being aware of our surroundings."

Gonzalez nodded. "Right. But it's also being aware of our feelings, our emotions, and how they impact us."

Arturo A. Schomburg Satellite Academy is what is known in New York City as a transfer school, a small high school designed to re-engage students who have dropped out or fallen behind. This academy occupies two floors of a hulking, grey building that's also home to two other public schools. For the most part, Gonzalez told me, the kids who come here genuinely want to graduate, but attendance is their biggest barrier to success. On the day I visited, one of Gonzalez's students had just been released from jail; one recently had an abortion; one had watched a friend bleed to death from a gunshot wound the previous year. Between finding money to put food on the table and dealing with unstable family members, these students' minds are often crowded with concerns more pressing than schoolwork.

Still holding the bowl, Gonzalez continued with the day's lesson. "I'm going to say a couple of words to you. You're not literally going to feel that emotion, but the word is going to trigger something, it's going to make you think of something or feel something. Try to explore it."

The slightly built, 30-something Gonzalez, who wears a wide smile and a scruffy beard, first learned about mindfulness from his wife, a yoga teacher in schools around the city. His students referred to him by his first name, and Gonzalez addressed them just as informally-greeting them in the morning with a high five and a "Sup," or "How you doing, bro?" or even "Hey, mamma." He told me he strives to make school relevant-explaining what a "motif" is by comparing it to the hook of a rap song, for example-and believes in the value of hands-on teaching, emailing students individually to check in when they don't show up.

"First, sit up straight, put your feet flat on the ground. Let your eyes close." Gonzalez demonstrated as he instructed. Most of the 15 or so students followed suit-though a few scribbled surreptitiously to finish overdue assignments. Gonzalez tapped the bowl and a rich, metallic sound rang out. The class fell quiet as the note reverberated.

"Take a deep breath into your belly. As you breathe in and breathe out, notice that your breath is going to be stronger in a certain part of your body. Maybe it's your belly, your chest, or your nose. We'll begin with trying to count to 10 breaths."

There was silence but for the hiss of the 5 train pulling into the station, the clunk of garbage cans, the faint siren of a police car.

"If you get lost in thought, it's okay. Just come back and count again. Whether you get up to 10 or not doesn't really matter. It's just a way to focus [your] mind."

It may not be the typical way to start an English class, but Gonzalez's students were familiar with these five-minute mindfulness exercises-from counting breaths and focusing on the sensations of breathing, to visualizing thoughts and feelings-that he uses to help train their attention, quiet their thoughts, and regulate their emotions.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, the biologist who first coined the term "mindfulness" in the '70s, defines it as a state of mind: the act of "paying attention on purpose" to the present moment, with a "non-judgmental" attitude. But mindfulness is really a secular philosophy and set of techniques adapted from thousands-of-years-old Buddhist meditation traditions-ones that only recently landed in mainstream Western consciousness. It was Kabat-Zinn who first formally brought mindfulness into a medical setting; he developed the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, which used specific exercises to help patients dealing with chronic pain and is now widely applied in other therapeutic contexts, and founded the Center for Mindfulness at UMass Medical School.

Mindfulness has also been harnessed in increasingly diverse contexts beyond health care-some uses more legitimate than others. Last year, the Congressman Tim Ryan introduced mindfulness into weekly staff meetings on the Hill, Time published a cover story on the topic, and CNN's Anderson Cooper dedicated a primetime segment to showcasing his own transformative experience at a mindfulness retreat center. Google, General Mills, the Seattle Seahawks, and the U.S. military have all embraced mindfulness as a means of boosting performance and productivity, while its potential as an antidote to the distractions and stress of everyday life is increasingly promoted within the general population and has spurred a cottage industry of books, magazines, and smartphone apps.

