Author Archives: Rina Deshpande

Dr. Sara Lazar began a yoga and mindfulness practice after a sports injury in the 1990s. Mindfulness – a practice rooted in Eastern philosophy of tuning into the body, mind, and environment – is quickly gaining credibility in the research world. Dr. Lazar has published several papers on the effects of mindfulness meditation on the brain, body, and wellbeing and is currently leading two studies in the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. I recently had the opportunity to speak with her about the history and future of mindfulness meditation in scientific research and its reach into classrooms.

Deshpande: What benefits can meditation have on the brain and wellbeing?

Lazar: Meditation practice is associated with changes in brain structure. Some of these changes are correlated with positive benefits.

Two structural changes in the brain are actually associated with decreased stress and increased wellbeing.  In other words, it’s not just self-reported measures – it’s that there is brain change (seen with magnetic resonance imaging) behind self-reports of lower stress, emotion-regulation, and greater wellbeing.

Research also suggests a preservation effect of brain structure and function with normal aging.  Our first data showed the brain structure was preserved with aging,¹ and newer research supports that meditation may help preserve function.² We also see increases in the hippocampus and in memory and more.

Deshpande: Can children and adolescents benefit from mindfulness practice in schools?

Lazar: There’s quite a bit of research on this actually, and the data is pretty clear. Mindfulness practice has a positive impact on stress and emotional regulation in children, teens, and young adults.

As a mother, I can tell you that stress in school these days is much higher than when I was in school. Drugs are being prescribed in record numbers. So from a stress-reduction standpoint, mindfulness practice would be highly beneficial for students.

There is also growing literature that mindfulness meditation can enhance various cognitive skills, which I think should be thought of as a secondary benefit. To me, the primary goal should be stress reduction and emotion regulation, rather than using meditation to try to achieve some goal, which will just create more stress. Plus, it might defeat the purpose.

There should not be pressure to meditate ever for any reason.  Children should enjoy the benefits of reduced stress so then they may actually choose to start practicing on their own and perhaps maintain a regular practice. With more pressure for a certain outcome, they’ll likely see it as a chore and stop doing it.  It’s basically just mental exercise. You really just want them to start practicing for themselves and like the experience. Mindfulness practice that has been incentivized by promising cognitive benefits likely won’t be as rewarding, at least probably not for the long-term.

Deshpande: Do you have any reflections on existing mindfulness research or curriculum for the classroom?

Not being a teacher, I don’t know that I can make a formal recommendation for what’s useful or feasible for a particular classroom. What I’ve heard is that teachers like to offer mindfulness practice at the beginning of class for a minute or two to help students get settled.

I would say that it’s important to not to make it a forced thing no matter when it’s offered. Hopefully teachers and curriculum developers will figure out ways to make it a natural and effective offer. I don’t have the formula yet. And it might not be for everyone. Not everyone takes to it.  For example, children who may not want to participate in morning practice could sit and doodle. For some kids, it might not take it right away but then they might start liking it at some later time. If there’s a way to make it available to students but not necessarily mandate it, it may be more likely that these practices would be used as tools for self-management.

Deshpande: Do you engage in a personal mindfulness practice?

Lazar: Yes. My practice is highly erratic. Some days it’s 40 minutes, and other days it may be 5 minutes. It also goes through phases; sometimes more, sometimes less. My meditation practice varies tremendously.

Deshpande: How did you first become interested mindfulness meditation practice?

Lazar: A sports injury brought me to yoga in ‘94. The yoga teacher included five or ten minutes of mindfulness at the end of class, and I gradually switched over. Eventually I began practicing Vipassana, an insight meditation.

I started to go on retreats, and that deepened my practice in a lot of interesting ways. It made me practice more regularly than before and my metta practice – openness and loving kindness toward others- got deeper over time. I’d usually go on a one-week retreat about once a year here in Massachusetts. A few times, I went on a two-week retreat. By two weeks in, you’re really able to be more settled. It’s nice to have that second week.

Deshpande: Any personal reflections for people new to or considering a mindfulness practice?

Lazar: I was so nervous on my first retreat. I had done some regular daily practice for a few years and a few one-day retreats that helped prepare me.  I was just so nervous to practice all day for a whole week. But it completely changed my world. You get a to a place you might not normally know. Quiet, very quiet. And very centered. It’s hard to explain, but it’s a wonderful experience.

—–

Traditional mindful practice was intended to alleviate our human suffering. As Dr. Lazar emphasizes, today’s research supports mindfulness meditation, body scan, mindful breathing, walking, and more as tools for emotion regulation and stress reduction both in child and adult populations.

While more research is needed to determine mindfulness’s effect on student performance in academics, I agree with Sara: mindfulness practice ideally should retain a primary purpose of psychological and physiological relief for students and teachers. In high stakes testing environments, mindfulness as a tool for stress alleviation – quieting the mind – would organically support a secondary purpose of enhanced focus and school performance.

Looking for more mindfulness resources?  

• MARC: The Mindful Attention Research Center (MARC) at UCLA offers some of the latest research and curricular resources for schools. Influential mindfulness researchers, like Dr. Lisa Flook, study the effects of Mindful Awareness Practices for pre-K through college classrooms.

• 
MindUp: The Hawn Foundation enlisted educators and scientists to design this 15-lesson mindful awareness program. Accredited by CASEL, MindUp blends neuroscience research in executive functioning – self-regulation and more – with academic learning standards.

• Yoga Ed: This program is more based in yoga movement (asana) than in seated meditation. It offers classroom practices that also align with national standards.

References & Further Reading

1. Lazar, S. W., Kerr, C. E., Wasserman, R. H., Gray, J. R., Greve, D. N., Treadway, M. T., . . . Fischl, B. (2005). Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness. NeuroReport,16(17), 1893-1897. [Article]
2. Gard, T., Taquet, M., Dixit, R., Hölzel, B., De Montjoye, Y., Brach, N., . . . Lazar, S. (2014). Fluid intelligence and brain functional organization in aging yoga and meditation practitioners. Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience [Article]

It’s buzzing all over the news: the heroic act of pediatrician, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, and her colleagues bringing to light the dangerous effects of lead-contamination in Flint’s water system.¹

Lead is a long-known neurotoxin with especially damaging effects on adult and child cognitive development (and therefore reason for serious alarm in Flint, Michigan).

