Mindfulness. You may be reading about or hearing this word more often. While the word is not new, its usage among the general population as well as within education is on the rise. In essence, it is a state of mind which is achieved by focusing our awareness on the present moment while calmly acknowledging and accepting our feelings, thoughts and physical sensations. Originally intended as a means of therapy, mindfulness, today, is becoming more of a way of life. We are, after all, the sum total of our thoughts. Our thoughts affect the way we feel by producing chemicals, such as serotonin, which regulate our mood.

What more people are beginning to realize is that if our thoughts affect the way we feel, and we ultimately choose the thoughts about which we think, we can ultimately affect how we feel by focusing upon choosing the correct thoughts. Scientifically, this is accurate. However, humans are not as simple as that. While we do choose what to think about, we do so mostly without thinking. What does that mean, you ask? Quite simply, most of what we think about has become a habit of thinking. Take the optimists, for instance. They see the good in life and people. They are generally happy, content and fulfilled. Were they born optimists, or are they just so used to thinking that way that it has become a habit? While we are certainly born with certain genetic predispositions, most of us are the results of our environment; especially the one in which we were raised.

Mindfulness is all about our reconnecting to ourselves to our true desires, dreams and ambitions while becoming aware of how our thoughts are affecting our view of life. Let's face it, we all wish for a life of peace, harmony and fulfillment. Our brains are bombarded, though, every day by the news, the media and our culture. We chase after things in the belief that they will be the conduit of happiness, but the reality is they will not. Things collect dust and wind up in garage sales. But mindfulness brings us into the infinite world of our inner selves. It allows for us to foster and cultivate appreciation for all of the wonderful things in life, such as the air we breathe, the sun and every element of nature from which we derive life. Mindfulness allows us to supersede the false need for material items. It gradually puts our attention on the greater things in life. And, where we place our attention is where we will be.

If you find that you are unhappy, before you run to take a pill, try engaging in mindfulness. Try it every day for a month. Unhappiness in most people is the result of long-term, negative and fearful thinking. We must accept the reality that we are ultimately in control of our lives through the thoughts that we think. With Mindfulness, we are taking control of our thoughts and creating new ways of thinking which, if we think the thoughts enough, will become as much of a habit as our negative, fearful thoughts.

This is why mindfulness is now something cutting-edge educators are realizing should be taught to children as young as pre-k. If we start children on the correct path of thinking, we can help them possibly avoid the development of negative thinking while building a generation of mindful, loving, peaceful citizens of the world. So take the time to be thankful for your life, your friends, family; the sun, all of the things you enjoy. Be thankful of others. They'll be thankful for you.
Source

Dania Percy's Interview with Allan Wallace on Cultivating Emotional Balance

Don't forget to register for five day retreat at Perth 'Cultivating Emotional Balance' starting August 1st, 2015. 

Stanford neuroscience research identifies more effective way to teach abstract math concepts to children

Building on new discoveries about how the brain grapples with abstract mathematics, researchers at Stanford Graduate School of Education have developed a classroom strategy for teaching children the often baffling concepts surrounding negative numbers.

The new strategy recruits the brain's use of visual symmetry to make sense of the physical world, and it could have profound implications for the way elementary schools teach math.

Using symmetry appears to have helped not just in teaching children about negative numbers but in improving their ability to solve higher-level math problems they haven't seen before.

"Learning about negative numbers is one of the first times that kids learn about abstract numbers – it's a gateway to more abstract learning,'' said Jessica Tsang, a Stanford researcher and lead author of a new study with Daniel Schwartz and Kristen Blair of Stanford and Laura Bofferding of Purdue University.

The study marks the latest and most concrete result of a five-year project that bridges the gap between new insights from neuroscience and the testing of new classroom teaching tools for fourth-graders in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is published in the current issue of the journal Cognition & Instruction.

Researchers have long thought that the brain harnesses and adapts "perceptuo-motor" capacities to make sense of abstract ideas.

For the purposes of making sense of math, the most widely studied of these capacities has been the ability to compare physical magnitudes such as size. Over the past 15 years, neuroscientists have confirmed that the same region of the brain that assesses physical magnitudes is also key to comparing the magnitudes represented symbolically by numerals.

Three years ago, the Stanford researchers proposed that the brain actually re-purposes several additional capabilities, such as sequencing and ordering, to solve math problems. In this project, the researchers focused on the brain's ability to process visual symmetry.

In 2012 the researchers found that most adults identified the midpoint between a negative number and a positive number more easily if the integers were more symmetric about zero.

