Mindfulness and Yoga in Schools A Guide for Teachers and Practitioners

84 • PART II: MINDFULNESS IN EDUCATING FOR SELF-REGULATION AND ENGAGEMENT CHAPTER 5: THE MINDFUL CLASSROOM • 85

verbally through an awareness of their bodies from the ground up. If they are seated in a

chair, you begin with the connection of their feet on the floor, awareness of their legs and

hips, and a sense of themselves sitting on the chair. You can have them notice the chair, how

it feels, hard or soft. You can bring them to awareness of their spine and belly. You can guide

them into their shoulders, arms, and hands. As much as possible, bring their awareness to

the physical sensations that they feel. You can move through the body to the crown of the

head. I am careful not to mention “private parts” (e.g., the pelvic floor) of the body in school.

It can quickly distract the class without adding substantial benefit to the meditation. You can

easily speak of the sitting bones (i.e., ischial tuberosity) and teach students where they are.

The next foundation is mindful awareness of feelings in which bare attention is focused

on the feeling-tone that accompanies the experiences of each moment (Cook-Cottone, 2015;

Grabovac, Lau, & Willett, 2011; McCown et al., 2010). These are the feeling-tones of unpleas-

ant, neutral, or pleasant (McCown et al., 2010). For students, you can guide them to notice

what feels good or not so good. You can teach them broad definitions of the words pleasant

(i.e., things that feel good) and unpleasant (i.e., things that feel not so good) and ask them to

give examples. Have them notice that there are physical feelings (e.g., how my feet and toes

feel in my socks and shoes, pressing into the carpet on the floor), and then there are emotional

feelings (e.g., not liking how it feels to sit still for 3 minutes [unpleasant] and wanting to

wiggle and move [something that feels pleasant]). The emotional feelings tell us how we feel

about what is happening (Cook-Cottone, 2015). In mindfulness practice, these feeling-tones

are simply noticed as they arise and pass away. So, Joey, who feels unpleasant feelings about

sitting for more than 90 seconds, notices this rather than letting himself wiggle. He can share

with the class what this was like and how he stayed focused.

The third foundation is mindfulness of the mind (Cook-Cottone, 2015; McCown et al.,

2010; Siegel, 2010). Note, this is a difficult concept for young children. For students who are

younger than 10 or 11 years old, it may be best to move right to awareness of objects of the

mind. Objects are concrete, or tangible, and therefore a little easier for children who have

not entered formal operative thought to consider (i.e., the ability to think about the world in

more abstract ways). In the case of mindfulness of the mind, bare attention is focused on the

activity, or processing, of the mind, noticing shifts in states of awareness, concentration, and

distraction (Kabat-Zinn, 2013). It can be helpful to take some time and define the different

states for the students and have them give examples of how that is experienced by them. In a

curriculum my research team developed for children with fetal alcohol exposure, we aligned

the states of consciousness with animals or characters to increase understanding. We used

terms such as “hunting dog” for alert and engaged, and “sloth” for feeling slow and lazy. It

can be fun to work with the class and create these distinctions and methodologies for each

of them. You want to be sure to include states of arousal, engaged attention, distraction, and

Mind

Awareness

Mindful

Practice

Body

Awareness

Emotion

Awareness

Mind-Object

Awareness

FIGURE 5.1 Four foundations

of mindful practice.