Lead toxicity in drinking water is measured in “parts per billion” (ppb) with most researchers claiming that no amount of lead is acceptable for ingestion or exposure. Even with the generous consideration of 5 ppb in drinking water as “cause for concern,” extreme circumstances in Flint show that hundreds of houses have registered at 27 ppb in their water supply. Some homes fall between a totally jaw-dropping 1,000 and 5,000 ppb– what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers “toxic waste.” For an alarming visual explanation, read more by Christopher Ingraham here.²

The effects of lead-contaminated water and environmental lead exposure are exceptionally harmful to adult health and even more so to young growing children. In this article, we’ll review the meaning of neurotoxicity and expose research on lead’s long-term harm to cognitive development.

What is “neurotoxicity”?

Neurotoxicity is damage caused by particular natural or artificial substances (also called “neurotoxicants”) on healthy nervous system functioning. Depending on severity, a neurotoxin can kill nerve cells, therefore diminishing development and function of the brain and other parts of the nervous system.³

One of many concerns with neurotoxins like lead is their often invisible, immediate symptoms. When effects do appear soon or later, symptoms can range from impairment of physical motor skills such as manual dexterity and leg paralysis to cognitive and behavioral problems. If severe enough, neurotoxin exposure can be fatal.

Lead’s long-term effect on cognitive function

In a groundbreaking longitudinal study led by Dr. Brian Schwartz at Johns Hopkins University, declines in learning and memory were found to be associated with lead exposure many years after exposure took place, suggesting that lead’s dangerous impact on the body is progressive and lasting.

Over the course of three years in the study, researchers tested 535 former lead workers and 118 controls (participants who had not been exposed to lead) for cognitive decline each year using a neurobehavioral battery. Additionally, blood tests measured amount of lead present in the tibia bone (one of two bones between the knee and foot) to estimate “peak tibia lead,” or levels of lead in the tibia at the last time of exposure to lead. Lead is usually eliminated from bones over years, which can mask the severity of original lead exposure. For this reason, instead of solely observing current lead levels researchers wanted to account for level of toxicity during the time of peak lead exposure to see if this had any impact on cognitive decline.

Schwartz’s longitudinal study offered two very important findings: (1) Controlling for age, former lead workers (most of whom had not worked with lead for at least 16 years) had much larger annual declines in neurobehavioral test scores and cognitive decline than did the controls who had not been exposed to lead. (2) Peak tibia lead levels in former lead workers predicted their annual cognitive decline in learning and memory, executive function, and manual dexterity. The higher the peak lead level, the steeper the rate of cognitive decline.⁴

Given evidence of lead’s toxic impact on adult cognition even decades after lead exposure, imagine the impact on cognitive development of young growing children.

Lead’s impact on child cognitive development

Over the last twenty years, the amount of lead required in a child’s blood to consider her at an “elevated blood lead concentration” has gradually dropped. In other words, with each passing year it’s becoming clearer that amounts of lead once considered negligible in a child’s blood are actually severely harmful for body and brain development.

A number of studies have illustrated how extreme levels of lead concentration in the blood can strongly affect intellectual processing and behavior in young children and, in some cases cause encephalopathy, a brain-altering disease. In more recent research, however, we see that as seemingly small an amount as 10 micrograms of lead (.01 thousandths of a gram) per deciliter of blood can have persistent and potentially irreversible negative effects on health and cognitive development in children.

In a longitudinal study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, nearly 200 young children previously identified blood lead concentrations of <10 micrograms per deciliter were assessed first at age three and again at age 5 for IQ (memory, vocabulary, spatial pattern analysis, and quantitative reasoning). Blood lead levels (BLLs) were measured every six months throughout the study.

Results revealed that the higher the levels of lead in a child’s blood, regardless of how it was measured in the study, the lower the IQ score of the child. Controlling for a variety of extraneous influences, peak blood lead concentration, average lead concentration through the first five years of life, and blood lead concentration on the day of IQ testing all had a significant inverse correlation with a child’s IQ. In other words, the higher the markers of lead exposure, the lower the markers of intelligence. An important focus of this study was confirming that any amount of lead in the blood– even very low traces – had an inverse association with IQ in children.⁵

In a related study in Mexico City, researchers were interested in lead’s impact on mental and psychomotor development on infants. Among one and two year-olds whose blood lead concentrations were less than 10 micrograms per deciliter, researchers found an inverse relationship between blood lead levels and their mental development and psychomotor development. These findings further support that, even with previously considered acceptable amounts of lead exposure, lead’s neurotoxic effects on mental and motor development are present in infancy.⁶

In studies such as the aforementioned, evidence from measuring blood lead levels and cognitive performance strongly suggest that infants and young children are at high risk from any level of lead exposure, but causal claims are tough to make from observational research.

Research in neuroscience to continues to explore the neurological deficits caused by lead exposure. In a 2011 study published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials, scientists observed the neurological effects of lead exposure on embryonic development of zebrafish, an abundant fish species that shares 70% of our genetic code and is now commonly used in medical research.⁷ The study revealed that zebrafish exposed to lead commonly displayed symptoms such as slow swimming movements and impaired escape action. Scientists Dou and Zhang attribute these findings to inhibited neurogenesis (nerve cell birth) and increased apoptosis (nerve cell death) resulting from lead-induced neurotoxicity.⁸

While the results of this animal study offer some insight about the harmful effects of lead on neurodevelopment, it’s unnerving to realize just how profound the damage may be on the health of Flint citizens.

How can we help Flint through the crisis?

It’s easy to feel powerless against lead contamination given the research, but there are ways to help. In a recent article featured on the Huffington Post, Sandra Grossman shares quick and impactful ways to support Flint amid its emergency.⁹

• To support immediate need of clean water in Flint, consider donating to the United Way of Genesee County. 100% of donations will be used toward purchasing filters and bottled water that goes directly to Flint communities.

• To support ongoing research on child health and development including interventions for lead contamination, consider donating to the Flint Child Health & Development Fund. Mona Hanna-Attisha herself is the founding donor.

For more ways to help, read the full article here.