For example, people were faster computing the mid-point of 6 and -4 than 8 and -2, even though both pairs of digits were displayed in the same locations on a video screen. Moreover, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, the authors found that visual symmetry-coding regions of the brain became more active for the more symmetric pairs.

Given that the adult brain recruits symmetry circuits for conceptual math problems, the researchers hypothesized that helping young students engage this native ability would improve their mathematics learning.

For the new study, the authors created a guide and tools that incorporate ideas about using symmetry to teach negative numbers. As intuitive as it might seem for people to rely on symmetry as a way to make sense of the world, few curricular materials now used for teaching math make explicit use of it.

The researchers then tested the tools with students and compared the results to those of other students who were taught with the existing approaches.

One of the new classroom teaching tools was a specially designed hands-on manipulative device. Students worked with a magnetic plastic strip that was numbered. To solve the problem 3 + -2, students attached three magnetized blocks to the right of zero and two blocks to the left of zero. The manipulative further included a hinge at zero, the point of integer symmetry. Students folded the two sides together, and the number of extra blocks on either side gave the answer, in this case +1. The hinge at zero helped students recruit their native abilities with symmetry, and the numbers on the little platform helped them coordinate the sense of symmetry with the symbolic digits.

After four hours of instruction spread over three weeks, the researchers documented encouraging results.

First, the children quickly applied the hands-on lessons with symmetry to build new strategies for solving abstract problems involving symbolic digits. When the symmetry students were asked to add up a string of negative and positive numbers, for example, many used a balancing strategy to simplify the problem.

Some paired up negative and positive numbers that would add up to zero and cancel each other out. Others clustered the positive and negative integers on separate sides, which made the balance between the positives and negatives more apparent.

Second, students were likely to incorporate symmetry as an almost automatic part of their thinking. That's important, said Tsang, because many skills – such as decoding words in reading – are more effective when they become instantaneous and reflexive.

But the biggest surprise was on what educational researchers call "generativity" – the tendency of students to apply the ideas of symmetry on their own to problems they haven't encountered before.

As it turned out, students who learned to rely on symmetry didn't simply do better than other students on the material they had just been taught. They also did better on topics that they hadn't yet studied, such as making sense of negative fractions and solving pre-algebraic problems.

"The big difference was that the symmetry instruction enabled students to solve novel problems and to continue learning without explicit instruction," said Schwartz, who holds the Nomellini & Olivier Professorship in Educational Technology at Stanford. "By untangling how the brain comes to know mathematics, we helped with a major goal of education – putting children on an upward trajectory of future learning."

Source

Simple meditation practices for kids

As more adults turn to meditation for peace and balance in their hectic lives, more children are being introduced to this ancient practice to help deal with stress, and have a more peaceful outlook.

LOOK AT CLOUDS:

On nice days, go outside, lie on your backs in the grass looking up at the sky. Bring your attention, begin to notice, the clouds in the sky. Talk about the different shapes and sizes. Notice how they just drift through the sky moving in and out of view…. Appearing and disappearing. Just simply watch the clouds in the beautiful blue sky. The Blue Sky isn’t bothered by the clouds , the sky stays the same vast, clear, open and free even as the clouds move through the sky. This is how our thoughts work… thoughts float in and out of our minds just like clouds… thoughts appear and disappear. Come and go. But our mind just like the great Blue Sky is always clear, open and free. Allow your thoughts to just come and go knowing your mind is amazingly clear and free just like the sky.

MINDFULNESS JAR:

Take an 8 0z Mason Jar and colored sand (you can find at Michael’s Craft store). You can have different colors representing different things: Red is our thoughts, blue is our feelings and emotions. Fill the jar with water (the jar of water is our mind) and then add the red sand (our mind holds our thoughts) , add the blue for feelings and emotions (our mind holds our feelings and emotions). Now shake it up… the sand will start to swirl and the water will get cloudy from all the sand (thoughts, feeling and emotions) sometimes we just need to sit and relax and allow our thoughts and feelings to settle. As we watch the jar what happens to the sand? The sand begins to float to the bottom and the water starts to clear again. Lets try it once more just watching the sand settle as our thoughts, feeling and emotions settle just like the sand. Breathing easy as we watch everything become clear and calm.

 MINDFUL LISTENING, A MEDITATION EXERCISE FOR CHILDREN

Sitting comfortably, bring out a bell, chime or anything that makes a simple sound that will carry when struck. Allow the children to hold it in their hands, feeling and hearing its sound as you ring the bell, chime, etc.

