WELCOME TO
MINDFULNESS IN
EDUCATION
Chris Gilham
cgilham@stfx.ca
Mindfulness as…
Paying attention
in a particular way:
on purpose,
in the present moment,
and
nonjudgmentally.
-Jon Kabat-Zinn
Who are we?
You should know that:
1) The waters will probably get muddied today. So be kind and generous
with yourself and those in the room.
2) We will spend more time focusing on our practice than on mindfulness
for children and youth.
WHY?
Because one must BE in order for others to BE. This is the entire point of
mindfulness. If this is lost, mindfulness becomes just another strategy or
tool to implement.
AND…our job is high stress!
3. We will look at resources for Children and Youth AFTER lunch.
An intro to sitting meditation (p. 122)
“…as long as you are breathing, there is more right
with you than there is wrong, no matter how ill or
hopeless you may feel”
(Kabat-Zinn, 1990, p. 2)
Pair n’ Share
What is it like for you?
How would you describe it?
Can you say more about that?
Is there more that you’ve noticed?
News Flash!
• Anyone can engage in intentional mindfulness practices.
• Do not let expert voices tell you this is only for the Counselor or
Psychologist, Monk or Disciple.
We are mindful beings. It is what makes us human.
“We are beings whose being
is an issue for us.”
-Heidegger
Moving Mindfulness with Karen!
School Staff: The data says…
• 13 peer reviewed studies
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Reductions in stress
Better mental health
Greater wellbeing
Increased kindness and compassion
Better physical health
Increased cognitive performance
Enhanced job performance
Evidence for Mindfulness: Impacts on the Wellbeing and Performance of
School Staff. 2014. Weare, K. Mindfulness in Schools.org and University of
Exeter.
Students: The data says…
• 20 peer reviewed articles met conditions of meta-analysis
• Mindfulness was HELPFUL, not iatrogenic
• Superior to active control comparisons
• Larger effect size found on those with psychological symptoms and
in studies focused on clinical settings
Mindfulness Intervention in Youth: A Meta-Analysis. Zoogman et. Al. 2014.
Mindfulness
Learning and Unlearning Practice (p. 98)
Autopilot…
• In everyday situations, we can sometimes go for hours on automatic pilot, not
fully aware of what we are doing or what is happening. We may never notice
that our thoughts are miles away. We might think about the past so much that
we forget where we are-right here in the present. We might become sad or
angry at what’s already happened. Other times we might be so busy trying to
see what will happen next that we completely miss what is happening now.
The future may feel scary or uncertain, and we may feel worried or anxious.
All that thinking and worrying can cause us to miss what is happening right
now. When we are on automatic pilot, we may react without thinking instead
of mindfully choosing how we wish to respond to events. Mindfulness
practices bring awareness to our thoughts, feelings, body sensations, and all
of our senses. When we practice living with mindful awareness, rather than
on automatic pilot, we can respond to other people and the events in our
lives with greater choice.
Semple & Lee, 2011. Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy for
Anxious Children. P. 274.
When are you most on autopilot?
What brings you here? Practice (p. 198)
What is it like for you?
How would you describe it?
Can you say more about that?
Is there more that you’ve noticed?
Moving Medication with Karen
Teachers Within Practice
(p. 94)
A Model for Mindfulness
Attention
Attitude
Intention
Intention = self-regulation to self-exploration to self-liberation: personal journeys
Attention = sustained focus and flexibility of focus
Attitude = non judgment as accepting, open, and kind curiosity towards one’s experience
Attention
Attitude
Intention
What happens?
• De-habituation (reorganization of perceptual structures – to know
more deeply)
• De-automatization (constant refreshing of perception of the
moment)
• De-centering (viewing experience from the outside – temporary
and not reified!)
Zinn calls this “ORTHOGONAL ROTATION IN CONSCIOUSNESS”
“…everthing old looks different because it is now being seen in a
new light – an awareness that is no longer confined by the
conventional dimensionality and mindset.” (2005, p. 350)
McMindfulness…
In Buddhism
• Life of the Buddha (p. 67)
The Four Ennobling Truths
The Three Marks of Existence
Mindfulness within the 8 fold path…
Four Foundations of Mindfulness (p.70),
• Of body (breath and body)
• Of feelings (feeling tone of emotions – pleasant, unpleasant,
neutral)
• Of mind (quality of activity of the mind)
• Of mind-objects (all the mind encounters)
• 5 hindrances, 5 aggregates, 6 subjective/objective sense factors/7 factors
of enlightenment, and 4 ennobling truths
Two forms of meditation
• Samatha = attention on an object (breath)
• Vipassana = fullness of direct experience (all is connected, cocreated and impermanent = insight)
The Four Sublime States (Brahmaviharas)
• Loving kindness vs. anger
• Compassion vs. cruelty
• Sympathetic Joy vs. jealousy
• Equanimity vs. attachment and aversion (anxiety)
Do you have a sense for your strengths / weaknesses here?
p. 72 - 73
4 minute Meditative Reflection (p. 111), then
Sharing…
Think about:
1) Loving Kindness
2) Compassion
3) Sympathetic Joy
4) Equanimity
• Practice, practice, practice!