In light of the evidence and the 8,000+ children exposed to lead-contaminated water, it’s clear why Dr. Hanna-Attisha is regarded as hero.

 

References & Further Reading

1. Gupta, S., Tinker, B., and Hume, T. (January 28, 2016). “‘Our mouths were ajar’: Doctor’s fight to expose Flint’s water crisis.” CNN.com. [Article]
2. Ingraham, Christopher. (January 15, 2016). “This is how toxic Flint’s water really is.” The Washington Post. [Article]
3. National Institute of Health: National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. NINDS Neurotoxicity Information. Retrieved on January 31, 2016. [Link]
4. Schwartz, B., Stewart, W., Bolla, K., Simon, P., Bandeen-Roche, K., Gordon, P., . . . Todd, A. (2000). Past adult lead exposure is associated with longitudinal decline in cognitive function. Neurology, 55(8), 1144-50. [Article]
5. Canfield RL, Henderson CR, Cory-Slechta DA, Cox C, Jusko TA, Lanphear BP. 2003. Intellectual impairment in children with blood lead concentrations below 10 microg per deciliter. N Engl J Med 348(16):1517–1526. [Article]
6. Téllez-Rojo, M., Bellinger, D., Arroyo-Quiroz, C., Lamadrid-Figueroa, H., Mercado-García, A., Schnaas-Arrieta, L., . . . Hu, H. (2006). Longitudinal associations between blood lead concentrations lower than 10 microg/dL and neurobehavioral development in environmentally exposed children in Mexico City. Pediatrics, 118(2), E323-30. [Article]
7. McKie, Robin. (2013). How the diminutive zebrafish is having a big impact on medical research. The Guardian. Retrieved on 2-1-16. [Article]
8. Dou, Changming, & Zhang, Jie. (2011). Effects of lead on neurogenesis during zebrafish embryonic brain development. Journal of Hazardous Materials, 194, 277-282. [Article]
9. Grossman, Sarah. (Januray 20, 2016). “5 ways you can help Flint, Michigan, amid the water crisis.” The Huffington Post. [Article]

Recently, my sister and I were watching a TV show that explored the minds and brains of geniuses through history. One particular point in the program caught my attention: a man considered a genius was found to have a higher than average number of glial cells – “glue” cells, also thought of as helper cells, that typically support and protect nerve cells – in his brain.

This fact was interesting, yes, but when used as the reason for why this person could be considered a genius, my gut reaction said that this oversimplified claim doesn’t stick. A lot of people have above average numbers of glial cells, but their brains may function quite differently from one another.

That said, it is truly an incredible time: we can tap into electronic newsfeeds to find various interpretations and translations of the latest research related to education, health, and more. In the sphere of mindfulness – an area of personal interest and study – I see intriguing presentations of new findings every day that could be useful in self-development and supporting our next generation as teachers and parents. As consumers of media-disseminated research, however, it’s also important to recognize gaps in and the boldness of causal claims. In other words, just because things are correlated, that doesn’t mean they directly affect each other.

As we continue exploring the world of mindfulness and yoga research and education – an area showing a lot of promise for executive functioning and socioemotional development in youth and throughout adulthood- let’s pause to evaluate a few common claims.

Claim 1: Mindfulness leads to healthy brain development in kids.

So far, mindfulness meditation research has shown neural benefits in studies with primarily adult participants. In particular, mindfulness meditation has been associated with increased activation in areas of the prefrontal cortex of the brain related to executive functioning, or planning and problem-solving, as well as significantly reduced levels of stress.¹

Presently, brain-imaging research on the effects of mindfulness is lacking in younger populations due to high cost of money and time (usually 30-45 minutes for a child brain MRI). As touched upon in the Young Meditators article , however, we do know that childhood adversity such as stress, neglect, and substance abuse can significantly hinder healthy development of a young brain, which can lead to complications later in life.

Over the last few years, more studies using cognitive tasks, surveys, and observations as data support the potential benefit of yoga and mindfulness on child self-regulation – a type of executive functioning.² Executive functioning, sometimes referred to as “EF” in the science community, is defined as the cognitive self-regulation skills required for planning and the completion of complex tasks.³

To know for sure how mindfulness can impact development of a child’s actual brain, particularly those related to executive functioning in the prefrontal cortex, technology like fMRI is required. Existing qualitative research, while somewhat limited by survey and observation bias, is required as initial steps to pave the way toward neuroimaging research in mindfulness practice’s impact on the brain.

Claim 2: Mindfulness triggers better test scores.

While practicing a few minutes of mindfulness meditation doesn’t necessarily guarantee that 100% on an English final, mindfulness practice may indirectly influence school performance. As previously mentioned, present qualitative research suggests that mindfulness in elementary and early childhood populations may enhance EF. Given that EF is an established predictor of a number of performance indicators, including math and language gains from pre-k through kindergarten,⁴ mindfulness may indirectly influence school achievement through its impact on EF.

Practicing mindfulness may also support the “Spacing Effect,” a phenomenon crisply explained in a recent article by Learning and the Brain contributor, Andrew Watson. In the Spacing Effect, ample time (space) to forget content or a skill in order to remember it again can lead to stronger retention. One of many forms of mindfulness practice includes drawing attention away from surroundings in order to focus on the breath, more or less giving the mind a “break.” Allowing the mind to focus on the physiology and sensations of breathing might offer space to the brain to forget learned content or skill, requiring concerted effort to “remember anew” and leading to stronger long-term memory.⁵

Claim 3: Mindfulness is only effective in high-needs populations

Mindfulness and yoga practices can offer benefits for all, but a few recent studies have revealed stronger improvements in children who tend to struggle with self-regulation. In a study led by Lisa Flook, elementary students either received 30 minutes twice a week of Mindful Awareness Practice – breath, body, and thinking awareness – or received no training in a control group. Overall, teachers and parents reported improvement of all children in the mindfulness program. Interestingly, children who showed difficulty in executive functioning in the mindfulness group showed much stronger improvement across the eight weeks of training as compared to children struggling with executive functioning in the control group. These results suggest that while mindfulness practice may be helpful for all children in managing daily demands, mindfulness could intentionally be used as an intervention for children struggling specifically with EF.⁶

Additionally, Karen Bluthe and colleagues found improved perception of stress and life satisfaction overall in a community sample of teens following participation in a six-week BREATHE mindfulness program. Bluthe also identified especially strong reductions of perceived stress and depression symptoms in at-risk adolescents.⁷ These findings suggest that mindfulness programs may not only support students managing high-poverty circumstances, but general adolescent populations.

