Mindfulness is a modern
reworking of ancient meditation traditions that have emerged
principally from the Buddhist faith. Mindfulness is designed to help
people deal with day to day difficulties by taking control of your
thoughts and focusing your attention on what is important in each
situation.
The aim of mindfulness therapy is to help you learn to be aware
of your thoughts and bodily sensations and in so doing be able to
better cope with day to day emotions and problems.
In difficult situations such as when a loved one is very ill or
we are approaching an anxiety provoking situation (e.g. an exam) or
someone makes us angry or frustrated, we may experience very strong
emotions e.g. sadness, anxiety or anger.
Often times these emotions prevent us from seeing the situation
for what it is and effectively dealing with the issue by taking all
of our attention. Overwhelming thoughts may accompany these
emotions such as "I'll never get through this, I'm not strong
enough to cope" or "I must be stupid if I'm so scared of this
exam". Allowing these thoughts to dominate our thinking without
refocusing our attention to the real issue tends to further
perpetuate the strong emotions to the point where we are no longer
in control of our thoughts and we can't cope.
This is particularly true for young people who are going through
tough times. A young person who has not developed effective coping
skills will tend to only see the negative in a difficult situation,
and will allow this perspective to dominate their thoughts. If as
teachers we can support students to see things in a different way
and focus their attention on what they can do to deal with
difficult times, then we will be helping students to develop the
resilience they need to get through life's ups and downs.
The Teachers Network has created a new section on the site that
explores Mindfulness in the
classroom. This section includes facts about mindfulness and the
benefits of mindfulness for wellbeing, lesson activities that you can
use with your students to help them focus their attention more
effectively as well as a collection of mindfulness resources and
useful links where you can find more information.
Here's some exercises to whet your
appetite
Check out our lesson ideas section for some exercises
that will help you and your students focus your attention.
Audio tracks that you can use in
class
The Melbourne Mindfulness
Centre has a number of mindfulness and relaxation tracks that
can be used with your classes to focus on breathing, body
awareness, relaxation and meditations. Tracks may be
downloaded and distributed for free. If you pass them to others the
Centre requests that you include the web address
stillmind.com.au.
Join the discussion
Let us know how you go if you try out any of these exercises for
yourself or with your class. What worked? What didn't work? What
surprised you? What would you do differently next time?
Leave your comments below ...