By: Amanda Werner
Do you often feel overwhelmed with all you have to do? Maybe you feel scattered and aren’t sure what to focus your energy on. Mindfulness in your personal and professional life can most definitely help alleviate these anxieties. In this blog post I’ll share ten ways you can begin to bring more mindfulness into both your personal and professional life. You’ll learn what mindfulness is and how you can begin practicing in your personal life so you can start bringing these practices into your classroom.
Before you can begin bringing these practices into the classroom you need to have a thorough understanding of mindfulness and personally make efforts to incorporate meditation and mindfulness into your personal life. In the video below I define mindfulness as paying attention to the present moment as often as possible with your five senses. I also describe activities you can do throughout the day to incorporate mindfulness into your life.
I recommend explicitly teaching students the definition of mindfulness. You might even consider showing them the video above. My favorite website for all things mindfulness is mindful.org. You can find many articles to read with students, videos to show and guided meditations on this website.
How many pauses do you take throughout your day? How many times do you stop and take a few deep breaths? How many times do you scan your body and focus attention on how you are feeling? If the answer is none, you can change this. You can also let your students know that you are making an effort to slow down and breathe during class and they can join in on making this a goal for themselves too. Believe me, it feels incredibly good to slow down, especially in a fast paced classroom environment.
There are many studies proving that meditation literally changes the brain! This is quite incredible and the science might convince you and your students why these practices are important.
Check out the different parts of the brain that are impacted by meditation in this informative yet straightforward article: How Meditation Changes the Brain. It also includes footnotes that cite the studies this information came from. You could teach about citations, meditation and the brain all at once!
There are also many articles online about the benefits of mindfulness. When introducing students to mindfulness, you might also read and discuss an article like this one from The Harvard Gazette together: Harvard researchers study how mindfulness changes the brain in depressed patients.
There are so many tools available to live a more mindful life. Here are some of my favorite:
Yoga with Adriene– I am a huge fan of Adriene’s work and am even a part of her membership community. She is such a kind, gentle yoga instructor and is a great role model for young people, she’s very young herself and so inspiring.
Teaching about habit formation can be a powerful wake up call for you and your students! Here are some key ideas you should know about habit formation:
Meditation and mindfulness have been proven to support addiction and obsessive behavior tendencies.
It makes complete sense that this would be the case. When you meditate you detach yourself from thoughts, you become an observer of those thoughts. You notice them and bring your attention back to your breath or body. You don’t get consumed by them as easily. So, how do you relay this information to your students? I’d start by reading and discussing articles like the ones below:
After reading some informative articles with students, you’ll definitely want to facilitate a meaningful discussion with them about this topic. What has worked for them? What is hard about this day and age? How do they feel after hours and hours of screens?
Be open to all student responses. Some students might don’t feel it’s a problem, and we need to accept that’s where they are right now. At some point in the future maybe these resources and discussion will have an impact, it just might not be today. Acceptance of all the flaws that come with human nature and dropping expectations about what people should and shouldn’t do is a huge part of living a more mindful life. It’s also one of the most challenging parts!
The Ted Talks below are short and worth watching and then showing to your students! You could use them to start a discussion about mindfulness or meditation, model public speaking skills, teach note-taking skills or to put on a playlist for students to watch asynchronously.
There are many misconceptions about meditation such as that you have to sit cross legged on the floor with your pointer finger and thumb touching and pointing up on your knees. Many of my students have jokingly put themselves into this position when I try to facilitate a mediation practice in my classroom. Instead of getting frustrated with these students, this can be the perfect opportunity to teach about different types of meditation. The video below is kid-friendly and discusses five types of meditation: traditional, walking, guided, auditory and visual.
This video doesn’t even scratch the surface when it comes to the variety of meditation practices out there. I’ve recently gotten really into chanting meditation and love the Kritan Kriya Meditation of Sa, Ta, Na, Ma. This meditation helps tremendously when my mind is caught up in stressful thoughts or craving. HeadSpace also has this blog post about 16 Types of Meditation.
Meditating in a classroom setting can be overwhelming and to be frank…awkward! Keeping 30+students silently focused on their own breath is no easy task. This is why I recommend starting with just a few minutes at first. You can do this:
At the beginning of each class or Google Meet/Zoom guide students to find a quiet space in their home (if possible) or put on headphones so all they hear is your voice. Mute all students except yourself.
Start a timer and explain to students that for the next 3 minutes all you want them to do is pay attention to their breathing.
Tell them to sit up straight and take a deep breath in through their nose, hold it at the top, and release through their mouth. Guide them to do this deep breathing about five times.
Next, have students breathe normally, close their eyes if they are comfortable. If they are not comfortable closing their eyes, they can lay their head down or just look at a point in front of them on their computers, their desk or the floor. Explain that their only job in the next few minutes is to breathe normally and count their breaths up to ten. The in breath is one, the out breath is two and so on. Explain that when their mind wanders (it most definitely will), notice and come back to counting the breath.
That’s it! It’s pretty simple but powerful and there is science and research to back up how powerful daily meditation practice is!
Once your students have been doing the 3 minute meditation for a month or so, you might feel they are ready for the next step, 5 minutes, then 10!
I believe being a teacher is about more than teaching our content area. In my opinion helping students cope with our fast paced world is a duty all teachers need to take on. Now, after reading this blog post, you are armed with the information and tools to help you do just that. If you want more done-for-you-lessons, videos and activities for students to teach them not just mindfulness but journaling and sketchnoting too, check out the resource below.
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