Mindfulness in Education as Stewardship…
(p. 105)
Freedom:
• to come more fully into your experience. Surrendering to how you are in the moment
Belonging:
• To see your influence on the life of the group…to offer care and the demand of
restraint…an accountability to others…a form of self-regulation for building solidarity
Resonance:
• The co-created inter-connected resonance of the group…the gift that we become for
one another to increase our freedom and belonging.
These three are interdependent…
Loving Kindness (p. 216)
What is it like for you?
How would you describe it?
Can you say more about that?
Is there more that you’ve noticed?
What’s Raw in Me? Practice
(p. 99)
Releasing the Jardine!
This is why, frankly, I am so concerned about the rise of mindfulness
practices in schools (see, e.g., Campbell 2013, Olson 2014, Saltzman 2014,
and countless recent others). My fear is that such things are unwittingly
(and dare I say that I more deeply fear that it is quite wittingly) ways to get
kids to settle down so they can go back to doing stupid and demeaning
things in classrooms, while at once derailing any "uprising" into a personal
problem that needs quelling, rather than see it as an intelligent and
intelligible insight into their institutionalized circumstances. "Increasingly,
teachers are using the principles of mindfulness to help make the classroom
a calmer place and to improve learning" (Campbell, 2013, n.p.) thus perhaps
masking classroom conditions and expectations that might just warrant
restlessness and discontent, and leaving in place, too, what "learning" and
"improvement" are understood to be. Mindfulness thus becomes
understood instrumentally against the background of the status quo of
school life whereas, in fact, once rooted back into its long legacies and
ancestries, it involves and leads to precisely the breaking of the spell(s) of
everyday life, waking up to the delusions and false promises of one's
circumstances and acting accordingly.
Dr. David Jardine
Meditation is working with our speed, our restlessness, our constant
busyness. Meditation provides space or ground in which restlessness might
function. Meditation practice is not a matter of trying to produce a
hypnotic state of mind or create a sense of restfulness. Trying to achieve
a restful state of mind reflects a mentality of poverty. Seeking a restful
state of mind, one is on guard against restlessness. There is a constant
state of paranoia and limitation. We feel we need to be on guard. This
guarding process limits the scope of the mind by not accepting whatever
comes.
Instead, meditation should reflect a mentality of richness in the sense
of using everything that occurs in the state of mind. Thus, if we provide
enough room for restlessness so that it might function within the space,
then the energy ceases to be restless because it can trust itself
fundamentally. Meditation is giving a huge, luscious meadow to a restless
cow. The cow might be restless for a while in its huge meadow, but at
some stage, because there is so much space, the restlessness becomes
irrelevant. (Trungpa 2003, p. 218-219)
What very often happens in schools when students become restless and
encounter difficulties with the work they face is that teachers (and
sometimes assessors, testers, curriculum developers, and remediators) zoom
in on that trouble, narrowing attention, making the “meadow,” the “field
of relations” available to that restless student less huge, luscious, rich
and spacious (this defines, of course, precisely what can happen to a
restless teacher in a school as well). As Trungpa notes, paranoia and
limitation increase in response to restlessness. In a tragic but terribly
understandable turn, restlessness begins to be blamed on the fact that the
field is too big, too luscious, alluring and distracting. Abundance,
lusciousness, variegation and multifariousness become transformed into
threats set on breaching the narrowing security fences. This is similar to
the ecological argument that Wendell Berry (1986) makes regarding how
greenhouse walls transform that which is outside of those walls into a
threat to what is inside the walls rather that in relation to which and in
the midst of which and in concert with which life is made vigorous and
health and whole.
Tasks facing a restless student become stupider, more menial and
demeaning, more degrading to be part of, less interesting, less alluring,
and all of this because of the student and their restlessness.
The more trouble a student has, the smaller and simpler and less
interesting the “bit” doled out to them.
And the more restless they become.
And the more our paranoia and need for limitedness increases
To hark back to Chogyam Trungpa’s words, in the process of such narrowing,
restlessness does not become irrelevant. It becomes paramount. The
restlessness now no longer has places (“fields”) that are patient,
forgiving, variegated, rich and rigorous enough so that our troubledness
might be able to work itself out.
It can now only be worked on.
Poor restless cow has a problem.
Gadamer on free spaces…
‘Being with difficulty’ Practice
(p. 101)
What is it like for you?
How would you describe it?
Can you say more about that?
Is there more that you’ve noticed?
Explore the following:
• StFX Mental Health Education LibGuide – Mindfulness page
http://stfx.libguides.com/mental_health_education
• Books
• Powerpoints for books here:
http://people.stfx.ca/cgilham/
• PD plans for schools (based on the books) here:
http://people.stfx.ca/cgilham/