Even when the concept of mindfulness was created it was slightly nebulous; now, as it is reappropriated and circulated in the media, it has become even more so. The lack of a universal definition for mindfulness, along with its increasing association with celebrity and vague implications of spirituality, health, and happiness leave some skeptics dismissing it as a superficial, hokey fad. Meanwhile, practicing Buddhists and others who believe strongly in the spiritual roots of mindfulness are concerned that the meditation techniques are being poorly adopted without a proper understanding of the principles behind them, and the long-term commitment they require-a phenomenon they call " McMindfulness."
Mindfulness is widely considered effective as a treatment for children and adolescents with aggression, ADHD, or anxiety.
Still, the body of scientific research illustrating the positive effects of mindfulness training on mental health and well-being-at the level of the brain as well as at the level of behavior-grows steadily more well-established: It improves attention, reduces stress, and results in better emotional regulation and an improved capacity for compassion and empathy. Brain-imaging studies at Harvard and Mass General Hospital have shown that long-term mindfulness training can help thicken the cortical regions related to attention and sensory processing, and may offset thinning of those areas that typically comes with aging. Mindfulness is widely considered effective in psychotherapy as a treatment not just for adults, but also for children and adolescents with aggression, ADHD, or mental-health problems like anxiety. (It remains to be seen whether mindfulness alone is a sufficient replacement for other therapies. In a review last year of 47 different randomized clinical trials, The Journal of the American Medical Association suggested that mindfulness training wasn't any more effective than other types of therapy, like drugs.)

This strong base of research, along with a growing body of supporters, are fueling the momentum behind mindfulness. And as Gonzalez demonstrates, it's now spreading to schools, where it could potentially have an impact on students' well-being; a quarter of American adolescents suffer from a mental disorder, according to a 2010 Johns Hopkins study.

The first major effort to use mindfulness in schools began in the UK in 2007 with a series of fixed lesson plans delivered in classrooms across the country. Interest in the movement has picked up pace since. This past July, Oxford researchers announced plans to launch a large-scale, seven-year, $10 million study on mindfulness in education next year. More than a dozen similar initiatives have sprouted in the U.S., grassroots programs that train teachers in mindfulness and generate their own curricula. Among the two largest are MindUP and Mindful Schools, the California-based nonprofit that trained Gonzalez, which continue to spearhead the country's steadily growing, but piecemeal, mindfulness-in-education movement. Since its founding in 2010, Mindful Schools has trained thousands of teachers through its online programs, most of them in California, New York, and Washington, D.C., who are said to have a total reach of 300,000 students.

After Gonzalez and his wife signed up for one of their six-week courses-Mindful Schools' training is open to any educator or mental-health professional who wants to teach mindfulness to young people-he was able to convince his school administrators to help him pay for a year-long certification program. Through a series of online lectures, weekly breakout sessions, monthly meetings, and two week-long summer retreats, Gonzalez worked on his own mindfulness skills, honing his ability to control his attention and regulate his own emotions while receiving specific guidance on how to teach those same skills to the youth populations he'd be working with. Gonzalez also received training about the biology of the nervous system, child development, and the neuroscientific basis for mindfulness's effects.

Not all mindfulness programs are in schools like Gonzalez's, where large numbers of students have been identified as disordered or disruptive, or struggle with mental-health problems and unstable living situations. Middlesex School, a prestigious boarding school in Massachusetts, requires that all incoming freshmen take a mindfulness course. The program, which was founded by an alumnus who used mindfulness to cope with both sports-related performance anxiety and T-Cell lymphoma, has proven popular among students. A vast majority-97 percent-of students surveyed in 2014 said they would recommend the course to others, reporting benefits ranging from better sleep and diminished stress to increased focus on schoolwork.

Education reformers have long maintained that there is a fundamental connection between emotional imbalance and poor life prospects. As Paul Tough argued and popularized in How Children Succeed, stress early in life can prompt a cascade of negative effects, psychologically and neurologically-poor self-control and underdeveloped executive function, in particular. The U.S. education system's focus on cognitive intelligence-IQ scores and academic skills like arithmetic-undermines the development of equally vital forms of non-cognitive intelligence. This type of intelligence entails dimensions of the mind that are difficult to quantify: It is the foundation of good character, resilience, and long-term life fulfillment. It is this part of the mind that mindfulness seeks to address.

Efforts to implement mindfulness in classrooms haven't always gone smoothly. Some parents and administrators have challenged its use in schools based on its religious roots-and in at least one instance even managed to shut a program down. As mindfulness is used more routinely in the medical sphere, these belief-based critiques are becoming less common. But the lack of evidence demonstrating the long-term academic impact of mindfulness has raised concerns about its role as an educational tool. Given the inherent nebulousness of mindfulness as a concept, and the grassroots status of the movement, these concerns are understandable.