As research in mindfulness continues, more patterns will certainly be found allowing us to make more generalized, sturdy claims – shifts in executive functioning in children may be seen in the prefrontal cortex through fMRIs, mindfulness curriculum may offer similar results when replicated across various student populations.

For now, our role as educators and parents is not to dismiss a practice right away, but to consume with care to best support our children.

 

References & Further Reading

1. Lazar, S. W., Bush, G. L., Gollub, R., Fricchione, G., Khalsa, G., & Benson, H. (2000). Functional brain mapping of the relaxation response and meditation. NeuroReport, 11(7), 1581-1585. [Article]
2. Flook, L., et al. (2010). Effects of mindful awareness practices on executive functions in elementary school children. Journal of Applied School Psychology, 26(1), 70-95. [Article]
3. S.K. Thurman, C.A. Fiorello (Eds.), Applied cognitive research in K-3 classrooms, Routledge, New York, NY (2008), pp. 41–84 [Book]
4. Fuhs, M., Nesbitt, K., Farran, D., Dong, N., & Eccles, Jacquelynne S. (2014). Longitudinal Associations Between Executive Functioning and Academic Skills Across Content Areas. Developmental Psychology, 50(6), 1698-1709. [Article]
5. Watson, A. The Science of Homework: Why Timing is Everything. [Blog]
6. Flook, L., et al. (2010). Effects of mindful awareness practices on executive functions in elementary school children. Journal of Applied School Psychology, 26(1), 70-95. [Article]
7. Bluth, Roberson, & Gaylord. (2015). A Pilot Study of a Mindfulness Intervention for Adolescents and the Potential Role of Self-Compassion in Reducing Stress. Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing, Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing. [Article]

When picturing a kindergarten classroom in America, chances are you imagine messy finger paint on tables, blocks clinking on the rug, oversized read-aloud books, and little kids climbing through colorful Rubbermaid jungle gyms. (Perhaps you imagine a young Arnold being trampled by 5-year-olds in Radio Flyer wagons).

When picturing mindfulness meditation, you might imagine a serene-faced adult seated cross-legged on an amber silk pillow. Her eyes are closed and she is perfectly impervious to distractions in her surrounding environment.

Most young children have loads of rambunctious energy, hungry for answers to curious questions. And with or without silk props, many meditation practices are designed to cultivate stillness and silence within.

It’s therefore natural to question not only if young children should meditate, but also if young children can meditate. In this article, we’ll explore the evidence for both.

Brain Development in Early Childhood

The first years of a child’s life are crucial to setting up a strong foundation for relationships, learning, and mental health. According to the Center on the Developing Child, neuroscientists have found that typically 700 synaptic connections between brain cells are created every second in a child’s beginning years of life.¹ (If you’re trying to do the math, that’s about a few hundred trillion connections by age 3.) Eventually, this period of synaptic exuberance subsides as the brain naturally prunes away unused connections, a mechanism popularly referred to as “use it or lose it.”

Brain development is shaped by biology, environment, and external experiences and is studied in a number of ways, including a growing field of research known as s. Epigenetics is a subfield of genetics that studies things like how non-genetic factors, typically at the cellular level, can affect the way a given DNA sequence, and therefore the way a gene, is expressed. According to the Center on the Developing Child, “positive experiences, such as exposure to rich learning opportunities, and negative influences, such as malnutrition or environmental toxins, can change the chemistry that encodes genes in brain cells — a change that can be temporary or permanent. This process is called epigenetic modification.”²

Young children experiencing adversity such as neglect, poverty, parental substance abuse, or prolonged periods of stress may be susceptible to a “toxic stress response.” Toxic stress can be as harmful as it sounds, destroying brain cells and significantly disrupting brain circuitry in foundational years, leading to emotional and mental health complications such as anxiety and depression in childhood or even later in adulthood.³

Development in early years often predicts emotional, academic, and social well-being and even physical health in adulthood. Jack Shonkoff, M.D., professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education and Director of Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child explains, “Biologically, the brain is prepared to be shaped by experience. It’s expecting the experiences that a young child has to literally influence the formation of its circuitry…If a child is preoccupied with fears or anxiety or is dealing with considerable stress, no matter how intellectually gifted that child might be, his or her learning is going to be impaired by that kind of emotional interference.”⁴

Learn more about the basics of early childhood brain development with Dr. Shonkoff in this short video from the Center on the Developing Child.⁴

Shonkoff recognizes that supporting healthy cognitive development in children is not separate from social and emotional development, making the case for intervention for children in early years. So is mindfulness the type of intervention that might help?

Mindfulness as Early Childhood Intervention

Contemplative practices – an umbrella term for practices like yoga and mindfulness meditation – have been studied primarily in adult and adolescent populations over the last few decades and are associated with increased activation in brain regions related to executive functioning.⁵ Executive functions (EFs) are a range of activities such as planning, decision-making, and self-regulation of attention, emotions and behaviors. As a result of positive findings in older populations, new research investigates the effectiveness of mindfulness interventions on executive functioning in elementary and early childhood settings.

Self-regulation, a type of executive functioning, is broadly considered to be the integration of flexible attention, working memory, and ability to inhibit one’s impulses. Self-regulation in preschool-aged children has been strongly correlated with academic success as measured by progress in emergent literacy and math. An even stronger predictor than IQ, self-regulation in beginning years of life is one of many functions that can predict math and reading achievement in elementary and middle school.⁶

Mindfulness practices have had mixed results in effectiveness on executive functioning in child populations, in part due to weaker design without control groups for comparison and due to reliance on self- or parent-reported data. Without a control group that receives alternative or no treatment, it’s hard to determine if any changes are linked to the actual mindfulness treatment or whether the changes would happen regardless. And with self-reported data like questionnaire and survey responses, it’s hard to calibrate if one person’s perception of “strongly agree” is the same as another’s. It’s utility as a measure of effectiveness, however, is revealing trends and prompting further precision investigation.

