CHAPTER 4: THE MINDFUL LEARNER • 79cling. When things are difficult and challenging, we want to avoid. The same is true for the
times in between the good and the difficult. Those times pass, too. I like to show students
how this is true, the waxing and waning of the good and the challenging. For example, if
students are stuck waiting in line, ask them to notice how long it lasts.
Students can also be taught impermanence in meditation practice by watching, as wit-
ness to their thoughts, the arising and passing away of all phenomena (i.e., thoughts, feel-
ings, and information coming to them through their senses; Olendzki, 2012). By witnessing
over and over, time and time again, they begin to notice that everything is impermanent
(Cook-Cottone, 2015). In the example with Samuel, he was able to see that anger was some-
thing that could fade and even diminish into nothing as he watched.
Like Samuel, students can also come to understand how impermanence shows up
differently when something is uncomfortable, challenging, or distressing (Cook-Cottone,
2015). When something is uncomfortable, it is easy to react as if it is never going to end.
Hence, being reminded of impermanence offers relief. When I am doing a difficult yoga
pose or feeling resistance in meditation, I remind myself that the emotion or reaction I am
feeling will arise and pass away. Similarly, Linehan (1993) asks her patients to notice imper-
manence when they are working to tolerate distress. They are asked to watch an urge or
an uncomfortable emotion arise and pass away, not reacting, not allowing the sensation to
trigger symptoms of dysregulation (Cook-Cottone, 2015). After a test, you can bring them
to awareness of how the test came and went. With a classroom mindfulness practice, you
can remind them how they used their tools (e.g., breathing [principle 2], staying aware and
present [principles 3 and 4], being self-determined [principle 8], and creating possibility
[principle 12]). All of that good work, while the test approached, was there for them, and
then was done.
Nonattachment
Nonattachment is the process of not attaching to or attempting to avoid thoughts, feelings,
emotions, people, things, and so on (Cook-Cottone, 2015). It begins at the most basic of lev-
els. Each sense impression (e.g., smell or sound) or mental event is reflexively paired with a
feeling-tone of positive, negative, or neutral (Grabovac et al., 2011). All of us, including our
students, naturally feel drawn to the positive or pleasurable feeling-tones and are compelled
to avoid the negative or aversive feeling-tones (Cook-Cottone, 2015).
Over time, habitual reactions, such as attachment and aversion to the feelings associated
with a sense impression or mental event, as well as a lack of awareness of these processes,
can lead to suffering (Grabovac et al., 2011). Mindfulness practice can help us to be pres-
ent in each moment of experience without clinging or craving (Olendzki, 2012). Olendzki
(2012) eloquently describes the heightened awareness that comes with mindfulness as a pry
bar that gets under the common assumptions and habitual responses that we bring to each
moment. With this pry bar, we are able to loosen the attachment to them (Olendzki, 2012).
Helping students notice what they are drawn to and what they try to avoid is important in
building their self-regulation skills. For Samuel, completing the loving-kindness medita-
tions was hard at first. Still, his teacher encouraged him to keep trying. She encouraged him
not to avoid the meditation just because it was challenging. She reminded him of principle 1,
“Samuel, you and your classmates are worth the effort” (see Chapter 3), and “Samuel, you
can do the work” (principle 8, self-determination).