144 • PART II: MINDFULNESS IN EDUCATING FOR SELF-REGULATION AND ENGAGEMENT
For younger students, it can be helpful to use a gardening metaphor—for instance,
pulling weeds and planting flowers (Hanson & Mendius, 2009). Students can gradually
supplant a negative, implicit memory encoding process (i.e., remembering only the bad
things that happen). This can be done by consciously making the positive aspect of your
experience prominent in your awareness (Cook-Cottone, 2015). Simultaneously, the nega-
tive aspect of memory or experience is placed in the background and given less attention
and energy (Cook-Cottone, 2015; Hanson & Mendius, 2009). Hanson and Mendius (2009)
suggest that, by planting flowers (i.e., tending to the positive aspects of memory and expe-
rience) and pulling weeds (i.e., reducing focus on or cultivating an anecdote for), you can
help shift how your brain neurologically processes information. Importantly, the authors
emphasize that active effort is required as the brain has a negative bias for reasons such as
self-protection. You and your students must actively work to heal negative experiences and
to internalize positive ones (Hanson & Mendius, 2009). When guiding students through
short meditations, you can have them garden their thoughts, carefully looking for kindness,
beauty, gratitude, and curiosity, and watering those thoughts so that they grow. Ask them
to notice negative thoughts like judging, worrying, and complaining, then weed them out
and place them in the recycle bin. If there is time for reflection after the meditation, they
can reinforce the process by drawing on paper the watering and weeding they imagined.
Sometimes, we can weed and water the wrong plants. Students can share and give each
other feedback.
These overarching informal processes of inquiry, happiness, gratitude, and active inten-
tion address many principles of embodied growth and learning (see Chapter 3), including
1, I am worth the effort; 3, I am mindfully aware; 4, I work toward presence in my physical
body; 5, I feel my emotions in order to grow and learn; 6, I ask questions about my physical
experience, feelings, and thoughts; 7, I choose my focus and actions; 8, I do the work; 11,
I am kind to myself and others; and 12, I work toward the possibility of effectiveness and
growth in my life.
INFORMAL PRACTICES
Opportunities for informal practice of mindfulness can be found everywhere and at any
time. In a busy classroom and bustling school, there are endless opportunities. Informal
practices can be taught during a structured mindful lesson (see Chapter 5 and Rechtschaffen,
2014). A posted listing on a classroom wall, gentle reminders, and mindful mini sessions
can help create an atmosphere of ongoing mindfulness in the classroom. Here are a few
informal practices that illustrate the opportunity to practice mindfulness anywhere and at
any time.
Single Tasking and Mindful Engagement
Willard (2016) suggests that single tasking is a simple way to bring mindfulness into our
daily lives. It can be very powerful to intentionally bring an accepting, open, and discern-
ing awareness to whatever you are doing (Kabat-Zinn, 2013; Shapiro & Carlson, 2009).
One of the many potential stressors children experience is multitasking (Chadha, 2015).
According to Grabovac et al. (2011), attention is a sequential process during which we pay
attention to one thing after another after another. When we feel as if we are multitasking,