Tag: mindfulness programs

Developing Mindfulness in Schools

Increasingly mindfulness is being introduced into schools for the benefit of teachers and students.   I previously discussed the work of Goldie Hawn and the MindUP program introduced extensively in schools across America.  Goldie explained the motivation for her work with schools and the reasons why children need mindfulness in an interview with Tami Simon.  The Australia and New Zealand Mental Health Association highlights the need to raise mental health awareness in schools because of the increasing level of mental illness amongst school age children and the adverse effects of social media together with study pressures and performance expectations (of others and themselves).  Research strongly supports the benefit of mindfulness for mental health.

Benefits of mindfulness in schools

Research into mindfulness practice in schools demonstrates that both students and teachers benefit.  Students develop greater capacity for attention and focus, increased self-awareness and better emotional self-regulation.  These outcomes in turn build their self-esteem and reduce stress and the incidence of anxiety and depression.  Teachers too experience similar outcomes and develop resilience to deal with setbacks and disappointments.  Patricia Jennings, author of Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom, identifies seven ways mindfulness can help teachers along with practices to support these outcomes.  These benefits include the capacity to slow down, build better relationships with students and handle difficult students more effectively.

Guidelines for the implementation of mindfulness in schools

The Smiling Mind organisation has developed guidelines based on research into successful implementation of their mindfulness programs in schools.  These evidence-based guidelines provide recommendations for the training of teachers and students in mindfulness as well as suggestions re the ideal duration and timing of daily mindfulness practices.  They strongly encourage the involvement of teachers in mindfulness practices so that they can act as models and a resource for students.  The guidelines recommend a whole-of-school approach to the development of mindfulness in schools, including the active involvement of school leaders and parents (where possible).  This wider level of involvement serves as positive reinforcement for the practice of mindfulness by students. 

Resources for mindfulness in schools

There is a growing mindfulness resource base for teachers, students and parents.  Here is a small sample of what is available:

  • Free mindfulness app: Smiling Mind offers a free mindfulness app that incorporates meditations and other mindfulness practices for use by teachers, students and parents.
  • Mindfulness videos and books: Grow Mindfully provides videos and a reading list for teachers and parents. 
  • Mindfulness training programs for teachers and students: Grow Mindfully and Smiling Mind offer these program.
  • Weekly meditation podcast: The weekly meditation podcast provided by the Mindfulness Awareness Research Center (MARC) covers a wide range of possible meditation topics that can be incorporated in school-based meditations.

Reflection

Developing mindfulness in schools can help both students and teachers deal with the stresses of modern life and help them to enrich their relationships at school, work and home.  Modelling by teachers (and ideally by parents) will help to reinforce positive changes in self-awareness and self-regulation achieved by students through mindfulness practices.  As students and teachers grow in mindfulness through regular practice, they can experience life more fully and with a greater level of contentment.

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Image by Sasin Tipchai from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Mindfulness and Organisational Interventions

The Mindful Nation UK  report stated that mindfulness alone will not fix dysfunctional organisations.  Where narcissistic managers or leaders exist in an organisation, the result is typically a toxic environment for employees where they are devalued, overworked and subject to public, caustic criticism.

Mindfulness can build resilience but the desired intention is not to build people’s capacity to endure unreasonable workloads or a toxic environment.  It is designed to build their capacity to contribute to the organisation where reasonable stressors exist.

Narcissistic managers see resilience as a way for employees to “toughen up” so that they meet their unrealistic demands.  I have even heard one senior narcissistic manager say of his subordinate manager that he “needs to be more resilient” in a situation that involved ever-changing deadlines, public criticism by the senior manager in front of his own staff, constant blaming for things outside his control and demands that border on unethical behaviour.

The Mindful Nation UK report was cognisant of the very relevant views expressed by the Trade Union Congress (TUC) in its 2013 document on “Work and Wellbeing: A Trade Union Resource”.   In this resource, the TUC expressed concern that wellbeing programs were being used as a substitute for addressing more fundamental issues such as workload, hours of work and inappropriate management style.