Qualitative evidence touting the benefits of mindfulness in the classroom-like Mindful Schools' encouraging survey results and uplifting anecdotes from participants-is easy to come by, and several short-term research studies on elementary- and middle-school students have shown positive results. But serious questions remain about the overall efficacy of such programs on non-subjective measurements of well-being and academic performance, such as test scores, graduation rates, mental-health referrals, and overall life outcomes.
The mindfulness-in-education movement has a lot in common with, and in many ways complements, the social-and-emotional-learning movement.
The lack of rigorous, robust, and long-term studies on mindfulness is what makes people like the Penn State University psychologist Mark Greenberg cautious. Greenberg works with the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning-one of the groups at the forefront of the two-decade-old social-and-emotional-learning (SEL) movement. The mindfulness-in-education movement has a lot in common with, and in many ways complements, SEL, since both aim to teach children how to build self-awareness, effectively handle their emotions, and empathetically manage their relationships. Unlike mindfulness, however, which takes more of an inside-out approach by helping students to slow down, intentionally focus their attention from moment to moment, and build compassion, SEL works from the outside in, teaching children a set of skills like how to mediate a conflict, or how to verbally express and explain their emotions to improve communication. Research shows that SEL programs alone have boosted kids' academic performance, as well as benefitting them socially and emotionally-but many believe mindfulness should also belong in the SEL toolkit.

Linda Lantieri, who helped found the SEL collaborative and has been working on these issues for decades, argues that the best approach to education combines mindfulness and SEL skills rather than treating one as a sufficient replacement for the other. While Greenberg agrees with Lantieri, he is a sober voice amidst the hype and enthusiasm about mindfulness, earning him the fond title of "curmudgeon" in some circles. "We don't know if these effects last," Greenberg told me. "Right now the promised benefits far exceed the actual findings." He is also concerned that mindfulness is just one "flavor of the month" that may detract attention from SEL programs supported by more substantial evidence. (Greenberg recently co-authored an impressive longitudinal study that followed hundreds of students as they progressed from early childhood through young adulthood and found that poor social-emotional skills in kindergarten helped predict negative outcomes across multiple domains of education, employment, criminal activity, substance use, and mental health.)

Mindful Schools is aware of these criticisms, and is beefing up its research efforts. In 2012, the group worked with a University of California at Davis research team to conduct a randomized controlled study of three elementary schools in Oakland, California. They sent in outside mindfulness instructors for 15 minutes, three times a week, to teach some classrooms but not others, and reported that mindfulness improved students' behavior and ability to focus, as well as teachers' sense of well-being-though the research design had several main points of weakness, mostly involving the challenge of measuring children directly rather than through teacher assessments. Mindful Schools' new research director told me that the group is eager to conduct more studies that are even better-planned, focusing more on the efficacy of the kind of integrated training Gonzalez received. The field is so new that techniques evolve rapidly, constantly going through phases of trial-and-error-so it remains to be seen whether current or future findings can convince skeptics of mindfulness's effectiveness.

Back in the Bronx, after a minute or two of the day's mindfulness exercise, his own eyes also closed, Gonzalez ran through a list of emotions: Happy. Sad. Excited. Mad. Bored. Loving. Worried. Jealous. Silly. The second item on this list seemed to especially resonate with an 18-year-old at the front of the classroom, a young woman with dark skin, shimmering pink lip gloss, and perfectly plucked eyebrows. Sitting up straight with her hands in her lap, her composed posture belied the challenges she faced shortly before transferring to Arturo A. Schomburg two years earlier.

"I didn't know anybody. I was very depressed. I didn't want to be in school," she told me in a hushed voice at the end of class. Shortly before transferring to this school, her favorite big brother had been hit by a car. She said she'd watched him fall into a coma, and sat by his side until his heart stopped; soon after that, she'd seen one of her friends get shot in the head and bleed to death in the street. During the quiet minutes set aside for mindfulness exercises in class, she would often cry.

