84 • PART II: MINDFULNESS IN EDUCATING FOR SELF-REGULATION AND ENGAGEMENT CHAPTER 5: THE MINDFUL CLASSROOM • 85
BEGINNER’S MIND AND PRACTITIONER’S WISDOM
As a teacher of mindfulness you need two qualities: beginner’s mind and practitioner’s
wisdom. First, no matter how long you have been practicing or how old you are, begin with
a beginner’s mind (Cook-Cottone, 2015). For you and your students, beginner’s mind is a
quality of awareness that allows you to see things as if you have never seen them before.
As you practice, work toward noticing your experience with openness and curiosity (Cook-
Cottone, 2015; Kabat-Zinn, 2013; Stahl & Goldstein, 2010). In this way, as actual beginners,
your students have an advantage (Cook-Cottone, 2015; Marlatt, Bower, & Lustyk, 2012).
Unlike other skills in which we intentionally develop automaticity (e.g., moving from
decoding words to immediate word recognition, or thinking through the steps of driving a
stick shift to skilled shifting), in mindfulness practices you want to stay with the beginner’s
advantage of noticing things as if you have never seen them before. With a beginner’s mind,
students can be present to and curious about each nuance of their internal and external
worlds so that, when risk of acting without thinking or missing an opportunity to learn
more about themselves is headed their way, they clearly see it (Marlatt et al., 2012).
What we do speaks so loudly to children
that when we talk they cannot hear us.
—GandhiSecond, no matter how many books you read, in-services or trainings you attend, or
instructional videos you watch, you will not be able to share the wisdom of mindfulness
unless you practice. Think about your most beloved and effective teacher. Without even
knowing them, I know that you are thinking about someone who is authentic and grounded
in that which they teach from a felt, experiential sense. If they taught you to read, they love
reading and read every day, like my mom. If they taught you how to ride a horse, they love
horses and have a deep knowledge of training and working with horses, like my Uncle Scott.
The same is true for mindfulness and yoga. If they taught you mindfulness and yoga and
you loved it, they practice. It is that simple. Deepen your practice and you will gain even
more insight as to how to effectively and powerfully share your experience (Willard, 2016). If
you come to each moment with a beginner’s mind, open and curious, and bring with you the
wisdom of all your hours and love of practice, you will be both competent and inspirational.
THE FOUR FOUNDATIONS OF MINDFUL PRACTICE
McCown, Reibel, and Micozzi (2010) describe four foundations of mindfulness practice:
body, feelings, mind, and mind objects (Figure 5.1). For children and adolescents, begin with
the first foundation (i.e., body awareness) and work your way through the foundations (i.e.,
feeling awareness, mind awareness, and mind-object awareness). You will want to work
from the most concrete, or tangible, experience as a starting point. This is much more acces-
sible for younger children and beginners.
First, there is mindfulness of the body, or physical self. This involves bare attention to
the breath, then to the calming of the body, and finally to awareness of the body in sensation,
postures, movements, and breath in both formal practice and daily living (Cook-Cottone,
2015; Kabat-Zinn, 2013; McCown et al., 2010). This can be done by guiding the students