Why Is Mindfulness Important to Combating Trauma and Stress?
While mindfulness is an important component in improving well-being for all children and adults (Farrell & Barrett, 2007), it has particular significance for those who experienced trauma (Fischer, 2017). One of every four children experiences a trauma before the age of four. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 2014) reports that many children live in a culture of violence, bullying, and trauma. And if children live with poverty, if children live in neighborhoods of high crime, if children experience racism and discrimination, the frequency and severity of their trauma will be even greater. Paul Gilbert (2009), the founder of compassion-focused therapy, describes the extent of harm that children experience: “Individuals subjected to early [traumatic] experiences can become highly sensitive to threats of rejection or criticism from the outside world and can quickly become self-attacking; they experience both their external and internal worlds as easily turning hostile” (p. 199). Children who are ashamed often “use a cold, bullying or aggressive inner tone to try to change their thoughts and behaviors” (Gilbert, 2009, p. 203). They often experience difficulties with learning, attention, memory, self-esteem, decision making, communication, fear, and impulsive behavior.
Through mindfulness practice, we can help build stronger connections between the areas of the brain that stress and traumatic experiences have compromised. Mindfulness helps to slow down reactivity and increase body awareness. It can contribute to greater emotional regulation and help us cope more easily with life’s frustrations, setbacks, and relationship challenges (Siegel, 2010a). When considering the trauma children face and the impact of poverty and neighborhoods of violence, the importance of being more responsive to the needs of our students is obvious. Developing a greater awareness, understanding, and compassionate response to children’s suffering is essential. In essence, we might be able to achieve greater compassion and greater academic gains if we pay more attention to what our hearts tell us. As Rollin McCraty (2015) indicates in Science of the Heart, Volume 2:
The heart communicates to the brain in four major ways: neurologically (through the transmission of nerve impulses), biochemically (via hormones and neurotransmitters), biophysically (through pressure waves) and energetically (through electromagnetic field interactions)…. The heart-brain’s neural circuitry enables it to act independently of the cranial brain to learn, remember, make decisions and even feel and sense. (p. 3)
Rollin McCraty’s (2015) extensive research suggests that it may be worthwhile to pay attention to our hearts. When we focus solely on our intellectual understanding, we may miss out on important information that is readily available to us as it is processed at our heart level.
Why Should We Open Our Hearts Through Mindfulness Practice?
So, we are suggesting that you consider opening your heart, listening to your heart, and acting from a place that includes input from your heart—increasing your mindful awareness of what your heart is feeling. If you have ever felt that your heart was telling you one thing and your head another, you may understand the value of tuning into your heart. Mindfulness practices can help us increase our sensitivity to our feelings and help us make more balanced heart-head decisions.
We believe that to adequately prepare our students for college, career, and life, we must educate with both our minds and our hearts. Chapters 1 (page 13), 2 (page 21), and 3 (page 37) offer research to support this belief. However, before educators can open the minds of their students, they must open their hearts to understanding the magnitude of the stressors, trauma, and circumstances that surround their lives. It is not good enough for teachers and other school leaders to simply stay the course with a sole academic focus. If they are going to address the many challenges associated with trauma and stress that so many students and teachers endure, and how they impact both learning and teaching, then small steps are not enough. It is not enough to practice compassion one day a week or to celebrate success with an annual assembly. If we are to improve the lives and education for all students, it will require a paradigm shift in the way we think about education, our children, families, and our world. It will require a move toward educating the whole child, with a balanced focus of academics and health and well-being so that all students feel safe and are cared for. We are concerned about the trauma, the violence, and the stress that permeate society, our families, and our schools. However, we believe we can turn this around.
Today, schools can increase protective factors—factors that help protect students from both the short-term and long-term damage of stress and trauma (Howard, Dryden, & Johnson, 1999; Knight, 2007; Santos, 2012). Schools can also decrease risk factors when we use our hearts to educate our students and ourselves. Listening to our hearts is not always easy to do. In fact, we have been trained as professionals to not get too involved with our students’ problems, to not care too deeply. Yet, with the approach we will outline in this book, we can achieve a balance—high expectations for students, research-supported pedagogy, and mindfulness.
We can help magnify protective factors in schools so long as there are caring and compassionate adults to help support students and parents during times of need. These supportive actions help to increase resilience and grit, making it easier for individuals to bounce back when experiencing stress and trauma. Using mindfulness practices in this book will guide us to achieve more favorable and positive outcomes for all students, helping to prevent child maltreatment and other social problems that complicate their lives.
What Do Students Need to Focus and Flourish?
Where would you begin if your task was not to ensure academic excellence, but to consider the ultimate well-being of each student, to give each student a toolbox to enhance skills, knowledge, and opportunities for individual feelings of success and being valued? If you think of students in your school who seem happy, successful, joy filled, and ready for the challenges of any particular day, what traits come to mind? Why do some students seem to be able to readily focus on tasks at hand, and others become easily distracted? Why do some gravitate toward high achievement, a healthy self-esteem, and happiness while others seem to walk under a cloud of doom? Substantial research suggests that we start with consciousness and mindfulness—something we consider to be two sides of the same coin (Diamond & Lee, 2011; Flook et al., 2010; Rempel, 2012; Schmalzl, Powers, & Henje Blom, 2015; Zelazo & Lyons, 2012). Mindfulness and the steps we recommend are research-based strategies for creating compassionate school communities where students, and the teachers on whom they depend, can flourish.
Mindfulness focuses our attention on the here and now. Meditation and yogic practices heighten our awareness of self and others by quieting our thoughts and creating a sense of calmness, and improving our awareness of the relationship between our physical feelings and our emotions. Research supports their value in a wide array of instances and for various subpopulations of students. It shows that mindfulness and yoga decrease anxiety and depression and increase self-esteem, mood, and ability to focus and control emotions (Büssing, Michaelsen, Khalsa, Telles, & Sherman, 2012; Felver, Butzer, Olson, Smith, & Khalsa, 2015; Raes, Griffith, Van der Gucht, & Williams, 2014; Semple, Droutman, & Reid, 2017).
Yoga, meditation, and mindfulness are being integrated into a growing number of U.S. schools, and teachers and students are adapting as they learn about these practices that used to be relegated to fitness centers and after-school programs. We find it useful for middle or high school student athletes, perhaps even some who participate in what some consider traditionally masculine sports such as football and wrestling, to talk with middle schoolers about their own yoga practices. Because athletes are sometimes revered, students are often surprised to find that these rough and tough student athletes are doing yoga. Using student leaders to guide activities also helps narrow the gap of discomfort some students associate with trying something new. Adolescents with depression or mental illness; children with learning disabilities, autism, or attention