Improving the Efficacy of Mindfulness in Schools

Sigh.
I practice these regularly, yet I feel extremely uncomfortable about the mindfulness movement, and especially about any environment in which there is the slightest hint of coercion attached to them, (including peer pressure or brownie points), whether it be schools, workplaces or inmate situations. It makes me cringe.

Unfortunately psychology, is subject to fads. Its been my own experience that mindfulness was created,, because it could be sold to the public where as meditation, could not. Mindfulness was created by those that wanted to use meditation by another name, to enrich themselves financially. Meditation itself, has a long history, with many religious underpinnings. There again, when one looks at what the experts say about meditation, their descriptions of meditation differ from what so called mindfulness instructs us. First of all. Osho, Krishnamurti, and many others have said that meditation, cannot be taught. That is is a “happening”, not a doing and that any lessons, teaching etc,, that purports to teach mediation is in fact its anti thesis. One can learn to experience it that is all. Its been my perception that mindfulness is a form of auto hypnosis, and that those under the influence of its practitioners, exhibit effects similar to being under hypnosis, i.e., they are highly suggestible. That being said, it may seem redundant, to say this but children, who need therapy, need therapy. Mindfulness cannot substitute for therapy, because that’s not what it does.

I have to laugh at some of the criticisms of mindfulness. Mindfulness is about trying to adopt a nonjudgemental attitude towards self. To notice our thoughts, notice being distracted, redirect our focus onto the present moment, and to try and do one thing at a time. Our current world doesn’t support mindfulness, as we have constant distractions in modern life. It’s a nonpathologizing view of the human experience. The fact that anyone would get offended by such concepts is to me quite confusing. All children should be taught to practice mindfulness, as it helps someone develop self compassion and focus to be present in one’s life. Not sure how this is controversial.

This is surely coming, here in the 21st-century paradigm shift, away from living in our heads. I suspect that soon enough, the realization will dawn in education systems around the globe, that filling young mind’s with more and more knowledge is not enough.

And that teaching the revelations of New Testament Neuroscience Revelations on the Human Condition, is very important, especially in that period when people experience the second major growth spurt in brain growth, after the first three years of life.

Do they, somewhere teach mindfulness of one’s infant sixth sense, I wonder. Or, as most practice in the West, do they teach a pseudo form of mindfulness that keeps the individual trapped in thought, unable to answer the Sage question:

Where are You, between two thoughts?

Please consider this excerpt from a paper on Yoga, Wisdom and How to Feel the Inner qualities of Being Human:

Yoga Therapy and Polyvagal Theory: The Convergence of Traditional Wisdom and Contemporary Neuroscience for Self-Regulation and Resilience.

Yoga therapy is a newly emerging, self-regulating complementary and integrative healthcare (CIH) practice. It is growing in its professionalization, recognition, and utilization with a demonstrated commitment to setting practice standards, educational and accreditation standards, and promoting research to support its efficacy for various populations and conditions.

However, heterogeneity of practice, poor reporting standards, and lack of a broadly accepted understanding of the neurophysiological mechanisms involved in yoga therapy limits the structuring of testable hypotheses and clinical applications.

Current proposed frameworks of yoga-based practices focus on the integration of bottom-up neurophysiological and top-down neurocognitive mechanisms. In addition, it has been proposed that phenomenology and first person ethical inquiry can provide a lens through which yoga therapy is viewed as a process that contributes towards eudaimonic well-being in the experience of pain, illness or disability. In this article we build on these frameworks, and propose a model of yoga therapy that converges with Polyvagal Theory (PVT).

PVT links the evolution of the autonomic nervous system to the emergence of prosocial behaviors and posits that the neural platforms supporting social behavior are involved in maintaining health, growth and restoration. This explanatory model which connects neurophysiological patterns of autonomic regulation and expression of emotional and social behavior, is increasingly utilized as a framework for understanding human behavior, stress and illness.

Specifically, we describe how PVT can be conceptualized as a neurophysiological counterpart to the yogic concept of the gunas, or qualities of nature.

Apologies to the choir for going off script and introducing something new.

But honestly, the only thing I’m trying to sell you here is the inner nature of you.

Apologies to Jessica too for not mentioning her efforts in this wonderful article on the importance of adolescence, and that age which is described as a time when summer nigh, in the New Testament parable of the human condition.