Now, she writes in perfect, neat script as she fills out a worksheet to accompany the day's mindfulness exercise. But she told me she wasn't always so eager to participate. "I used to write, 'I hate this, I don't want to do this.' I ripped those papers up," she said. But one day when she was in a particularly dark mood, something clicked. "Argos told me to close my eyes. Then he said, 'Connect to your breath.' He always used to say it, but I never really did it until then." Gonzalez told me that his Mindful Schools training had specific segments dedicated to working with trauma.
"At times all the roles blur-teachers, therapists, social workers."
"I noticed that I could feel [my breath] in my chest," she told me, "And at that moment, I felt so relieved. The only thing I could think in my mind was, 'I'm ok.' And, I don't know-from that day on, it just didn't hurt anymore." She told me she hadn't been in fights the way she once used to. Her four other brothers are in jail, and she is convinced it's because they didn't get the mindfulness training she now has. "Your emotions drive you mad," she said, but escaping them is possible by "focusing on now." (Our conversation also benefitted from the fact that I myself have some knowledge of mindfulness; I discovered it during a year off from college as I struggled with anxiety and depression.)

Another student told me she was skeptical about mindfulness but admitted that it could be helpful. She told me that she initially refused to do the exercises, sitting defiantly while others participated. Some of the tasks-like tapping your thumb to each finger individually, to narrowly focus attention on your fingertips-did nothing but irritate her. Eventually, though, she realized she was alone in her resistance, and she began to go through the motions, largely because she likes and respects Gonzalez. She was also struck by a movie Gonzalez showed them that compared two jails, one that trained prisoners in mindfulness and one that didn't. The prisoners who learned mindfulness were much happier and more successful when they got out. Still, ultimately, she maintains that she doesn't see the point.

Beyond the issue of scientific evidence, bringing mindfulness into classrooms raises other questions: How does it fit into the traditional teaching model? Could any teacher teach mindfulness, or does it require a significant personal investment? Is opening teachers up to dealing with their students' emotional and psychological needs, in addition to their academic ones, encouraging a blur between teacher and therapist?

Gonzalez doesn't think so. "My intention as a mindfulness instructor is to give students some very simple and basic tools so they can learn to self regulate. That's the beginning and end of it." When a student is dealing with emotional trauma, Gonzalez said he's been taught to keep his advice general-to remind the student that everyone suffers and feels pain, but that life is a gift to be treasured.
Mindful Schools has found that a majority of the teachers it has trained experienced lowered stress and higher job satisfaction.
The clinical social worker at Gonzalez's school-a large man with a warm baritone voice-thinks mindfulness supports the school's overall SEL mission. "At times all the roles blur-teachers, therapists, social workers. Especially in a school like this. If you don't address the noise in a kid's head that they bring in from the outside, I don't care how good a teacher you are, you're not going to have much success."

He was convinced that Gonzalez is on the right track; and that all teachers should get something akin to mindfulness training, given that they must deal with undiagnosed mental conditions on a regular basis. While they are not therapists, they "can at least ease some of the stress in the moment. Long enough to have somebody intervene."

Greenberg's view about the teacher-as-therapist issue is also clear: "Teachers teach many things that are therapeutic. They are managing children's behavior all day long, but that doesn't make them therapists, that makes them good teachers. Some of the same ideas we teach in therapy are also applicable to all people."

Beyond helping his students, Gonzalez also thinks mindfulness helps him to cope with the strains of teaching. He believes he now draws clearer lines in his relationships with students-giving them the skills to help themselves, rather than feeling that he needs to be the one to heal them-and copes more healthily with the trauma the job exposes him to, whether directly (in a previous teaching job, he said a student once stumbled into his office bleeding from a stab wound) or indirectly through working with a grieving student.

Gonzalez ultimately thinks that mindfulness may go furthest if applied to teacher education as a way to help prevent burnout-a major issue, given that 20 percent of teachers in high-poverty schools leave within their first year. Greenberg agrees. One of the ongoing research projects he and his colleauges are involved in is the Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education (CARE) program, funded by the U.S. Department of Education, that focuses on the well-being of the teacher and instructs teachers on emotional awareness, techniques for emotion regulation, and ways to apply these skills to teaching. Greenberg and others suspect that mindfulness specifically tailored to teachers and their struggles-stress and time management, for example-and incorporated into their initial training might do as much or more to improve classroom performance than trying to teach children directly. In its annual surveys, Mindful Schools has found that a majority of the teachers it has trained experienced lowered stress, more connection with students, and higher job satisfaction.

By the end of Gonzalez's morning class, the quiet, focused tone had long faded. Several students stood up from their desks, leaning over each other, laughing, knowing that personal challenges await them outside the classroom, just as they always have.

