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Mindful Life Community News – February, 2016

Our Mindful Life Community (MLC) membership and vision is growing! Members have joined from many states across the US and from countries around the world. It is supporting both individuals and communities.

The Community resources are expanding and will soon begin to include specific resources for targeted communities such as teachers, therapists, and the recovery community. Currently we are growing the resources for the recovery community and will be adding specific resources for teachers shortly. We are very excited that the staff at two different public schools have chosen MLC as a way to support all their teachers and administrators.

Becoming a member is a great way to be introduced to and begin taking action to make meaningful change if you are new to mindfulness. We designed the Community so that whatever MLP course, workshop or retreat you attend, all of the invaluable tools and skills that you learn are reinforced and expanded by MLC and allow you to have the continuous support that helps you make meaningful change in your habits and your life. The community has been designed to provide daily ongoing support to include and elaborate on the four keys of living mindfully that are embodied in all of our teachings and trainings.

Members of the community receive daily mindfulness support by email with inspiration, teachings, activities and exercises that are specifically designed to support and reinforce the healthy habits of living mindfully and to make meaningful change. In addition to the emails, members have access to our meditation and mindfulness resource libraries, the opportunity to participate in conference calls three times a month, and access to meditate with the whole community via a live web stream at different times throughout the month.

When we began the community, the inspiration was to provide the precious resources and tools of mindfulness to those who normally would not have access to them, as well as to provide ongoing support for those who have already engaged in an MLP program. However, our vision has now grown beyond seeking to help just individuals as we see the value of how individuals making meaningful change can make our world a better place. Many of our members have commented to us how their practice has helped them counteract the harsh rhetoric and anger that can sometimes dominate our communities as well as social media. We’ve come to realize that, together, we can become a movement. A movement of compassion and mindfulness that counteracts the voices of hatred and division that have become so loud. Imagine millions of people all over the world absorbing their daily support email and engaging in mindful, meaningful activities that improve their lives and those they come in contact with. We encourage all of you to join us in this vision. Together, we are the difference we want to see the world! If you’re not currently a member, join now and tell a friend. Learn more here. 

 

Mindfulness Exercises Improve Kids’ Math Scores

Fourth and fifth graders who did mindfulness exercises had 15% better math scores than their peers

Posted in Time.com by Mandy Oaklander – January 26, 2015

The study authors put 99 4th and 5th grade public school students in British Columbia into one of two groups. One group received four months of the mindfulness program, and the other got four months of a standard “social responsibility” program already used in Canadian public schools.

In the mindfulness classrooms, the program incorporated sense-sharpening exercises like mindful smelling and mindful eating, along with cognitive mindfulness exercises like seeing an issue from another’s point of view. Children did a three-minute meditation three times a day focusing on their breathing. They also acted on their lessons by practicing gratitude and doing kind things for others.

For the four months, researchers analyzed all kinds of in-depth measures, like behavioral assessments, cortisol levels, children’s self-reports of their own wellbeing, reviews from their peers about sociability and the objective academic scores of math grades.

The results were dramatic. “I really did not anticipate that we would have so many positive findings across all the multiple levels we looked at,” says study co-author Kimberly A. Schonert-Reichl, a developmental psychologist at the University of British Columbia. “I was very surprised,” she says—especially considering that the intervention took place at the end of the year, notoriously the worst time for students’ self-control.

 Compared to the kids in the social responsibility program, children with the mindful intervention had 15% better math scores, showed 24% more social behaviors, were 24% less aggressive and perceived themselves as 20% more prosocial. They outperformed their peers in cognitive control, stress levels, emotional control, optimism, empathy, mindfulness and aggression.

The program also may have had an unintended effect—one the researchers didn’t measure, but now want to. “Anecdotally, teachers tell us that the program helped them calm down more—by doing the program and integrating these mindful attention practices and being more aware and thinking more about others, that they actually become less stressed,” Schonert-Reichl says. “That has huge implications, and a further area of research is needed.”

More research is needed, but mindfulness interventions like these are promising. “Doing these kinds of programs in school does not take away from academics,” Schonert-Reichl says. “It adds to a growing research literature that’s showing, actually, these kinds of programs and practices increase academic gains. By adding this on, you not only create more academically capable, successful students, but actually create more caring, less stressed, kind students.”