Monday February 9th was to have been the kick off to our PTA’s Heart Health Awareness week. We were starting off with Meditation Monday. Unfortunately, Mother Nature had something else in mind and the slick sheet of ice on most of our roads kept us snug in bed, perhaps dreaming of the return of the warm summer sun in a few months! Even though we lost the opportunity to practice meditation on Monday, it is something that is worth talking about for all its profound benefits to our health, productivity, creativity, stress-reduction and overall psychological well-being. An article by Alice G. Walton on Forbes.com provides us with scientific evidence that Meditation can actually change the brain.
In our fifth grade classes we have been discussing some key areas of the brain involved in learning and memory (the Hippocampus), and emotional regulation (the Amygdala). The children now know that the Amygdala can provide us with false information about our world and create a heightened sense of anxiety in us if we do not become more mindful and aware of what we are experiencing and how we are reacting to it. To back this up, “In 2011, Sara Lazar and her team at Harvard found that mindfulness meditation can actually change the structure of the brain: Eight weeks of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) was found to increase cortical thickness in the hippocampus, which governs learning and memory, and in certain areas of the brain that play roles in emotion regulation and self-referential processing. There were also decreases in brain cell volume in the amygdala, which is responsible for fear, anxiety, and stress – and these changes matched the participants’ self-reports of their stress levels, indicating that meditation not only changes the brain, but it changes our subjective perception and feelings as well.”
Having this understanding of the neuroplasticity of our brains and providing the children with a different way of viewing their experiences is all part of the Mindfulness training we are doing in fifth grade in the hope of developing more resilient, reflective individuals.
Sharing the idea that Mindfulness is the act of paying attention, on purpose, in the moment, without judgement sparked some good conversation. We practiced silently being aware of our inner experiences (thoughts and feelings inside our bodies) and then carefully being aware of our external world (sights, sounds, smells). We discussed how some of us found it easier to tune-in to our inner experiences and others of us had an easier time focusing our attention on the input to our five senses. All of this gave the kids an appreciation for how much we process at any given moment if we allow ourselves to be aware of it. It helped some of them recognize that being mindful and aware of someone else’s circumstances, like the exhaustion of a working parent at the end of a long day, could help to avoid nasty conflicts if they chose a different time to share a new song they learned on the violin. Awakening in them the understanding that one’s thoughts and feelings can be recognized as events occurring in the broader field of awareness will build their perspective-taking and empathy towards others. But this new view of the world and themselves in it doesn’t happen overnight...which is why it is called Mindfulness PRACTICE! So even though we missed out on some mindful meditation in school on Monday, take the opportunity to discuss ways to imbed the practice of mindfulness into your family’s daily routines - it could be starting the day with peaceful breathing and a positive affirmation about how the day will go or ending it with thoughts of gratitude for a day well spent. The more we practice this mindset, the more empowered we will feel!
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