Taking a Moment: The Power of Mindfulness in Schools

Meditation–or mindfulness–has been a practice for creating inner peace for hundreds of years, but it does more than just calm your mind, it can improve your overall wellbeing. More and more research is developing exemplifying why using mindfulness in schools should become a common practice across the world. ScienceDaily recently reported on a study by a staff member of Texas Tech University showing the wonders mindfulness in schools could provide.

The power mindfulness in schools can offer

The study wasn’t actually conducted in a school setting, but it can definitely offer up ideas in the area of creating a system for mindfulness in schools. Li-Yuan Tang, head of the research, has created a new way of mindfulness called Integrative Body-Mind Training (IBMT). It’s distinct from mindfulness meditation in that it doesn’t closely involve your emotions. He explains:

“With IBMT practice, you distance your thoughts or emotions and realize they are not you, then you see the reality in an insightful and different way. Mindfulness helps you be aware of these mental processes at the present, and you just observe without judgment of these activities.”

Tang’s way doesn’t try to control thought, it instead requires you to have a coach who leads you through “body-adjustment guidance, mental imagery, and other techniques while soothing music plays in the background.” Eventually, you gain control over your thoughts through this process.

It has been shown in his research that just five 20-minute sessions have the power to greatly improve relaxation, calmness, self-awareness, brain activity, and attention–all wonderful things for the learning process. He’s also found a significant drop in stress, anxiety, anger, fatigue, and depression. It seems to be an overall great way to improve health.

How this could benefit students

Students are faced with a large dose of daily stress and anxiety. Mindfulness in schools could help manage this. By only taking a small amount of time each day to do a guided moment of mindfulness in schools, students could have large drops in stress, anxiety, and moodiness, while having large increases in productivity, academic performance, and positive social behavior. It’s hard to argue with those benefits, which is why mindfulness in schools is being integrated in many places across the country.

Asheville Academy can help

Asheville Academy is a therapeutic boarding school for young girls, ages 10-14, struggling with anxiety, depression, ADHD, and other behavioral or mental issues.

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