Question…

1. Question… • What do the following people have in common? • The employees at Google and Apple • Superbowl Champion Seattle Seahawks • Los Angeles Lakers and Chicago Bulls under Coach Phil Jackson • Entertainers Katy Perry and 50 Cent • Service Members of the United States Army and Marine Corps

2. The Neuroscience of Mindfulness Exploring Its Discoveries and Implications for Education

3. Why Mindfulness in Education Is Needed More Than Ever • 1 in 5 of American adolescents are experiencing signs and symptoms of a mental health disorder, including ADHD, depression, anxiety, substance abuse and eating disorders (1). • 30% of 12-19 year old Americans take at least one prescription drug to combat these disorders (2). • Teachers face an unusually high degree of burnout due to long, unpaid hours and what is commonly called “compassion fatigue” in all lines of caregiver work (3). • Nearly 50% of teachers leave the profession within the first 5 years; most common reasons cited are high-stakes testing pressure and poor working conditions (4). • What’s the common connection?

4. STRESS • Mark Williams, Oxford University professor and co-founder of Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), states that the bell-curve distribution of stress-related anxiety has effectively shifted far to the right in the last half-century. What were once considered clinical levels of anxiety in students/teens 50 years ago is now the new normal baseline for today’s youth (5). • Jon Kabat-Zinn, a medical doctor and founder of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), notes in the foreword of The Way of Mindful Education: “…it is now well known that stress has deleterious effects on the developing brain. In particular, stress has been shown to degrade the executive functions of the prefrontal cortex—which is essential for problem-solving, creativity, and reasoning—as well as the activity of the hippocampus, which plays an active and important role in learning, memory, and emotion regulation. Stress also affects the amygdalae, the threat reactivity centers within the brain’s limbic system, which get bigger with ongoing stress exposure, and smaller with mindfulness training.” (6)

5. A Tale of Two Nervous Systems Sympathetic Nervous System Parasympathetic Nervous System Eyes Closed, Relaxed, Safety Signal Generates “Rest-and-Digest” Response PNS is the complement to the SNS; if the SNS acts as the accelerator for the brain and body, the PNS acts as the brakes. By engaging the PNS with mindfulness practices, the damage caused by the overstimulated SNS can be reversed and overcome. • Eyes Open, Alert, Ready for Danger • Generates “Fight-or-Flight” Response • SNS cannot differentiate between real and perceived threats, which leads to overproduction of cortisol, the stress-response hormone. This in turn has debilitating physiological effects on the brain and body over the long term.

6. fMRI – A Window into the Brain Baseline Scan Mindful Practice Scan

7. Benefits of Regular Mindfulness Practice

8. Mindfulness in Education Success Stories • A study conducted by Tabriz University and reported at the 6th International Congress on Child and Adolescent Psychiatry concluded that mindfulness embedded within school curricula increased student motivation and academic performance. • Congressman Tim Ryan, author of A Mindful Nation, secured a one million dollar grant to implement the “Skills for Life” program for children in the Youngstown and Warren school districts in Ohio. The Skills for Life program is the first of its kind, combining mindfulness and SEL practices to help students become more engaged and socially responsible learners. Teachers within these districts note that not only is student behavior better, but that student achievement and proficiency have made noticeable gains as well. • A recently completed pilot study done in the Madison Metropolitan School District demonstrated that teachers who underwent mindfulness training had improved mindfulness (i.e. moment-to-moment awareness) and self-compassion, reduced stress-related negative psychological symptoms and burnout, and increased effective teaching behavior. • A cooperative study between Portland State University and the University of British Columbia, Vancouver discovered that “mindfulness training holds promise for the improvement of teaching and learning in public schools by assisting teachers in managing job stress and feelings of burnout more effectively. By helping teachers to develop self-regulatory resources to meet the cognitive, social, and emotional demands of teaching, mindfulness training also may help teachers to conserve precious motivational and self-regulatory resources for investment in relationships with students and classroom teaching.”