I’m sure she is familiar with The Polyvagal Theory and its impact on trauma-informed care for people suffering a subconscious nervous response to life’s most difficult experiences. To clarify, for those who care to take the time to read and digest, meditating upon such knowledge in a visceral way. Please consider an excerpt from an academic paper, now a chapter in a book:

The Infant’s Sixth Sense: Awareness and Regulation of Bodily Processes

Life is a sensory experience. During every moment of our lives, we experience the world through our varied sensory systems. Sensory experiences drive our behavior and contribute to the organization of our thoughts and emotions. Immediately after birth, the infant is bombarded with a variety of new sensory stimuli. These provide important information about the characteristics and potential demands of the baby’s new environment. The infant must immediately detect, discriminate, and adapt to this information. Successful adaptation to the rapidly changing environment and the ability to cope with changing demands depend on the infant’s ability to detect and interpret sensory information. Thus, when we study infant behavioral patterns, vocalizations, and physiological reactivity, we attempt to understand how the young infant uses sensory systems to detect information from the environment and to integrate this information into motor, affective, and cognitive schema to successfully interact and adapt to a changing environment.

We have learned that humans have five primary sense modalities: smell, vision, hearing, taste, and touch. We know that even a newborn can respond to these sensory modalities. These responses are obvious to the parent and clinician (although only a few decades ago, scientists were unaware of the sensory capacities of young infants). However, this traditional method of categorizing sensory information does not account for the vast amount of sensory information being conveyed to the brain from the numerous sensors located inside our body. Even current clinical models of infant regulation (e.g., Ayres, 1972; Greenspan, 1991) that emphasize the importance of sensory processing in the emotional and cognitive development of the infant, and individual differences among infants in the ease with which they detect and interpret sensory information, focus primarily on three sense modalities that describe the external environment— that is, touch, vision, and hearing. These models do not deal with internal sensations that provide information about the physiological regulation.

Although neurophysiologists and neuroanatomists describe sensory systems that regulate our internal organs, this research has had little influence on either our common language or the clinical terminology we use to describe bodily processes. At present, there are only a few easily understood descriptors that characterize internal senses and states— for example, pain, nausea, and arousal. Yet in spite of this linguistic handicap, our experiences provide us with an awareness of bodily sensations and an appreciation of how these sensations can contribute to mood state and psychological feelings.

Missing from our language and our science is the ability to describe internal states. In our day-to-day interactions we choose vague terms, such as “feelings,” to describe the psychological consequences of bodily changes. Behavioral scientists often attempt to objectify these terms by operationalizing concepts such as state, mood, and emotion with verbal reports and elaborate coding systems. Clinical practitioners infer these feelings and use terms descriptive of emotional tone. However, whether we are talking about feelings, emotions, states, or moods, we are always attempting to describe the internal states that are continuously being monitored and regulated by the nervous system. The goal of this chapter is to introduce an additional sense modality that monitors bodily processes. A variety of terms may be used to describe this sensory system. Classic physiology describes this sensory system as interoception. Interoception is a global concept which includes both our conscious feelings of and unconscious monitoring of bodily processes, Interoception, like other sensory systems, has four components:

1. Sensors located in various internal organs to “sense” internal conditions;
2. Sensory pathways that convey information to the brain regarding the internal conditions;
3. Brain structures to interpret sensory information and organize systems to respond to the changing internal conditions; and
4. Motor pathways that communicate from the brain back to the internal organs that contain the sensors to change directly the state of the internal organ. Brain structures evaluate interoceptive information, categorize it, associate it with other sensory information, and store the associations in memory.

Best wishes to all, and I apologize again for appearing to be off topic and off script.

Although, I do feel its important to try and value-add comments and not just opine.

I’m just going to throw this in here.
I’m guilty of causing tangles with this, but is there a way we could sort out the threading problem in the comment threads? It can be really hard to follow discusssions. Is there a solution I’m not seeing?

It seems to be easier to follow conversations via the email feed because even though it’s not clear what comment someone is responding to, threading by time alone seems more coherent when conversations get complicated.

I agree with your comments shaun f. I think anyone can either directly benefit from mindfulness practices, or if they learn the techniques, that can benefit them sometime in the future. Also I am not sure why people are talking about ‘coercion’ in the comments – the article doesn’t even mention that children are being forced to practice (or perhaps I missed something). Usually kids are encouraged to do these practices in a fun-filled way – I had extracted the following sometime back:
“Children may be told that thoughts pass through the mind like floats pass by in a parade; some of the floats (thoughts) may grab their attention more than others, but just as they would not jump onto a float at a parade, they can simply observe their thoughts as they occur.”

Reference: Zelazo, P. D., & Lyons, K. E. (2012). The potential benefits of mindfulness training in early childhood: A developmental social cognitive neuroscience perspective. Child Development Perspectives, 6(2), 154-160.

Mindfulness = mental health treatment sold to schools, especially now that bad students are “sick” students, in theory anyway.

Yes, Virginia, government intervention via the mental health system is everywhere.