Mindfulness means paying attention in the present moment to our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, or surrounding environment. For the sake of simplicity, we can define it as noticing what’s happening right now in an open, balanced and curious way. It also includes intentionally nurturing positive states of mind such as empathy and kindness.
Scientific studies find that mindfulness improves young people’s attention, emotion regulation, behaviour in school, social skills, empathy, test anxiety and stress, among other benefits. For more information, visit mindfulschools.org/research.
Both quantitative and qualitative research indicate that mindfulness helps give students the mental and emotional skills needed to improve learning readiness, attentional stability, prosocial behaviour, impulse control and emotional regulation. In turn, these changes can support improved academic performance and behaviour.
No, Mindful Schools and other mindfulness in education approaches are completely secular and are based upon decades of work and research applying mindfulness to the medical and mental health fields. Youth learn awareness, self-regulation, and social-emotional skills. Click here to read more about secularity.
Mindfulness is not a replacement for social-emotional learning (SEL), but it is an important complement. The practices, skills and outcomes of both mindfulness and SEL are complementary and mutually reinforcing. Mindfulness teaches youth to pause and self-regulate, allowing them to respond with their social-emotional skills rather than react impulsively. The Mindful Schools curriculum includes SEL, so it can be taught alone or combined with a more intensive SEL curriculum. Click here to read more about integrating mindfulness and SEL programming.
Yes the program can be offered to all the above. Please contact us for more details on this.