In a recent study by Lisa Flook et al. (2010), for example, early elementary children received training Mindful Awareness Practices that included breathing awareness, body awareness and movement, and awareness of environment. Results revealed that, according to teacher and parent reports, children who started the program with difficulties in self-regulation showed significant improvement.⁷

This preliminary study call for more research on mindfulness as an effective intervention in even younger child populations – a way to offer children experiencing adversity a way to self-regulate their emotions and behaviors, potentially preventing disruptions to healthy brain development.

But can young children really meditate?

Given what we know about young children’s development and naturally quick shifts in attention, even 10 minutes of seated silence with children ages 3-5 seems unrealistic. To manage the concern of long periods of quiet, shorter adaptations of meditation practice have been designed to help introduce children to meditational techniques by reading a related story, participating in walking and observation meditations, playing games like “breathing buddies,” as well as reflective activities.⁸

It’s important to remember, however, that in many Eastern classrooms, children are often introduced to more traditional meditational practices at an early age. In a recent research study by Tang et al (2012), 4.5-year-olds in China were trained in integrative body-mind therapy (IBMT) sessions adapted from the original Zen training program for adults. Standard IBMT sessions consist of 5 minutes of modeling and directions by an instructor, 20 minutes of silent meditation or meditation with soothing music, and 5 minutes of reflection. Young children participated in twenty 30-minute sessions – a total of 10 hours of mindfulness practice – over the course of a month. In contrast to a control group, the mindfulness group’s performance on two stimulus-discrimination Stroop Tasks to measure attention significantly improved. The mindfulness training group also showed significant increases in effortful self-control (an executive function) as reported by their parents.⁹

Research is still required to confirm the beneficial impact of integrative body-mind therapy (IBMT) on child brain development, though preceding neuroimaging studies of IBMT in adults demonstrated promising results. After just one month of practice, fMRI on adult participants revealed enhanced functional connectivity between the anterior cingulate cortex and striatum as compared to a control group receiving relaxation activities, suggesting that the mindfulness training may enhance focused attention.¹⁰

Yi-Yuan Tang and her team plan to study IBMT in American settings in order to determine the impact of mindfulness on self-regulation in early childhood across cultures.

What does meditation with young children look like?

Mindfulness can take various forms, silence in a seated posture being one of them. Paying attention to the breath or sounds within our outside of the body is another form. Walking mindfully with each step is another. Mindfulness is simply paying attention, without judgment, to the present moment.¹¹

In the last decade, various organizations and programs have emerged to support mindfulness in classrooms. One such organization begun in 2008, Mindful Schools, offers certification and video resources on how to teach mindfulness to elementary-age children. The following sample video offers student-friendly listening to the sounds of bells and sharing their experiences, and it all takes less than fifteen minutes: K-5 Mindfulschools.org Lesson.¹² Scroll down and click on the K-5 Curriculum Demo. At 5:33, you can get a sense of how students receive scaffolding support to move from listening to sounds outside of themselves to listening for sounds inside of themselves).

If meditating silently on external or internal sounds feels less appropriate as a mindfulness introduction to your students, consider adapting mindful practice ideas to meet your young students where they are. For example, you might play a familiar song and have your students gently tap their noses each time they hear a particular note or word. To help encourage awareness and regulation of attention, perhaps sing overlapping rounds of “Row, row, row your boat,” allowing children to learn strategies for how to focus their attention on their part. Equally important is supporting children as they learn to re-focus their attention when they’re momentarily distracted (if you’ve played this singing game before, you know how challenging it can be!). Mindfulness is not simply sitting perfectly still; music and movement often make ideal mindfulness entry points for elementary-age children.

As mindfulness research in early childhood settings continues to grow, so shall science-based, kid-friendly resources for the classroom. Improvement of programs and refinement of research is undoubtedly the ongoing goal, but waiting for perfected materials means waiting to offer potentially life-altering resources to our children while they’re still children. Let’s help them evolve into healthy adults by offering them simple mindfulness tools now.

 

References & Further Reading

1. Center on the Developing Child (2009).Core Concepts in the Science of Early Childhood Development. [Multimedia Article]

2. Center on the Developing Child (2009).Deep Dive: Gene-Environment Interaction. [Article]

3. Shonkoff, J., & Garner, A. (2012). The lifelong effects of early childhood adversity and toxic stress.Pediatrics, 129(1), E232-E246. [Paper]

4. Shonkoff, J. (2009, October 1). Center for the Developing Child: The Science of Early Childhood Development. [Video]

5. Lazar, S. W., Bush, G. L., Gollub, R., Fricchione, G., Khalsa, G., & Benson, H. (2000). Functional brain mapping of the relaxation response and meditation. NeuroReport,11(7), 1581-1585. [Paper]

6. McClelland, M. M. and Cameron, C. E. (2012), Self-Regulation in Early Childhood: Improving Conceptual Clarity and Developing Ecologically Valid Measures. Child Development Perspectives, 6: 136–142. [Paper]

7. Flook, L., et al. (2010). Effects of mindful awareness practices on executive functions in elementary school children. Journal of Applied School Psychology, 26(1), 70-95. [Paper]

8. Elizabeth Willis & Laura H. Dinehart (2014) Contemplative practices in early childhood: implications for self-regulation skills and school readiness, Early Child Development and Care, 184:4, 487-499 [Paper]

9. Tang, Y., Yang, L., Leve, L., & Harold, G. (2012). Improving Executive Function and Its Neurobiological Mechanisms Through a Mindfulness‐Based Intervention: Advances Within the Field of Developmental Neuroscience.Child Development Perspectives, 6(4), 361-366. [Paper]

10. Tang, Y., Lu, Q., Geng, X., Stein, E., Yang, Y., & Posner, M. (2010). Short-term meditation induces white matter changes in the anterior cingulate.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America,107(35), 15649-52. [Paper]

11. Kabat-Zinn, J. (2003). Mindfulness-based interventions in context: Past, present, and future.Clinical Psychology-Science And Practice, 10(2), 144-156. [Paper]

12. Cowan, M. K-5 Curriculum Demo: Class One – Mindful Bodies and Listening – 1^st Grade Classroom. [Resource]

To teach math through a problem like the one below, an effective math teacher would first try the problem herself.

