The practice of mindfulness and meditation is something that isn’t a fairly new practice but is starting to get itself some attention. These two techniques are starting to become extremely beneficial tools and life skills to people of all ages. Being mindful or using the skill of mindfulness is a way to focus on the present moment at hand. It is done so in a calmly manner where one is able to acknowledge what they are feeling mentally and throughout their body as well as becoming in touch with their thoughts. Meditation goes hand and hand with mindfulness. It is a way to relax the body and exert good energy into what you are doing. It helps to express feelings in a calm and collective matter. Joining these two practices together creates a highly useful skill set. By having both of these skills it helps to become so much more self-aware and thoughtful about life decisions being made.

Although this is something that is being seen more and more in society today, the initial idea of its use for someone is usually only when suggested from a professional in the field. There is an idea put into people’s heads that this is only necessary when dealing with a mental illness but it has mass amounts of benefits for someone going about their daily life. Because of how useful it proves to be I believe it is the perfect practice that should be implemented in schools starting at a young age. By starting out young with this it will give children the opportunity to gain a completely new skill set that will benefit them in the long run. The use of mindfulness and meditation has been shown to help reduce stress or even just help someone be able to cope with it better than they were able to before.  There are so many added pressures to kids in schools nowadays and everybody is always looking for a way to help with that. Not only is the stress factor huge but it also is a great way to learn decision-making skills. By using this they will learn how to relax and assess a situation rather than using an impulse decision, which might not always be the best move.

Implementing this in schools has been done before in several studies and has been very successful. As a simple example a class would start off the day by sitting up straight with their feet on the floor and hands in front of them. The teacher would have the class focus on something in the room and focus on their breathing. Becoming in tune with our own bodies helps to understand what we are feeling and just simply to know whom we are. By just doing this for just a small fraction of the class it helps to be able to have a clear mind and be able to focus for the remainder of the class. Especially with younger students and children focus is a main concern in the classroom.

The successfulness of mindfulness in a positive way for students has been proven at Piedmont Avenue Elementary School. They have changed small things like the ring of their school bell at the start of their day. It is more of a quiet and soothing tone that is signaling it is time for just a few minutes to stop everything and start off the day with deep breathes to relax. They tell the children to think about “loving kindness on the playground” as well as them having a mindfulness specialist come in twice a week to have a 15 minute session (Brown). Children are using this technique to stop what they are doing and take a moment to figure things out and to take a deep breath. One specific boy shares that “he was losing at baseball and wanted to throw his bat” but he thought about the mindfulness tricks he has learned and it helped him to realize that was not the right choice (Brown). Educators and administrators goal is always to get children to pay attention and only do so by telling them so many times a day but it isn’t ever taught to them how to do that. By having this meditation and mindfulness it shows them not only to pay attention to what is being taught in front of them or what is happening around them but it also gives the children a chance to be able to solve a situation and think about it before acting upon their initial gut reactions (Brown). As this might not be the case for every single child because everybody learns and processes things differently it has shown significant results in the children that it has benefitted. Some students may pick it up faster than others or be able to use these skills more easily but that doesn’t mean the students who are struggling more with this are taking absolutely nothing away from it.

Searching for a way to help people cope with their stress is always on the table and this is the perfect way to address it. A main beneficial factor to mindfulness and meditation is stress reduction. It is no secret that students of all ages suffer from stress. Although it may not be as serious of a situation within the younger age groups but it does helps them to acquire skills that they will carry with them (Santagelo). This will be an insight into the future but they will learn from the smaller things first. There is no doubt that stress progressively grows as you grow in age. Things become more complicated whether it is an overload of their schoolwork, issues at home or their social situations inside and outside of school. It has been proven that “Teenagers are the most stressed group of people in America”(Willard). Stress is sort of an emotional threat. It brings out all different emotions in everyone and we all deal with it in different ways. We either fight the situation or run away from it, or freeze and forget it. Everyone and everything looks like a threat when we are stressed out and we are always just looking for a way out (Willard). The little things like breathing allow us to calm down, relax the nervous system and relax the mind. These techniques become very soothing for the relief of stress (Greenburg).

There have been many different and successful programs created to specifically direct a person on the path of mindfulness. One of them was created by Jon Kabat Zinn, a very highly respected man in the mindfulness and meditation community. He is very big on having mental strength and with developing mental strength it makes you to become more aware of the entirety of who you are (Kabat-Zinn). He is a founder of MBSR, which is Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction.  MBSR teaches mindfulness and focuses on teaching your mind not dwell on “regrets from the past or worries of the future” (Buam). This is an eight-week program that has been implemented in hundreds of hospitals around the world originally to support people with chronic pain but developed into something much larger. It now affects the lives of thousands of people ranging from “serious stress of an illness or simply day-to-day stress” (Buam). Although it would not be necessary to require all students to attend an eight-week program there are aspects that can be taken away from it that would benefit in a school setting. It teaches people to acknowledge the “moment we are present and are sitting in that space between the stimulus and response” (Buam). That is the moment of time where instead of choosing the reaction, which calls upon stress, it is a time to breathe and consider the situation at hand. Just this simple aspect of MBSR has given people hope and the realization that they don’t need to be held back in their lives by stress.