Over the chatter, the student with the glossy pink lips told me that hearing Gonzalez say the word "sad" triggered a flashback to all of those overwhelming memories of grief and pain she has been working to move beyond, but that it was okay. "Those feelings are there, but they won't kill me," she said. "I still have my days where it's not easy, but mindfulness helps me a whole lot. Honestly, I feel like if I'd had this before, it would have been easier."

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What Happens When Mindfulness Enters Schools

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Many educators are introducing meditation into the classroom as a means of improving kids' attention and emotional regulation. A five-minute walk from the rickety, raised track that carries the 5 train through the Bronx, the English teacher Argos Gonzalez balanced a rounded metal bowl on an outstretched palm.

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Four-year-old Faith already believes in the power of breathing to help her do her best learning. "I was trying to match some letters and I got really frustrated," says Faith. "And I needed to take a deep breath and I almost got it. I almost got it by myself and I felt just a little happy."

Faith knows that the simple act of breathing can help her focus to complete the task at hand. She attends the Momentous School, a program of the Momentous Institute, a 97-year-old organization devoted to the social emotional health of kids and families. The school has been tracking kids' progress for almost 20 years and have accumulated significant data showing the positive effects of incorporating mindfulness into education. Faith and her classmates are learning essential skills that research shows may give children lifelong protection against one of the most serious and quickly growing threats to child well-being in America today: toxic stress.

How toxic stress impedes healthy development in kids

Toxic stress is a prolonged activation of the stress response - without the buffer of safe relationships. It, along with " adverse childhood experiences" (ACES) - such as, poverty, abuse, domestic violence and more - is on the rise. Dr. Robert Block, former president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, feels that ACES "are the single greatest unaddressed public health threat facing our nation today."

A growing body of science, including the work of Harvard University's Center for the Developing Child, has found that toxic stress can impede healthy development, literally changing children's brains and affecting their capacity to absorb even the best instruction.

A growing body of science, including the work of Harvard University's Center for the Developing Child, has found that toxic stress can impede healthy development, literally changing children's brains and affecting their capacity to absorb even the best instruction. Mindfulness is a much-needed life preserver in this otherwise troubling picture.

While childhood trauma is sadly nothing new, science now better understands its impact on brain function. During stressful experiences, the amygdala essentially hijacks the pre-frontal cortex impeding its ability to come online. In other words, the part of our brain responsible for the fight, flight or freeze response takes over and blocks the part of our brain which processes complex thoughts, anticipates consequences and inhibits behavior.

To state the obvious, we must intervene upstream to prevent ACES in the first place. In fact, a recent study examining the long-term cost savings of social emotional health programs in elementary schools estimated a benefit-to-cost ratio of 11:1, meaning every dollar invested in the programs had an average return of $11 in benefits.

Mindfulness can help kids manage their internal worlds

Moving stress from toxic to tolerable involves increasing the number of protective relationships in children's lives and helping them learn how to regulate their nervous system, which is where mindfulness comes in. This skill allows children to manage their internal world regardless of what comes at them externally, which is a concept that even young children like Faith can understand.

At Momentous Institute, we use the analogy of a glitter ball or snow globe to convey the concept, explaining that the brain under stress is like a shaken snow globe- with the glitter swirling, they cannot see clearly. Breathing and other mindfulness techniques, which the children practice several times each day, help them " settle their glitter" so they can do their best thinking. We teach them that mindfulness and social emotional health can help them understand and manage their feelings, reactions and relationships. As Susan Kaiser Greenland illustrates in her books, The Mindful Child and Mindful Games, mindfulness practices can be right-sized for kids as young as Faith.

How mindfulness translates into improved academics

Science tells us why this works. Research shows mindfulness shrinks the amygdala and thickens the pre-frontal cortex. According to Dr. Richie Davidson, mindfulness strengthens connectivity between areas of the brain that support attention and concentration, thus weakening the amygdala's capacity to hijack the thinking parts of the brain.

With this understanding, it is easy to see how mindfulness and self-regulation can translate into improved academics. This is true for all kids, but especially important for our most vulnerable kids coping with multiple ACES.

In kindergarten, those in the mindfulness group scored higher on a standardized vocabulary/literacy assessment than those in the control group.