“It’s June 1st, and you’ve begun receiving an allowance of $8 dollars on the first of each month. You’ve had your eye on a new jacket that costs $27, not including the additional 8% sales tax. If you want to have at least $2 per month for incidental spending, what percent of your $8 monthly allowance would you choose to save in order to buy the jacket before the start of the new year? Explain your thinking.”*

At minimum, one attempt may lead her to a solution. To more holistically prepare, she would ideally practice several strategies, conceptualizing the problem in many different ways to anticipate and stretch various students’ thinking.

An effective teacher of math explores math herself. It therefore makes sense that in order to effectively teach children about the benefits of mindfulness -psychological, physiological and social¹ – a teacher would explore and practice mindfulness herself.

How can mindfulness practice help kids?

Mindfulness practice is being adapted for school implementation to support healthy emotional, mental, and physical development. Children face rigorous testing and extracurricular demands and may be susceptible to high levels of stress beginning at the elementary level. Additionally, in underserved urban environments in the U.S., children experience higher levels of stress and exhibit fewer prosocial behaviors than wealthier counterparts, which has been linked with lower academic performance.²

Susan Andersen and Martin Teicher, researchers of developmental biopsychiatry at Harvard Medical School, suggest that chronic stress exposure at young ages may have effects on neurobiological development. Structures in the brain involved in emotion-regulation and decision-making may be compromised by stress during child development.

In a 2009 review, Andersen and Teicher studied the system between the nucleus accumbens – a basal forebrain structure that interacts with the hippocampus and is involved in memory and emotion – and the prefrontal cortex – known to be involved in decision making and social behaviors. Under times of stress in childhood, the review suggests, this system can be compromised. It is possible that this may be involved in the development of maladaptive behaviors that may affect school performance, including substance abuse.³

Mindfulness – paying attention to the present moment – has begun to show promise as a school-based approach to support children’s emotional and mental well-being. Rather than mental and social health as an “aside” from academics – mindful self-management in classrooms is now being linked with higher math scores even after just a few weeks.⁴

The potential impact of mindful practice on student stress management, neurological development, and academic performance is gaining credibility. So if we want to encourage children to utilize mindfulness practice, why would it matter if teachers practice?

Why should teachers practice mindfulness?

If we’re preaching to children about the importance of mindful self-regulation to successfully navigate life but we’re doing it with pained, distracted looks and yesterday’s graded papers still stuck to our tired faces, chances are that mindful practice might not land well with our kids.

I paint this as a comical picture, but how physically and emotionally demanding teaching can be is no laughing matter. Teachers work daily to support students’ socio-emotional progress, manage individual and whole-class behaviors, internalize the latest curricular expectations, and tailor instruction to all children’s unique learning needs. Under heavy demands, teacher practice of stress and emotion regulation are crucial for two reasons: (1) enhanced teacher wellbeing may implicitly enhance the classroom environment, and (2) teachers practicing strategies themselves would likely be much more effective, authentic models of the practice when leading students through them.

In a recent review of teacher “extra-role time,” which accounts for the hours teachers spend outside of school days grading and planning or leading student activities on evenings and weekends, U.S. schoolteachers were found to spend an average of 1,913 hours on teaching-related work per week in a 36-week academic year. That’s an average of about 53 hours of work per week. To couch this in context, an average full-time employee works an average of 40 hours per week spread out over 48 weeks.⁵ Such concentrated, energy-demanding work runs the risk of leading to teacher burnout.

In a 2007 policy report by the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, the teacher attrition rate in the U.S. had doubled since the 1990s at nearly 17% nationally and 20% in urban schools. In analyzing possible reasons outside of retirement, the report suggests that stress may be a significant factor: “The problem is not finding enough teachers to do the job – the problem is keeping them in our schools.”⁶

How can we help teachers feel emotionally balanced and less stressed in their work? In a 2011 study, mindfulness meditation was linked with increases in “positive reappraisal,” an emotion regulation strategy used to re-contextualize a stressful event as positive or harmless.⁷ Positive reappraisal has historically been shown to mediate reductions in stress. In a recent brain imaging study, mindfulness practice in healthy adults was positively associated with activity in the left and right dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (PFC), the brain regions supporting, among other things, emotion regulation.^8,9 Mindfulness therefore may be an effective tool for adult emotion regulation and reduction of stress, and may allow teachers to better manage day-to-day stressful experiences when workload shows no sign of decreasing.

A 2015 pilot study assessed effectiveness of a mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) adapted for educators specifically.¹⁰ As its name would suggest, the mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program, developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn, M.D., was designed to help lower levels of stress through an 8-week mindfulness intervention adapted from historically Buddhist practice for clinical settings. Its benefits have been documented over the last few decades as it has been adapted for adolescents, the elderly, patients with cancer, those struggling with PTSD, and more.

In the MBSR pilot for educators, 18 healthy high school teachers participated in 8 weeks of mindfulness practice and 18 teachers were assigned to a waitlist control group. Mindfulness participants engaged in two-hour weekly sessions guiding them on body awareness, breathing awareness, yoga, mindful eating, mindful walking, and additional meditation techniques with opportunities for reflection. They also were asked to practice with a guided meditation CD for 25-30 minutes daily.

Teachers in the intervention group reported significant improvement in multiple measures of self-compassion including diminished over-identification, which is similar to dwelling on negative thoughts. They also reported significant improvement in ability to remain present and calm and better sleep quality when compared to the control group.

These initial findings may invite more investigation of mindfulness practice for educators, though the study is not without limits. While there is much psychological and neurobiological evidence in academic literature to support the effects of mindfulness on emotion regulation in adults, the present study is one of the first to focus on educator mindfulness specifically, and therefore relied solely on self-report as a measure of effectiveness.

Additionally, a wider and larger sample than 36 teachers will help reduce environmental influence on participant progress. In the pilot, the mindfulness group was comprised of teachers from one school and the control group consisted of teachers at a different school. School culture may have therefore contributed to differences when comparing groups in mindfulness and self-compassion. A larger sample size of teachers across multiple schools, with teachers participating in either waitlist or control at each of those schools, could better isolate effectiveness of MBSR for educators.