With depression and anxiety disorders also being very prevalent in today’s society this is another way to get to the problem early with young children before it becomes severe and to help people who are already at a later stage in it to be able to cope with and recover from it. It needs to be shown to students like this that mindfulness is training the muscle of our attention (Burnett). It is all about how you place your attention and where you place your attention. Our attention tends to go to what is wrong and latches onto it instead of the positives. We are mostly thinking and not sensing (Burnett). More time should be spent in the mode of sensing and being aware of our body instead of having our mind spinning off into thinking of the bad. It is about recognizing when thinking becomes over thinking and knowing how to change gears into a motivating mode to eliminate anxiety.

Often in school life most of the concern is always revolved around the students and most people forget about the struggles of teachers and administrators. Educators also become very stressed out with their own students and can easily be pushed over the edge. It is especially important for teachers to acquire skills also to be able to deal with life in the classroom. They have so much that they are balancing at one time between the curriculum, lesson plans, the overall atmosphere of the classroom and how their students respond to them (Roser). If educators are aware of the works of mindfulness and meditation then they can relay their knowledge to their students and be able to relate with them. The type of mindset that a teacher or administrator have reflects on the attitudes and behavior of the students. If they get into good habits with their mind it will rub off on their students.

From someone who has experience in the education field with mindfulness, Amy Burke explains the hardships that teachers deal with and how having being educated in mindfulness herself helped her students. It can sometimes be difficult for educators to create a connection with their students. This issue is usually caused by a lack of connection with their selves. If they don’t know what is going on in their mind and body then it is more difficult to create that connection wit their students (Burke). Although it can seem like mindfulness is just about fixing everything and becoming a happy person all of the time it is also about being aware of your whole self in these moments and encountering life as it is. In education it is extremely important for teachers along with their students to be able to know how their mind, body and health function. A lot of the time it isn’t taught how our minds work and how to deal with emotions unless we have an issue that needs to be dealt with (Burke).

With mindfulness there becomes a higher level of thinking which seems to sound better and more beneficial but there is also the thought that it could be associated with over thinking and causing even more stress than there initially was. This brings about the topic of conversation of the use of mindlessness. Mindlessness is simply the opposite of mindfulness. It is basically just minimal information processing where we rely on “categories that have already been formed and distinctions that have already been drawn” (Jones). Mindlessness gets put down because to people it seems like it is a way of not trying but in some ways it can be useful. 

Using mindlessness is effortless and helps with situations you already know and things you have already come across. It helps to not think too hard about the basics that you already know. Teaching mindfulness in schools will teach them to try to use it more often in their daily life and in scenarios they are uncomfortable with but that’s what it is for. For the situations that are hard and unknown how to be dealt with. There are times when they will know immediately what to do with their instinct which is the mindlessness coming in and times where they need an extra boost (Jones). Implementing the practices of mindfulness in schools doesn’t mean that is all they have to know and rely on. It is about learning how to balance your own thoughts and your own actions to where it becomes a natural part of someone’s life and just a regular way to think and process information.

Because of the fact that mindfulness isn’t something that is very common in all schools to get it started up it is suggested “you start by offering it to teachers and parents” (Willard, Saltzman, Greenland). By doing this they will start to understand the benefits and want to have it integrated into their children’s lives. It is important for kids to know “why they are being taught this” because most may think it is just another dumb activity but they have to know “that it will be a fun experience” (Willard, Saltzman, Greenland) that they should embrace. Whether or not the children know it in the moment of all of this it will be beneficial whether “they use it now or in 20-30 years” (Willard, Saltzman, Greenland). They will remember that there is a thing they have learned that may help them to relieve stress or take a situation step by step. In elementary school levels an easy introduction to this would be introducing yoga and meditation. Young children will find a simple activity like this an enjoyable break from a math lesson and while still being able to learn to focus their attention. In schools with teens or older just implementing a few sessions a semester will slowly give them insight into the whole field of mindfulness and meditation and what it has to offer them. Even having a trained professional of these practices that works in a guidance office of a school will give people that come and ask for help a new method to deal with stress related issues.

Providing students with these skill sets and techniques to deal with all different types of issues going on in their lives is a necessary component in school. Yes they are there to learn to about all the core subjects, but school is also a time for students to figure out who they are and what they are capable of. This gives them the power to exceed in life and to be independent. It helps them advance their knowledge in different way than just learning facts, it gives them the ability to face their hardships confidentially and stress free. Mindfulness and meditation is something that can’t hurt. It is a strategy used to be able to tackle and feel at ease with the bad but to also give yourself a breath of fresh air by feeling good about who you are. Becoming more aware of your own life but of others also can help call attention to problems easier but also be able to deal with them in a better and healthier way. Learning this practice doesn’t require a huge amount of effort but can create a significant outcome. It is all about teaching how to be in the right mindset and on the same page with your entire self.