There is a scarcity of large-scale research confirming mindfulness improves children's life trajectories. However, there is a robust body of evidence about the benefits of mindfulness for adults. We hope it is only a matter of time before a large body of research about the impact of mindfulness on children becomes available.

Momentous Institute published one of two existing studies examining the impact of mindfulness practices on prekindergarten students' self-regulation and academic performance. This study indicated that prekindergarten students who received a yearlong mindfulness curriculum showed greater improvements in their working memory and capacity to plan and organize than students in a control group. In kindergarten, those in the mindfulness group scored higher on a standardized vocabulary/literacy assessment than those in the control group.

Other research at Momentous School has shown that after three years of participating in mindfulness practices, 5 th grade students' levels of empathy predicted their scores on standardized reading and math assessments. This tells us that Faith was right when she said breathing helped her figure out her letters. Mindfulness does not just help her feel better or calm down; it increases her capacity for academic performance.

Mindfulness for kids is not one-size fits all

Without question, there are no silver bullets when dealing with complex topics like education and trauma. Mindfulness can only thrive in schools where positive climate is a priority. In addition, mindfulness can never be reduced to a curriculum. This work only takes root in a sustainable way if the system adopts a commitment to consistent practice and the well-being of all involved-children and adults alike.

The systemic issues behind the rising stress levels - poverty, racism, sexism, violence and inequity-must be attended to with courage and conviction.

Embedding mindfulness in education is one important step. That alone, however, will never be sufficient in addressing toxic stress and ACES. The systemic issues behind the rising stress levels - poverty, racism, sexism, violence and inequity-must be attended to with courage and conviction.

By prioritizing these systemic shifts along with a true integration of mindfulness, we can provide children a sense of control and the opportunity to achieve their full potential. We believe the same breathing that helped Faith learn the alphabet can spell long-term thriving for our children and our society.

A Glimpse at a Mindfulness Class for Children

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Why Mindfulness Belongs in the Classroom - Mindful

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Four-year-old Faith already believes in the power of breathing to help her do her best learning. "I was trying to match some letters and I got really frustrated," says Faith. "And I needed to take a deep breath and I almost got it. I almost got it by myself and I felt just a little happy."

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by TeachThought Staff

The modern school day can be stressful, due in part to the pressure caused by standardized testing, social tension, and dwindling unstructured free time - all issues that affect teachers as well as students.

It's hard to cultivate a culture of curiosity and patience in an environment that's heavy on schedules and expectations, but the true objective of education is to enrich lives in a way that fosters lasting growth and an interest in knowledge, and that's unlikely to happen if the daily experience is filled with anxiety.

Although it's difficult to change the way the (school) system operates, it is possible to adjust how you operate within the system. Introducing meditation and mindfulness techniques in the classroom not only allows you to create a calmer environment, but the practice has also proven to have verifiable benefits on the human brain.

A Harvard study of MRI images showed a thickening in the cerebral cortex (an area responsible in part for attention and emotional integration) in meditation participants in as few as eight weeks. It's more than a good habit and some quiet time in the classroom-you may be helping the brains of your students develop even more than you realize.

Where do you even begin teaching meditation when you may not be familiar with the practice yourself? Although it seems like an incongruous match, this is yet another area where technology steps in to make learning convenient, and a variety of apps offer options for every age, ability, and amount of available time.

Obviously, you don't necessarily need an app if you have experience with meditation. Further, there are some decent YouTube videos available that you could also start with if you're unsure how meditation might fit in your classroom. However, apps are far more structured and offer features that videos can't.

With that in mind, here are a few to experiment with as you get started.
See also 10 Team-Building Games For A Friendlier Classroom 16 Meditation Apps For Children In The Classroom
Platforms: iOS, Google Play

Price: Free with paid support and curriculum

Developer Description: "Our app is a completely free, state-of-the-art technology platform that supports every member of the school community with hundreds of guided meditations and mindfulness activities that can be used in the classroom and at home."

Platforms: iOS, Google Play

Price: Free with In-App Purchases

This is a great place to learn the basics of mindfulness for beginners and is suitable for a wide range of ages. The included Headspace For Kids program focuses on breathing exercises, visualizations, and focus-based meditation in themes like calm, focus, kindness, sleep, wake up, and tailored for age groups 9-12, 6-8, and 5 and under, with regular Headspace being appropriate for older kids (and teachers who need a midday meditation break!)