Nevertheless, collectively, the research points to the benefits of teachers engaging with the mindfulness practices that they promote to their students.

Taking the Jump

A mindfulness practice may appear to be another requirement piled onto an already full teaching plate, but even a few minutes of daily practice might soften the stress of teaching demands. Here are a few simple ways to begin:

• Dr. Kristin Neff specializes in self-compassion research. Check out www.self-compassion.org for free guided meditations and more.

• For a simple, calming breath technique, consider trying this 3 Minute Full Complete Breath Audio (recorded for you by yours truly!).

A teacher practices math to support her students in math. A teacher practices emotion regulation and mental wellbeing to support students in emotion regulation and mental wellbeing.

Our children and teachers face what seems like a growing number of stressors in life that may not be easily removed. With openness to a personal mindfulness practice, teachers would not only have a chance to feel better in stressful circumstances as helping professionals, they may better guide children in mindful practice from a more grounded, earnest place. As role models to our students, this has the potential to encourage healthy habits and dramatically improve their quality of life.

*(And for the record, I’d save 62.5% of my monthly allowance, or $5 a month. That way, I could have the minimum $2 for spending flow and keep another $1 for separate savings each month, still having enough to buy that jacket by November 1st and impress at holiday parties. But that’s my practice. What’s yours? ☺).

 

References & Further Reading 

1. Rempel, Kim. (2012). Mindfulness for Children and Youth: A Review of the Literature with an Argument for School-Based Implementation.Canadian Journal of Counselling and Psychotherapy, 46(3), 201-220. [Article]
2. Mendelson, T., Greenberg, M., Dariotis, T., Gould, J., Rhoades, K., & Leaf, L. (2010). Feasibility and Preliminary Outcomes of a School-Based Mindfulness Intervention for Urban Youth.Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 38(7), 985-994. [Article]
3. Andersen, S., & Teicher, M. (2009). Desperately driven and no brakes: Developmental stress exposure and subsequent risk for substance abuse. Neuroscience And Biobehavioral Reviews,33(4), 516-524. [Article]
4. Schonert-Reichl, K. A., Oberle, E., Lawlor, M.S., Abbott, D., Thomson, K., Oberlander, T.F., & Diamond, A. (2015). Enhancing cognitive and social-emotional development through a simple-to-administer mindfulness-based school program for elementary school children: A randomized controlled trial. Developmental Psychology, 51(1), 52-66. doi: 10.1037/a0038454 [Article]
5. Brown, L., & Roloff, M. (2011). Extra-Role Time, Burnout, and Commitment. Business Communication Quarterly,74(4), 450-474. [Article]
6. NCTAF Policy Brief. (2007). [Brief]
7. Garland, E., Gaylord, L., & Fredrickson, S. (2011). Positive Reappraisal Mediates the Stress-Reductive Effects of Mindfulness: An Upward Spiral Process.Mindfulness, 2(1), 59-67. [Article]
8. Modinos, G., Ormel, J., & Aleman, A. (2010). Individual differences in dispositional mindfulness and brain activity involved in reappraisal of emotion. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 5, 369–377. [Article]
9. Hölzel, B., Lazar, S., Gard, T., Schuman-Olivier, Z., Vago, D., & Ott, U. (2011). How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? Proposing Mechanisms of Action From a Conceptual and Neural Perspective.Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(6), 537-559. [Article]
10. Frank, J., Reibel, L., Broderick, D., Cantrell, P., & Metz, T. (2015). The Effectiveness of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction on Educator Stress and Well-Being: Results from a Pilot Study.Mindfulness,6(2), 208-216. [Article]

“Mindfulness” is a buzzword popping up everywhere from the New York Times, prestigious science and education journals, to grade school and university curriculum. Headlines offer intriguing statements like, “Mindfulness meditation may have positive effects on stress, anxiety, and reshape the brain!” If you’re curious about the bold claims of mindfulness but are not quite sure what mindfulness is, you’ve come to the right place.

Like the start of a fresh classroom unit, our first post in this mindfulness series begins at the root of Bloom’s Taxonomy: defining what mindfulness actually is. What is its goal? We’ll start in digestible terms and even try out a brief practice before introducing scientific definitions and research application in the classroom.

As we explore deeper questions in meditation and education research, see this post as a way to reground in common understanding of mindful practices.

What mindfulness is not:

One of my favorite teaching strategies is to offer learning by way of contrast. In other words, first identifying what mindfulness isn’t. Thich Nhat Hanh, world-renowned peace leader and poet, reminds us of the simple opposite of mindfulness: forgetfulness.

“Most people are forgetful; they are not really there a lot of the time. Their mind is caught in their worries, their fears, their anger, and their regrets, and they are not mindful of being there. That state of being is called forgetfulness—you are there but you are not there.”¹

If you’re now laughing to yourself thinking about when you forgot where you placed your keys earlier this week, I mindfully invite you to come back to the present moment. Let’s now draw attention to what mindfulness is.

What mindfulness is:

Mindfulness, put simply, is being aware of and allowing yourself to be in the present moment. In the words of Thich Nhat Hanh:

“The opposite of forgetfulness is mindfulness. Mindfulness is when you are truly there, mind and body together. You breathe in and out mindfully, you bring your mind back to your body, and you are there. When your mind is there with your body, you are established in the present moment. Then you can recognize the many conditions of happiness that are in you and around you, and happiness just comes naturally.”¹

Right now, take a moment to observe yourself where you are. You may notice yourself sitting with your chin resting on your wrist in a chair, breath long and slow. You might be standing on a subway platform scrolling through this article on a phone, breathing in and out quickly, the strap of your bag tugging at your shoulder.

Now try taking a full inhalation deep into the belly and into the chest, feeling the ribs comfortably expand. What does it feel like to inhale fully? Now exhale slowly and completely, lungs and belly hollowing comfortably. What does it feel like to exhale fully? Continue this practice of fully inhaling and fully exhaling for a few more cycles of breath. How does your body feel? Where are your thoughts focused? Allow yourself to observe your own thinking without judgment and come back to your breathing.

