Invite them to participate with the class and make explicitly clear that they can also quietly observe without participating as the class engages with mindfulness Similarly, being forced to sit in one particular position would be counterproductive for students who feel most relaxed when sitting on their knees rather than their butts.įor students who may have experienced/are experiencing trauma-students for whom the feeling of calm or awareness of their inner emotional world may be new and may be uncomfortable-teachers should: Asking all students to adhere to one specific mindfulness practice that may work well for you or even for most of the students in the class may be very harmful for the student whose traumatic experiences are triggered by flashbacks when forced to close their eyes. Mindfulness is about being in the present-moment and can be practiced in many different forms. Depending on what students have or are currently experiencing, several common mindfulness practices, such as closing the eyes and taking deep breaths, sitting still in one’s seat, or remaining silent, can be triggers for re-traumatizing thoughts or feelings. As trauma responsive educators, we must be alert for when mindfulness as a practice is harming rather than helping a student. Successful mindfulness within schools requires a trauma responsive approach that is based on strong teacher-student relationships. This effortful regulation will have cascading and reinforcing benefits for meeting the behavioral and academic expectations of your classroom. The effortful regulation skills that are learned through regularly engaging your students in these core practices builds their ability to:Īs students repeatedly practice the letting go of thoughts and distractions and returning their focus to the mindfulness practice, they are strengthening their ability to maintain focus on a goal while inhibiting distraction. OPEN MONITORING Learning to sit with the totality of your mental and emotional states as well as take in visual, physical, and auditory stimuli without the need to immediately push away the experience Mindfulness utilizes a limited number of core practices that can be repeated in an endless variety of ways to develop students’ capacity to maintain present-moment awareness of their experiences and awareness of their physiological and emotional reactions to experiences.īREATH Learning to focus on your breath to moderate emotional reactivity to external and internal events.įOCUSED ATTENTION Learning to non-judgmentally notice when your attention strays and gently bring it back on the focal object.īODY SCAN Learning to recognize the stress and emotional reactivity that is held in and expressed through your physical well-being. The more you practice mindfulness, the better equipped you will be to demonstrate it to your students through your own mindful ways of being. When you practice mindfulness along with your students you are deepening your mindfulness capabilities.
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