The One Quality You Must Instill In Your Child (Huffington Post)
By Amanda McCorquodale
Published (c) 2013 The Huffington Post, November 2013
Teachers and parents: What if we told you you were only 10 minutes away from having studious, focused, well-adjusted, compassionate, and happy children?
Some researchers say the secret is mindfulness, a daily meditative practice that emphasizes bringing one’s complete attention to the present moment.
Enter Mindful Kids Miami, a non-profit working to introduce mindfulness into Miami-Dade public schools, oncology wards, and centers that serve abused children and their families.
Valerie York-Zimmerman, who has studied with Buddhist monk and author Thich Nhat Hanh as well as Jon Kabat-Zinn, director of University of Massachusetts’s Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness, founded the pilot program in 2011.
In the years since, she has trained teachers to reduce children’s stress and combat over-stimulation by bringing their focus to their direct experience as they become aware of physical sensations such as breathing.
“Children and teens are experiencing much higher levels of stress today,” York-Zimmerman told The Huffington Post. “And stress impairs the ability to learn and effects executive function in the brain. Executive function correlates with working memory, emotional regulation, resilience, and socially appropriate behavior – all important functions in development and learning.”
Here are five ways a mindful child can benefit in the classroom and at home, according to York-Zimmerman:
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- Mindfulness increases attention and focus that can result in higher academic achievement.
- Mindfulness reduces stress, allowing kids to learn more and perform better throughout the day.
- Mindfulness has been shown to improve kid’s impulse control, a benefit that can increase productive teaching time in the classroom.
- Mindfulness develops emotional regulation in turn teaching children to “respond” rather than “react.”
- Mindfulness builds empathy and compassion in children, cultivating greater tolerance of cultural, religious and sexual diversity; and reducing cruelty, bullying, and violence leading to safer and happier schools.
BREATHING BEAR PRACTICE MEDITATION
See below for Bear Breathing Practice, an example of the kind of activities York-Zimmerman uses at Mindful Kids Miami.
“It’s something teachers can do in the classroom and parents can do at night when putting a child to bed,” she said. “Even big kids like focusing on their breath with a lovable stuffed animal.”
Breathing Bear Practice:
Mindful Kids Miami has adorable, stuffed teddy bears wearing hoodies that have the MKM logo on the back and “BREATHE” on the front. These friendly bears help children to become aware of their breath, to relax, and to learn to breathe fully into their bellies.
Intention: To experience relaxation with your Breathing Bear.
Instructions:
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- Ring the mindfulness chimes 3 times.
- Ask the children to lie down on their backs and put their Breathing Bear on their belly.
- Invite them to close their eyes if they are comfortable doing so. If not, almost close them. And see if they can feel their friendly bear resting on their belly.
- Now encourage the children to feel their breath flowing into and out from their nose.
- To feel their chest rising with each in-breath and falling with each out-breath.
- To notice if they can feel their belly moving up and down gently with each breath… feeling the belly expand and deflate slightly like a balloon with each breath.
- Now invite the children to focus on feeling their Breathing Bear riding on their belly.
- Seeing if they can take their Breathing Bear for a relaxing belly ride up and down.
- Invite them to notice if their Breathing Bear helps them to feel their breath.
- Continuing on in your own words if you like.
- Now invite the children to listen to the chimes with their mindful ears without moving until they can’t hear the chimes anymore.
- Ring the mindfulness chimes 3 times.
Some Reflections on the Origins of MBSR, Skillful Means, and the Trouble With Maps (PDF)
The following article by Jon Kabat-Zinn explores the foundations of MBSR and the importance of meditation practice and retreat attendance.
“As I will recount a bit further along, mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) was developed as one of a possibly infinite number of skillful means for bringing the dharma into mainstream settings.1 It has never been about MBSR for its own sake. It has always been about the M. And the M is a very big M, as I attempt to describe in this paper. That said, the quality of MBSR as an intervention is only as good as the MBSR instructor and his or her understanding of what is required to deliver a truly . . . . “
Download the original PDF article here: kabat-zinn-on-mbsr-origins.PDF
Contemporary Buddhism, Vol. 12, No. 1, May 2011 ISSN 1463-9947 print/1476-7953 online/11/010281-306 q 2011 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14639947.2011.564844
Buddha Lessons (Newsweek)
by Claudia Kalb, Sept. 26, 2004
For decades, Dalia Isicoff has suffered the agony of rheumatoid arthritis–joint pain, spinal fusion, multiple hip surgeries. Painkillers dull the aches, but it wasn’t until she took a course at the University of Maryland’s Center for Integrative Medicine that Isicoff discovered a powerful weapon inside her own body: her mind. Using a meditative practice called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, or MBSR, Isicoff learned to acknowledge her pain, rather than fight it. Her negative and debilitating thought patterns–“This is getting worse,” “I’m going to end up in a wheelchair”–began to dissipate, and she was able to cut back on her medication. The pain hasn’t gone away, but “I view it is an ally now,” she says. “Mindfulness is transformational.” Continue reading “Buddha Lessons (Newsweek)”