Perhaps just now from focusing attention on the in-breath and out-breath you feel a little different. Scan your body and mind. Perhaps you find yourself feeling less tense and a little less caught up in the future or past. The changes may be subtle or distinct.

In mindfulness, the breath often serves as a physical tool to help bring the mind and body back to the moment at hand. Breathing awareness – observing the length and sensations of your breath – is one way of practicing being mindful. Body awareness – noticing the physical position of and sensations within your body – is another way. Awareness of emotions and thinking as well as different forms of meditation such as guided visualization, insight meditation or tuning “inward,” are also forms of mindfulness practice.

Mindfulness is historically rooted in Buddhist practices and Indian yoga, though evidence of mindful practices exists across cultures, religions, and even in acts of creating music, art, cooking, knitting, and exercise. As aptly suggested by Kabat-Zinn in framing mindfulness in the West, we are all inherently mindful as humans.

The scope of “mindfulness practices” is far-reaching and varied to meet the needs of children and adults, but the fundamental experience of all is similar: to practice being attentive to the present moment.

What is the goal mindfulness?

The intent of mindfulness is to relieve the natural human suffering that often occurs from maladaptive habits of which we’re unaware². In other words, the more we do something with or without our awareness, the more connected the underlying neural pathways become, making it more automatic even if the habit doesn’t make us feel good. For example, we might unknowingly rehearse self-critical thoughts that lead to negative emotions. Mindfulness is meant to help relieve us of those patterns by building awareness and practicing change.

Much of today’s neuroscience and psychology research seeks to relieve the same symptoms of human suffering – anxiety, depression, indecision, stress, lack of focus, and memory loss. Mindfulness has therefore been adapted for scientific study as possible treatment for wellbeing in children and adults. Growing data is promising, allowing mindful practice to begin making its way into more schools than ever before.

Overview of Mindfulness Research 

Researchers in mindfulness have adapted research-friendly definitions from Eastern practice. Ellen Langer, social psychologist and founding mindfulness researcher at Harvard University, defines mindfulness as “a process that cultivates sensitivity to subtle variations in context and perspective about the observed subject rather than relying on entrenched categorizations from the past.”³ The operating definition used by Jon Kabat-Zinn, professor of medicine, student of Thich Nhat Hanh, and originator of the renowned Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, is “the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment.”⁴

The last four decades have featured numerous neurological and psychological studies that support mindfulness practices in adult populations. In healthy adults, mindfulness meditation has been associated with increased attention and reduction of stress.⁵ In physically, mentally, and emotionally-demanding professions like teaching, such practices like breath awareness and meditation may help teachers sustain their own well-being as leaders in the classroom.

More inquiry is under way on the benefits of mindful practice for adolescents and children. One pilot study of note by Karen Bluth and colleagues assessed the effectiveness of the BREATHE mindfulness program as compared to a substance-abuse control program in ethnically diverse, including at-risk adolescents. Students in the mindfulness program showed more reduction in symptoms of depression and stress as compared to students in the control group.⁶ Such results suggest that mindfulness may support adolescents in psychological wellbeing, making more room for academic and social success.

More studies in mindfulness are emerging in elementary and early childhood settings as well. Lisa Flook and colleagues recently found that second and third graders who were less self-regulated showed more improvement in executive functioning after participating in an 8-week long mindful awareness program (MAP) as compared with those in the control group.⁷ Flook since teamed with Richard Davidson, known for his brain meditation research with monks, to develop a mindfulness-based Kindness Curriculum (KC) to evaluate prosocial and self-regulatory behaviors in preschool children. The mindful kindness group showed greater gains in socio-emotional development and social competence as measured on report card grades by the teacher as compared to the control group, which demonstrated more selfish behaviors over time.⁸ Such findings suggest that mindfulness practice may developmentally appropriate not only for adults and adolescents, but for young children as well.

The present challenge in evaluating mindfulness research in academic settings is that most existing studies rely on teacher or parent observation of change in young students. As unbiased as we like to be as caregivers, our perceptions may be unintentionally skewed. Bias may also exist in adolescent reports of their own wellbeing.

With initial promise of mindfulness in children and young adults, however, more rigorous inquiry will likely involve magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and functional imagining to observe structural and functional changes in the brain. Given the jam-packed days we already face as teachers, corroborating or clarifying results from brain research could help inform time and type of mindful practice that is both reasonable and still beneficial for academic settings.

The journey of mindfulness in Western science and education may be just beginning, but its roots are deep and its practices simple. As research starts to stabilize in a crisper understanding and evaluation of mindfulness, implementation in the classroom will become clearer. For now, let’s mindfully navigate the bumps together and trust in its unfolding.

 

References & Further Reading

1. Hanh, T. N. (2010). Thich Nhat Hanh on the Practice of Mindfulness. [Web Article]
2. Vago, D. R. (2014). Mapping modalities of self-awareness in mindfulness practice: a potential mechanism for clarifying habits of mind. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1307: 28–42. [Paper].
3. Langer, E., Cohen, M., & Djikic, M. (2012). Mindfulness as a Psychological Attractor: The Effect on Children.Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 42(5), 1114-1122. [Paper]
4. Kabat-Zinn, J. (2003). Mindfulness-based interventions in context: Past, present, and future.Clinical Psychology-Science And Practice, 10(2), 144-156. [Paper]
5. Lazar, S. W., Bush, G. L., Gollub, R., Fricchione, G., Khalsa, G., & Benson, H. (2000). Functional brain mapping of the relaxation response and meditation. NeuroReport,11(7), 1581-1585. [Paper]
6. Bluth, K., Campo, R. A., Pruteanu-Malinici, S., Reams, A., Mullarkey, M., & Broderick, P. C. (2015). A school-based mindfulness pilot study for ethnically diverse at-risk adolescents. Advance online publication. [Paper]
7. Flook, L., et al. (2010). Effects of mindful awareness practices on executive functions in elementary school children. Journal of Applied School Psychology, 26(1), 70-95. [Paper]
8. Flook, L., Goldberg, S. B., Pinger, L., & Davidson, R. J. (2015). Promoting prosocial behavior and self-regulatory skills in preschool children through a mindfulness-based kindness curriculum. Developmental Psychology, 51(1), 44-51. [Paper]