School Student Mindfulness
& Stress Management
Why Mindfulness?
Mindfulness programming is schools is an excellent way to assist staff and students in learning new skills and manage the rising stress levels, prevent mental health issues and reengage students during these challenging times. Mindfulness can be taught as part of social emotional learning goals to enhance overall effectiveness. The benefits of learning mindfulness can benefit students throughout their education and careers with healthy coping and resiliency.
Research suggests that practicing mindfulness strengthens brain areas related to attention, leading to improved emotional regulation, mental health and cognition. These improvements are found both in adults including and in school students.
Research has shown us that practicing mindfulness improves the brain areas that control “executive function” such as the prefrontal cortex, hippocampus and amygdala. For this reason mindfulness leads to improved attention, memory, emotional regulation and self-awareness. In turn, improvements in these areas can lead to reduced stress, anxiety and depression and better academic skills, social skills and self-esteem.
Getting Started
Students should be introduced to mindfulness as early in their school years as possible in an age appropriate manner.
The three final years of high school is also a time when students are most vulnerable to the onset of mental illness, so this is a vital time to incorporate mindfulness education programs.
Inner Wisdom Wellness offers the programs listed below. These programs are school-based mindfulness interventions and are in alignment with Project Aware Ohio.
Building Everyday Resilience at the elementary level,
Mindup Curriculum for middle schools and
Learning to BREATHE at the high school level to cultivate emotion regulation, attention and performance.
Building Everyday Resilience
This program originated in Canada and is based on research that mindfulness based education may be useful for helping children adapt more effectively in changing and increasingly stressful environments. The fun, play-based activities include four main categories: sensory, breathing and visualization, compassion and perspective-taking activities. Using the principles of mindfulness, the activities are designed to help children develop helpful habits to manage, cope with and overcome everyday challenges. The fun, play based segments are
Mindup
Mindup is research based featuring the latest research about the brain to improve behavior and learning in students. Each lesson offers easy strategies for helping students focus their attention, improve their self-regulation skills, build resilience to stress and develop a positive mind-set in both school and life.
Learning to BREATHE
Learning to BREATHE was developed by clinical psychologist, Patricia C. Broderick, mindfulness expert and tailors mindfulness education to the developmental needs of adolescents to help them understand their thoughts and feelings and manage distressing emotions.
Students will be empowered by learning important mindfulness skills to improve emotion regulation, reduce stress, improve overall performance and develop attention. This program also incorporates some of the themes of mindfulness-based stress reduction developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn.The acronym BREATHE and each theme has a core message: Body, Reflection, Emotions, Attention, Tenderness and Healthy Mind Habits and Empowerment.
Additional information:
Mindfulness for Educators
School staff also benefit from mindfulness and can more effectively support mindfulness programs when they also use mindfulness practices. We recommend school staff receive our mindfulness education module (found in Inner Wisdom at Work tab) prior to students receiving education for a more comprehensive schoolwide mindfulness program.
What Mindfulness Is Not
First of all, mindfulness is not a spiritual or religious practice. It is not about social support or simply about peace, or relaxation. And it isn’t about not thinking at all. It isn’t about emotional suppression or suppressing one’s thoughts.
What Mindfulness Is
Mindfulness is the technique of directing one’s attention to the current experience with an attitude of non-judgmental acceptance. Emotions and thoughts are part of that experience and so are neither suppressed nor cleared, and viewed as neither negative nor positive.
District-wide Mindfulness
To ensure effectiveness, mindfulness programs should begin with the school staff education, ensure programs and strategies have high fidelity in implementation, are monitored for effectiveness and be considered in alignment with the district-wide plan for behavioral support. Mindfulness programming can be incorporated into the classroom and threaded into a schoolwide approach. Additionally, individual students could receive additional support as needed.
We can assist your district with implementation and classroom program along with a districtwide mindfulness approach to bring mindfulness activities for all students while some grade levels have additional education..
Contact Information
Our staff have credentials and experience working with schools and students and can help your district determine the best way to approach programming. Contact us for a free consult today.