B. Gurley
Mindfulness …
 What is Mindfulness. What it’s not
 Mindfulness Research
 Why it works - brain & parasympathetic nervous
system.
 Benefits for students with ED.
 Strategies
 Play Time
 Curriculum and recourses.
Don’t Think…
About A Purple Elephant!
You Thought About
A Purple Elephant!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm22OjwKcU8 ://
What is Mindfulness
“Mindfulness is a state of active,
open attention on the present.” Psychology Today
Is & Is Not
Mindfulness-based teaching
opportunities provide strategies for
calming the mind, identifying false
beliefs, and provide opportunities for
attention and successful focus.
Additionally, research has found that
mindfulness helps with social abilities.
Mindfulness is not a religion; however,
every religious tradition promotes
mindfulness and its benefits.
Elements of Mindfulness
In mindfulness meditation, the aim is to
let thought be transitory and to keep
coming back to the present moment.
To let thinking be a thought without any
particular meaning attachment.
The identification of “this is who I am,”
is removed and the thought becomes
just a component of thinking, which can
be easily accepted.
Some Research
Researchers Black and Sussman looked at
16 peer reviewed studies in their article
Sitting-Meditation Interventions Among
Youth: A Review of Treatment Efficacy and
found “sitting meditation seems to be an
effective intervention in the treatment of
physiologic, psychosocial, and behavioral
conditions among youth,” (Black and
Sussman, 2009).
More Research
Rempel, (2012) researched the
effectiveness of mindfulness-based
therapies and correlated an analysis of
results in Mindfulness for Children and
Youth: A Review of the Literature with an
Argument for School-Based
Implementation.
Counter-Intuitive
Mindfulness & Being
Social?
It would seem that meditation and
mindfulness would be counter-intuitive and
not seen as building block for social skills
for children with emotional disturbance
and/or autism. After all, sitting alone crosslegged, and listening to the breath go in and
out slowly from the nostrils is not exactly
venturing out to “win friends and influence
people.
Children and Adolescents
with Emotional
Disturbances
Over a decade ago, the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services reported
that 21 percent of children 9 – to - 17
years of age in the U.S. have a
diagnosable mental illness, (USDHHS,
2001).
The Brain…
How Mindfulness Has
Been Used in Child &
Adolescent Therapy
Types of Mindfulness
Therapy
Current therapies that include mindfulness
practice:
• Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)
 Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy
(MBCT)
 Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
 Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).
Mindfulness-Based
Cognitive Therapy for
Children (MBCT-C)
The child therapy uses repetition, variety,
active participation in performing tasks, such
as mindfulness in moving, body scan, guided
imagery and discussion groups. The
environment is structured so that children are
sitting in a circle on the floor with cushions.
The aim of the structured group setting is to
create “a cohesive, safe, and confidential
environment – particularly during the initial
sessions.”
Teach Cognitive
Awareness of Social Filters
One of the strategies in the children’s
course is to provide opportunities to
reflect on social awareness and the missinterpretations that are often associated
with social interactions. The strategy is
used to explicitly teach cognitive
awareness of social “filters.”
Mindfulness for Children
Strategy to categorize thoughts with
mindfulness, “three states of mind:”
 Emotion mind – Recognize the emotions
that are present.
 Reasonable mind - Recognize thinking
errors
• Wise mind – Understanding the ebb and
flow of negative/positive thinking.
Students are taught to experience the mind in terms of
examining their thoughts and emotions with nonjudgmental,
slow, and curious intent.
An Example CBT
The instructor reads…
 “You are walking down the street, and
on the other side of the street you see
somebody you know. You smile and
wave. The person doesn’t seem to
notice and walks by.”
Mindfulness-Based
Cognitive Therapy for
Adolescents (MBCT-A)
Adolescent’s Mindfulness
Mindfulness is assisting teens in the…
Removal of negative social judgments
Improvement of communication
Improvement in intimacy of primary relationships
Reducing interpersonal risk avoidance
Expanding interpersonal boundaries
Assignment example
For example, the thought - “no one likes me, I am really
weird,’ is deconstructed in the wise mind, as – “hum there is
that thought again. Look at it; it’s dark and repetitive –
that’s a thought, which might be coming from the
emotions. If I look at that thought from the logical mind, I
discover there is no evidence at all I am more weird or less
weird that most people. I see evidence that weird is just a
side effect of being awesome. After all, it has been said that
Einstein was weird. Really everyone has a little weird. Let
me look at this thought from the wise mind again. Wise
mind says, look at your body’s reaction to that thought,
muscles are tight and there is a slight ache in your stomach.
My body is telling me that this thought is toxic. Wise mind
also says, there are hundreds and thousands of thoughts
everyday that come into my mind. I don’t have to feel each
and everyone of them.’
Strategies
 Breath (Sensory Yoga for Kids)
 Sound (Music)
 Smell
 Taste (Mindful Eating)
 Sight (Art Therapy)
 Body Awareness (Workbook)
 Apps
Practice
Eating a Raisin
Bag Smells
Stress Scale
Visuals
BioFeedBack
Sensory Toys.
Garrison Institute
 Go to http://www.garrisoninstitute.org/
 Click Teaching and Learning
 Scroll to the bottom and click Database
and?or Resources.
The End