In their discussions with the working group developing the Mindful Nation UK report, the TUC were particularly concerned about the need to address toxic work environments and not assume that mindfulness training for staff will change the level of toxicity by osmosis – that is, by unconscious assimilation of the values, ideas and skills of mindfulness by narcissistic managers who create toxic environments.

The Mindful Nation UK report recognised the validity of the TUC’s concerns by stating:

Mindfulness will only realise its full potential when it is part of a well-designed organisational culture which takes employee wellbeing seriously (p. 45)

Despite this assertion and the statement that “as an isolated intervention it [mindfulness] cannot fix dysfunctional organisations”, the report recommendations relating to mindfulness in the workplace still failed to include explicit intervention in the organisational culture.

As organisations help managers and leaders to grow in mindfulness through mindfulness training, they also need to design interventions to directly address the culture of the organisation in a planned, constructive way that creates values and behaviour consistent with those espoused in mindfulness programs.

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of  geralt on Pixabay

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

 

The Mindfulness Initiative: Mindfulness in the Workplace

The Mindfulness Initiative is a policy group that developed following mindfulness training for British MPs, peers and staff and now works with politicians from around the world.  It helped UK politicians to establish a Mindfulness All-Party Parliamentary Group (MAPPG).

It is interesting to note that the primary patrons of the policy group are Emeritus Professor Jon Kabat-Zinn and Ruby Wax, comedian, who has completed a Masters in mindfulness-based, cognitive therapy at the Oxford University Mindfulness Centre.

The Mindful Initiative also assisted the MAPPG to undertake a parliamentary inquiry into mental health in a number of arenas, resulting in the production, after 8 parliamentary sittings, of the Mindful Nation UK report.

Shortly afterwards in 2016, The Mindfulness Initiative published a new document, developed by the Private Sector Working Party, which was called, Building the Case for Mindfulness in the Workplace.   This document is the primary focus of my post.

The latter document focused on mindfulness in the workplace and provides an explanation of mindfulness, identifies the potential benefits for business and discusses workplace implementation issues and strategies.  The ideas advanced in Building the Case are strongly supported by reported research and shared experience captured in documented, organisational case studies.

It provides an excellent starting point for any organisation envisaging the development and implementation of a mindfulness program for their executives, managers and staff.  Besides individual mindfulness training, it also touches on organisational mindfulness as a cultural approach.

One significant point that Building the Case makes is that mindfulness is not the province of a particular religion, such as Buddhism.  The report contends, based on the work of Dane (2011) and Kabat-Zinn (2005), that:

mindfulness is best considered an inherent human capacity akin to language acquisition; a capacity that enables people to focus on what they experience in the moment, inside themselves as well as in their environment, with an attitude of openness, curiosity and care.

The problem of course is that with life in our fast-paced world, obsession with social media and concerted efforts by interested parties to disrupt our attention, we are fast losing the power to concentrate and focus – we increasingly experience “disrupted attention” and recent research confirms that our attention span is declining rapidly.  Additional research demonstrates that we spend almost 50% of our time thinking about the future or the past and not being present to our internal or external environment.

We also carry with us memories, emotions, prejudices and biases that distort our perception of reality.  This, in turn, results in workplace stress, mental illness and declining productivity.

The Building the Case report highlights the potential business benefits that accrue from the pursuit of mindfulness, focusing on:

  • enhanced well-being and resilience
  • improved relationships and collaboration
  • enhanced performance
  • improved leadership
  • better decision-making
  • growth in creativity and innovation.

To ensure that people approach the implementation of workplace mindfulness programs in a level-headed way, the report challenges a number of myths about mindfulness and addresses the issues involved.

Of particular note, is the emphasis on regular practice of meditation and organisational support mechanisms beyond the initial training to sustain mindfulness within the organisation.

It is clear from the research and case studies cited, that as people in the workplace grow in mindfulness and sustain their meditation practice, they experience real personal benefits that, in turn, flow onto the organisation, work teams and colleagues.

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of Free-Photos on Pixabay