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For Your Hands: Encourage Mindfulness

From "5 Practices for Nurturing Happiness", by Thich Nhat Hanh ()

...Mindfulness is the best way to be with our suffering without being overwhelmed by it. Mindfulness is the capacity to dwell in the present moment, to know what’s happening in the here and now. For example, when we’re lifting our two arms, we’re conscious of the fact that we’re lifting our arms. Our mind is with our lifting of our arms, and we don’t think about the past or the future, because lifting our arms is what’s happening in the present moment.

To be mindful means to be aware. It’s the energy that knows what is happening in the present moment. Lifting our arms and knowing that we’re lifting our arms—that’s mindfulness, mindfulness of our action. When we breathe in and we know we’re breathing in, that’s mindfulness. When we make a step and we know that the steps are taking place, we are mindful of the steps. Mindfulness is always mindfulness of something. It’s the energy that helps us be aware of what is happening right now and right here—in our body, in our feelings, in our perceptions, and around us.

With mindfulness, you can recognize the presence of the suffering in you and in the world. And it’s with that same energy that you tenderly embrace the suffering. By being aware of your in-breath and out-breath you generate the energy of mindfulness, so you can continue to cradle the suffering. Practitioners of mindfulness can help and support each other in recognizing, embracing, and transforming suffering. With mindfulness we are no longer afraid of pain. We can even go further and make good use of suffering to generate the energy of understanding and compassion that heals us and we can help others to heal and be happy as well.

The way we start producing the medicine of mindfulness is by stopping and taking a conscious breath, giving our complete attention to our in-breath and our out-breath. When we stop and take a breath in this way, we unite body and mind and come back home to ourselves. We feel our bodies more fully. We are truly alive only when the mind is with the body. The great news is that oneness of body and mind can be realized just by one in-breath. Maybe we have not been kind enough to our body for some time. Recognizing the tension, the pain, the stress in our body, we can bathe it in our mindful awareness, and that is the beginning of healing.

If we take care of the suffering inside us, we have more clarity, energy, and strength to help address the suffering of our loved ones, as well as the suffering in our community and the world. If, however, we are preoccupied with the fear and despair in us, we can’t help remove the suffering of others. There is an art to suffering well. If we know how to take care of our suffering, we not only suffer much, much less, we also create more happiness around us and in the world...

1. LETTING GO
The first method of creating joy and happiness is to cast off, to leave behind. There is a kind of joy that comes from letting go. Many of us are bound to so many things. We believe these things are necessary for our survival, our security, and our happiness. But many of these things—or more precisely, our beliefs about their utter necessity—are really obstacles for our joy and happiness...If you come to look deeply into your fearful attachment, you will realize that it is in fact the very obstacle to your joy and happiness. You have the capacity to let it go. Letting go takes a lot of courage sometimes. But once you let go, happiness comes very quickly. You won’t have to go around searching for it.

Imagine you’re a city dweller taking a weekend trip out to the countryside. If you live in a big metropolis, there’s a lot of noise, dust, pollution, and odors, but also a lot of opportunities and excitement. One day, a friend coaxes you into getting away for a couple of days. At first you may say, “I can’t. I have too much work. I might miss an important call.” But finally he convinces you to leave, and an hour or two later, you find yourself in the countryside. You see open space. You see the sky, and you feel the breeze on your cheeks. Happiness is born from the fact that you could leave the city behind. If you hadn’t left, how could you experience that kind of joy? You needed to let go.

 2. INVITING POSITIVE SEEDS
We each have many kinds of “seeds” lying deep in our consciousness. Those we water are the ones that sprout, come up into our awareness, and manifest outwardly. So in our own consciousness there is hell, and there is also paradise. We are capable of being compassionate, understanding, and joyful. If we pay attention only to the negative things in us, especially the suffering of past hurts, we are wallowing in our sorrows and not getting any positive nourishment. We can practice appropriate attention, watering the wholesome qualities in us by touching the positive things that are always available inside and around us. That is good food for our mind.

One way of taking care of our suffering is to invite a seed of the opposite nature to come up. As nothing exists without its opposite, if you have a seed of arrogance, you have also a seed of compassion. Every one of us has a seed of compassion. If you practice mindfulness of compassion every day, the seed of compassion in you will become strong. You need only concentrate on it and it will come up as a powerful zone of energy. Naturally, when compassion comes up, arrogance goes down. You don’t have to fight it or push it down. We can selectively water the good seeds and refrain from watering the negative seeds. This doesn’t mean we ignore our suffering; it just means that we allow the positive seeds that are naturally there to get attention and nourishment.

