From the New York Times comes this article: "In the classroom, a new focus on quieting the mind".
Mindfulness training helps children focus on learning and assists them in getting along better with their peers. An excerpt:
Mindfulness, while common in hospitals, corporations, professional
sports and even prisons, is relatively new in the education of
squirming children. But a small but growing number of schools in places
like Oakland and Lancaster, Pa., are slowly embracing the concept — as
they did yoga five years ago — and institutions, like the psychology
department at Stanford University and the Mindfulness Awareness Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, are trying to measure the effects.
During
a five-week pilot program at Piedmont Avenue Elementary, Miss Megan,
the “mindful” coach, visited every classroom twice a week, leading 15
minute sessions on how to have “gentle breaths and still bodies.”
The following section really stayed with me:
Yolanda Steel, a second-grade teacher at Piedmont, said she was hopeful
that the training would help an attention-deficit generation better
manage a barrage of stimuli, including PlayStations and text messages.
“American children are overstimulated,” Ms. Steel said. “Some have
difficulty even closing their eyes.”
Can you close your eyes? If you can't, why not?
I am so plugged in to technology for my job, it's often a huge challenge to settle my mind when work is done. After speeding along the information superhighway all day long, it takes a while to leave that mode.
We need to learn how to turn off this stimuli — for short periods of time, at least — if our creativity and identity are to survive this constant bombardment of digital messages and communication.
Two solutions: spend more time in nature to combat the growing nature-deficit disorder, and have a computer shutdown day occasionally.
