The attentional and emotional regulation mindfulness provides m​akes it an elegant solution to the academic and mental health support schools are desperately seeking.

Why mindfulness in schools?

"This is just the next generation of exercise. We've got the physical exercise components down, and now it's about working out how we can actually train our minds." 

​ ~Judson Brewer, MD, PhD, ​
Teachers report that the pace, stress, and technology saturation of our society is drastically changing how kids walk through the door of their classrooms. They are tired, distracted, and stressed, with an increasing subset of kids experiencing trauma. 

Time with parents, time outside, and unscheduled time are all in short supply now--the very ways children used to regulate their nervous system. 

Given that the state of the nervous system is what determines a student's ability to learn, with more demands on their system and less opportunities to regulate it's no wonder academic achievement and behavior are a challenge. Simply pushing for more focus and self-control with no attuning to biology will not work.. 

​As we embrace the explosive change of 21st century learning and living, the brain training and nervous system stabilization that mindfulness education delivers is critical: 
  • It is a robust antidote for the attention fragmentation inherent in a technology-based society.​​​
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  • It engenders self-compassion and empathy--scaffolding for a culture of kindness to combat the alarming rates of trauma, bullying, and suicide​​​.
  • It is a comprehensive self-awareness and self-regulation toolkit. ​​
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  • ​It clears the decks for more student learning and buoyancy in staff as teachers spend less time managing students’ attention, emotions, and behavior.​​

How does it work?​


​The state of the brain determines the ability
​to learn and behave.

​When kids are stressed, anxious, angry, or threatened, the most primitive part of the brain--the amygdala--takes over. In order to direct all resources toward survival and react quickly, the brain runs exclusively on ancient fight or flight circuitry and bypasses it's more highly evolved areas. The pre-frontal cortex and hippocampus--responsible for attention, emotional regulation, memory storage and retrieval--are physiologically inaccessible.
 
Even if students have packed knowledge, academic strategies, behavior guidelines, and conflict resolution protocol into their brains, they will literally not have access to any of it when they are in the throes of test anxiety, emotional upheaval, or a stressful social situation.  
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​Students need tools that target the nervous system directly. 

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It is empowering for students to discover that they have a technology for shifting physiologically what’s happening in their body.
Mindfulness enables kids to shift gears, bring their whole brain back online, and be intentional about their attention and behavior. Instead of being pushed around by distractions, emotions, and reactions students are able to:
  • Calm down and access the information needed for a test
 
  • Focus in class for longer stretches, catch themselves when they’ve become distracted (self-awareness), and re-focus attention more easily
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  • Pause, think, and respond more skillfully to peers and teachers
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​Trauma leads to heightened arousal or dissociation
Kids with trauma have particularly sensitive nervous systems. For many, the fight or flight neural pathway is so well-trod that little things which wouldn’t normally trigger someone else cause immediate nervous system arousal for them. Mindfulness practice can equip these kids to down-regulate when they get triggered, and it will help stabilize the nervous system over the long haul so they don't get triggered as easily. Others cope through under-arousal, going into a state of spacing out, immobilization, and dissociation. Mindfulness practice can equip these kids to regulate up into a state of greater alertness and engagement.

Many of us parents and teachers are in low grade fight or flight all the time
Children regulate their nervous system off that of the grown-ups around them until they are in their 20s. We adults need mindfulness too! The more we and our students take time to practice mindfulness in neutral moments, the more we will be able to use these tools in moments of nervous system activation and stress. Furthermore, consistent practice rewires our brain and patterns into our nervous system a new baseline or default set point--one of ease, spaciousness and responsiveness instead of tension and reactivity.

What are the results?

  • "I use mindfulness when I zone out so I can keep up with the teacher to understand the lesson. Mindfulness helps you keep focussed and not distracted.​"
  • "I used mindfulness to help not say mean things."
  • "I used mindfulness during a test and it helped a lot. I felt confident, focused and I got a good score."
  • "My favorite thing about mindfulness is that it really does help you calm down. Mindfulness can also help you with anger & becoming better at something."
Over 750,000 students worldwide have been through Mindful Schools' 8-week curriculum. Student evaluations consistently report the same top three benefits:
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  1. Better focus in the classroom. Mindfulness is not forcing attention but offering access to a moment of choice. Students have greater awareness of where their attention is and can direct it more easily. 
  2. Ability to calm themselves when upset. Mindfulness is not repressing emotions but offering access to a moment of pause. Students can recognize the physical sensations of their experience before they take action and have tools for self-soothing and self-regulation.​
  3. Ability to make better decisions.
A short video by Cheryl Vigder Brause of 2bpresent documents teens benefitting from mindfulness.
Formal research on mindfulness with youth consistently shows the same top two results:
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  1. Increased attentional capacity and stability
  2. Increased self-awareness and self-regulation—an ability to regulate in real time what’s happening in the nervous system and make different choices



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​While studies on mindfulness in adolescents are not as well developed yet as those with adults, the growing body of research suggests the same core list of benefits we see in adults:
  1. Better Focus and Concentration
  2. Increased sense of Calm
  3. Decreased Stress and Anxiety
  4. Improved Impulse Control
  5. Increased Self Awareness
  6. Skillful Responses to Difficult Emotions
  7. Increased Empathy & conflict resolution skills​

In School Services

​Instruction in classrooms 
Program includes:
~15 minute lessons twice per week for 8 weeks using Mindful Schools’ K-5 or adolescent curriculum
~Workbooks for younger students and journals for older students
~3  support sessions with classroom teacher
~A parent information session
Individual or small group pull-outs
Program options:
~30 to 45 minute sessions once per week for 6 weeks
~A custom designed program to fit your needs
​Mindfulness for staff
Program options:
~30 to 45 minute sessions once per week for 3 weeks
~2 hour workshop
~A custom designed program to fit your needs
A mindfulness practice space in your school
~Turning an existing detention room or other space into a mindfulness practice room with stations, hands on materials for practice, and written or pictoral guides
~Training for those assisting students in the space