Platforms: iOS, Google Play

Price: Free with In-App Purchases

Developer Description: Featuring recurring characters, "teach your kids the basics of mindfulness with guided meditations designed to help kids relax, reduce anxiety and manage negative thoughts."

Platforms: iOS, Google Play

Price: $4.99 with In-App Purchases

While not made specifically for children, Buddhify's simple and colorful interface and 80 plus custom meditations offer plenty of options, and the upfront price with no additional costs adds even more value.
5. Simple Habit
Platforms: iOS, Google Play

Price: Free with In-App Purchases

Developer Description: "Our wellness and sleep therapy sessions offer guided mindfulness & meditation, daily motivation, guided sleep sessions and coaching by world-renowned experts, personalized for the way you live your life. We'll help you feel less stressed, get better sleep and be your best self whether you have 5 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes during your commute or need to fall asleep quickly. Start your Simple Habit today and live better every day."

Platforms: iOS, Google Play

Price: Free for schools

Made just for kids, Dreamy kid offers meditations such as Body Scan, an ADD and ADHD session, ambient background noise, and more. General and issue-based meditations, guided visualizations and affirmations are added each month.
7. Ninja Focus: Kids' Mindfulness
Platforms: iOS, Google Play

Price: Free with In-App Purchases

Platforms: iOS, Google Play

Insight Timer is a well-rated and revised meditation app with different styles, teachers, and methods. Users can log cumulative meditation time, join the online community of meditators, or set a timer for some quiet.

Platforms: iOS, Web Browser

Price: Free with In-App Purchases

The title indicates what this app focuses on and all three are important life skills that are often under-taught. Best-suited for the 10 and up crowd and ideal for individual use, this app makes it easy to track progress and gain daily momentum with reward stickers, check-ins, and a lesson on how to meditate as well as a list of meditations to follow.

Platforms: iOS

Price: Free with In-App Purchases

This simple app geared towards the elementary crowd offers five meditations with kid-friendly art and tone, ranging in time from three to 14 minutes and working on sitting comfortably, visualization, and a gradual reorientation.

Platforms: iOS, Google Play

As part of the Calm Classroom Initiative, teachers can apply to receive Calm's paid subscription at no cost for access to the library of meditation and mindfulness exercises for age groups covering pre-k through high school.

Platforms: iOS, Google Play

Price: .99

While well-reviewed and focused on supporting meditation for children, this app no longer appears to be supported.

See also Supporting Wellness in Schools.

Whether you're interested in developing the whole child, carving out some quiet time, growing gray matter, or all of the above, incorporating meditation and mindfulness into your class's schedule can create a ripple effect into their daily lives, future, and the world beyond. The meditation apps listed below are not child, student, or school-centered but may prove useful in a classroom under the supervision of a teacher who has experience with meditation.
13. Ten Percent Happier Meditation 14. Balance 16. Mindfulness Coach 16 Meditation Apps For Children In The Classroom

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16 Meditation Apps For Children In The Classroom

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Where do you begin teaching meditation when you may not be familiar with the practice yourself? These meditation apps for children may help.

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Find films, lesson videos, presentations, guided audios, and books helpful for introducing mindfulness to your school.

Are you looking for an overview of mindfulness in education to help parents, staff, and administrators understand the power of this work? Start with these short videos and films. All are free and can be shown at staff meetings and parent education nights.

Just Breathe (4 min)

Watch and listen to young students describe how mindfulness helps them handle difficult emotions in this 4-minute film from Julie Bayer, one of our Mindful Schools graduates. You can learn more about the Just Breathe film here.

Room to Breathe (56 min)

Airing on PBS, Room to Breathe was the first broadcast documentary on mindfulness in education. Raw, authentic and human, it is great for showing people what mindfulness training really looks like in a school community dealing with an array of economic, academic and mental health challenges.

Arrive (2 min)

At the start of class, Ms. O guides her high school students in a simple mindfulness meditation practice. This allows students to quiet their nervous systems and get ready to learn. Arrive was filmed at Gateway High School in San Francisco, CA.

Healthy Habits of Mind (41 min)

Healthy Habits of Mind is a 45-minute overview of Mindfulness in Education. Featuring pioneering neuroscientist Dr. Richard Davidson, it focuses less on classroom implementation than Room to Breathe but has more contextual information on the neurobiology and research underpinning mindfulness. A great overview piece for administrators.