3. MINDFULNESS-BASED JOY
Mindfulness helps us not only to get in touch with suffering, so that we can embrace and transform it, but also to touch the wonders of life, including our own body. Then breathing in becomes a delight, and breathing out can also be a delight. You truly come to enjoy your breathing...When we practice mindful breathing or mindful walking, we bring our mind home to our body and we are established in the here and the now. We feel so lucky; we have so many conditions of happiness that are already available. Joy and happiness come right away. So mindfulness is a source of joy. Mindfulness is a source of happiness.

Mindfulness is an energy you can generate all day long through your practice. You can wash your dishes in mindfulness. You can cook your dinner in mindfulness. You can mop the floor in mindfulness. And with mindfulness you can touch the many conditions of happiness and joy that are already available. You are a real artist. You know how to create joy and happiness any time you want. This is the joy and the happiness born from mindfulness.

 4. CONCENTRATION
Concentration is born from mindfulness. Concentration has the power to break through, to burn away the afflictions that make you suffer and to allow joy and happiness to come in. To stay in the present moment takes concentration. Worries and anxiety about the future are always there, ready to take us away. We can see them, acknowledge them, and use our concentration to return to the present moment.

When we have concentration, we have a lot of energy. We don’t get carried away by visions of past suffering or fears about the future. We dwell stably in the present moment so we can get in touch with the wonders of life, and generate joy and happiness. Concentration is always concentration on something. If you focus on your breathing in a relaxed way, you are already cultivating an inner strength. When you come back to feel your breath, concentrate on your breathing with all your heart and mind. Concentration is not hard labor. You don’t have to strain yourself or make a huge effort. Happiness arises lightly and easily.

5. INSIGHT
With mindfulness, we recognize the tension in our body, and we want very much to release it, but sometimes we can’t. What we need is some insight.

Insight is seeing what is there. It is the clarity that can liberate us from afflictions such as jealousy or anger, and allow true happiness to come. Every one of us has insight, though we don’t always make use of it to increase our happiness...

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For Your Head: The Impact of Mindfulness

From "How Mindfulness During Class Can Help Students and Teachers", by Jena Brooker, The Hetchinger Report (KQED's )

Mindfulness, an umbrella term for a range of practices, is about observing your emotions and state of mind, without judgment. This can be done during sitting meditation, walking meditation, activities such as yoga and even while eating.

Though few public schools have the budget to hire a full-time mindfulness teacher like Worthen, many have been introducing mindfulness in the classroom since the coronavirus pandemic shuttered buildings and thrust children into their at times stressful and chaotic home environments. Some teachers are integrating discussions about emotions into daily lessons or starting class with a short mindfulness practice to help everyone feel centered and prepared to learn, while others are sharing mindfulness apps and using online mindfulness videos.

The depression rate for K-12 students was already on the rise before the coronavirus pandemic brought increased financial stress, sickness and death into the lives of thousands of American families. In a survey, since the start of the pandemic, 50 percent of students reported worsened mental health, 35 percent said their family relationships were worse and a majority reported feeling “lonely” and “anxious.” In another survey, 50 percent or more of the students said they were worried about losing connections with friends, missing out on scholarship and job opportunities and how Covid-19 would affect their future employment and college plans.

Megan Sweet is the senior director of program and impact at Mindful Schools, a nonprofit organization that trains educators to teach mindfulness in the classroom. During the coronavirus pandemic, she said, “this idea of tending to the emotional well-being and support of staff and students has gone from something that was a backburner item to something that is in front-of-mind for educators and school leaders.”

In late March, Mindful Schools created a free mindfulness series for kids, in response to Covid-19, which was shared 87,000 times on social media, a record for them. Additionally, they offered an online event to address educator burnout and highlight the benefits of self-compassion. They noted that it drew 10 times the organization’s usual number of attendees. The Holistic Life Foundation, a 20-year-old nonprofit in Baltimore that teaches mindfulness to kids, said that they extended their reach by a factor of 10, from 10,000 in 2019 to over 100,000 students this fall. Similarly, the mindfulness app Headspace for Educators reported that they experienced a 77 percent increase in teacher sign-ups from mid-March to now.

Mindfulness school programs have been shown to improve young people’s emotional well-being, academic performance and relationships. In one study in Chicago of almost 200 elementary public school students, listening to 10 minutes of audio-recorded mindfulness daily for eight weeks improved students’ grades in reading and science. In a survey of sixth grade Boston charter school students by researchers at MIT, the students self-reported less stress and fewer feelings of sadness and anger after eight weeks of in-person guided mindfulness. The MIT researchers also found that students’ brain imaging showed less reactivity to negative images, compared to before they started the mindfulness program. (More brain reactivity to negative events and images is associated with increased risk for depression.) In a review of 61 studies, researchers found that mindfulness in schools resulted in improved cognitive and social-emotional functioning...

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For Your Heart: Everyday Mindfulness

For Your Heart: Teen Mindfulness Meditation