This time, ring the bell and have the children listen very carefully — paying attention from the very first moment the child hears the sound of the bell all way to the end. When the children can’t hear the sound anymore, they open their eyes or raise their hand. You can first try it with eyes open and then with eyes closed.

One of Clement’s meditation practice for older kids who are between 9 and 13 includes pressing a thumb on a each finger (on the same hand) one by one, by saying affirmations such as “I am strong.” “I am confident.”

Source

Well-being program gives schools something to meditate on

Rachael Fisher, founder of KindKids, told The Educator that her organisation’s mindfulness program, designed for children aged 7-11, also has practical applications for teachers and principals.

“With mindfulness, teachers are able to bring more presence when they engage with students. Mindfulness empowers teachers and students to manage challenging behaviours and difficult issues such as bullying,” Fisher told The Educator.

“In essence mindfulness brings students and teachers together and all areas of school life become opportunities to practice.”

Fisher said that in a fast-paced society it was important for children to learn how to “slow down and savour the present moment”, a practice which she said can lead to improved focus in the classroom among other benefits.

“When children are given the regular space to be still, then not only does the perceived value of the practice increase but so do the benefits,” Fisher explained.
“Such benefits include: better focus and attention; improved impulse control; increased calm and contentment; increased empathy and understanding of others; greater sense of confidence and choicefulness.”

Some schools, such as Waverley Public School in NSW and Santa Maria College in Perth, have attributed improvements in their students’ academic performance to the practice, heeding research into the benefits of mindfulness in schools.

So what does the research say?

A recent meta-review of the effects of meditation being used in schools has shown that mindfulness is just as important as any other school program when it comes to maintaining and improving student well-being and performance.

The review, published by the University of Melbourne, combined the results from 15 studies and almost 1,800 students from Australia, Canada, India, the UK, the US and Taiwan.

The findings showed meditation leads to three broad outcomes for students: better well-being, social skills and academic skills.

Fisher said mindfulness takes what teachers want and expect from their students such as concentrating, being confident, paying attention and being kind and shows them how to do this “from the inside out.”

“In KindKids, students develop these mindfulness skills and learn how to be restful and resilient, how to be generous and kind, how to manage challenging emotions and how to be choiceful versus reactive,” Fisher said.

“Mindfulness cultivates a new way of being brave. Instead of resisting or running from difficulties, mindfulness empowers youth with the skills to intentionally turn towards their difficult emotions and approach problems with openness, kindness and curiosity.”
Source

Ways Music and the Senses Encourage Meditation

I have been meditating for the past 40+ years. This has led me on a journey to share the awareness of this relaxing and balancing practice with everyone I meet. When I first began meditating, it was with the intention to be calm and clear. Getting down to the brass tacks of being calm and clear are not easy when you're a teenager, let alone when you're not. I didn't have an inkling as to how to keep myself from sitting still long enough to experience the quietude and insight my spiritual teachers had told me about.

Often, I found that many people were not sure how to experience meditation. The most common complaint was not being able to sit still long enough to be mindful. If you are one of these people, you are not alone. In fact, you are probably in the majority, though I'm hoping that after this blog is read, more people will join in the joy of finding peace via meditation.

Music -- Using music will help create the ambiance for beginners. Be sure to use music that is more instrumental so that the words do not distract you from your intention to go within.

Sounds -- Listening to the birds, the weather, street sounds, bells, crystal bowls, or even the vibration of your own heartbeat, will help you maintain the rhythmic breathing necessary to establish routine.

Spoken Word -- This is mostly a guided meditation wherein a facilitator will lead you through the steps to teach you to breathe and open you to the understanding of how to get started.

Imagery -- Pictures and colors will allow your mind to experience a wide range of gentle emotions. Meditate on colors that you have an affinity for and they will encourage positive energy.

Touch -- Some people like to hold something, like the energy of a crystal, shell, stone or special icon. These objects can establish feelings of well being that connect us to the meditation practice and remind us of how good we felt in doing so.

Scent -- When you add specific scents of essential oils and incense to your environment, you level the emotional element of your experience as you open to what the oils remind you of. Rose, lavender and vanilla are good for raising morale and helping with mood swings.

It's important to keep in mind that nothing is etched in stone and you always have the power to choose what type of meditation to use simply by measuring what is comfortable to you. Feel free to experiment with music, sound, touch and scent, and be sure to take notes to follow your progress. After a short time of steady meditation of at least 10-15 minutes a day you will feel relaxed and focused.
Source

Have you registered?

Register Online