Download a Starter Lesson

demonstrated in the videos above, that introduces mindful bodies and mindful listening to K-5 elementary school students. Try the lesson in your classroom and notice how your students respond.

Listen to three guided practices to get an introduction of how to practice mindfulness through breathing, body scan, and walking.

Mindful Walking

(Click the red play button above)

Mindful walking cultivates awareness of your body while in motion and it's something you can practice throughout the day. It can help increase your energy level if you are tired or restless and also add variety if you're doing longer periods of seated practice.

(Click the red play button above)

The body scan is a simple, structured way of bringing consciousness to different parts of body. The body scan can be very useful as a grounding mechanism when facing strong emotions, or if you're having trouble stabilizing awareness on the breath or body.

Mindful Breathing

(Click the red play button above)

Awareness of the breath is one of the foundational exercises for learning mindfulness meditation. It's a popular starting point because the breath is something you can always access. It serves as a valuable anchor for other mindfulness practices.

Explore all of these techniques and learn the neuroscience behind mindfulness practice in our Mindfulness Fundamentals course for educators. The training expands on topics such as emotions and interpersonal mindfulness and supports you to cultivate a regular practice. Join our upcoming session.

Why is Mindfulness Fundamentals required before taking the Mindful Educator Essentials course? Because before you formally teach mindfulness to students - your self-care, self-awareness, and personal mindfulness practice serves as an essential model for your students. Learn more about Our Approach.

Mindful Schools community members frequently request examples of how we explain mindfulness to parents, administrators, and other educators. Here are a few presentations and interviews from our archives.

Conference Presentation

Mindful Schools Trainer Megan Cowan speaks at the Practicing Mindfulness & Compassion Conference about how mindfulness programs make schools more compassionate places. Co-hosted by our partners at The Greater Good Science Center and Mindful magazine.

PTA Presentation

Mindful Schools Trainer Megan Cowan speaks to a large PTA audience. An excellent example of a presentation that explains what school-based mindfulness programs are to parents.

Google Talk

This mindful parenting Google Talk by Mindful Schools Trainer Chris McKenna includes neuroscience and practical techniques and strategies. (1 hr)

Presentation by Jon Kabat-Zinn

Mindfulness pioneer Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn describes his vision for mindfulness in education at a benefit for Mindful Schools at UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall, 2012. (1 hr 40 min)

Adult Mindfulness Books

Mindfulness in Education

Mindful Parenting

Teaching Mindfulness to Youth

Explore Mindful Schools' professional development programs to start training your faculty and staff.

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Multimedia Find films, lesson videos, presentations, guided audios, and books helpful for introducing mindfulness to your school. Watch Films About Mindfulness in Education Are you looking for an overview of mindfulness in education to help parents, staff, and administrators understand the power of this work?

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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Resources for teachers on Mindfulness, websites, videos, and links!

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http://mindfulnessforteens.com/guided-meditations/

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https://app.stopbreathethink.org/

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http://www.meditationinschools.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Mindfulness-Relaxation-Exercise-Script.pdf

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The Scientific Power of Meditation Video

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The Scientific Power of Meditation Video

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw71zanwMnY

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqoxYKtEWEc

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http://www.meditationinschools.org/resources/

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Daily Meditation: A Bold Approach to Reducing Student Stress

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Daily Meditation: A Bold Approach to Reducing Student Stress

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https://www.edutopia.org/stw-student-stress-meditation

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http://www.mindfulteachers.org/

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9 Simple but Powerful Gratitude Practices to Share with Your Students

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9 Simple but Powerful Gratitude Practices to Share with Your Students

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http://www.mindfulteachers.org/2016/12/simple-powerful-gratitude-practices.html

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8 Principles of Trauma-Informed Yoga and Mindfulness Teaching

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8 Principles of Trauma-Informed Yoga and Mindfulness Teaching

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http://www.mindfulteachers.org/2017/01/trauma-informed-yoga-and-mindfulness.html

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Eight Principles for teaching mindful meditation to ad

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Eight Principles for teaching mindful meditation to ad

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http://www.mindfulteachers.org/2016/04/eight-principles-mindfulness-adolescents.html

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http://www.mindfulteachers.org/p/free-resources-and-lesson-plans.html