72 • PART II: MINDFULNESS IN EDUCATING FOR SELF-REGULATION AND ENGAGEMENT
Mindfulness involves the release of judgment. It entails an unconditional presence and
unconditional openness (Brown et al., 2007). This means that, when you are engaged in
mindfulness, you are not deciding if you like something or not, or if it is good or bad.
Rather, you are in inquiry about it. You are curious, exploratory, and present (see Chapter 3,
principle 6, inquiry). It is believed that once you shift into judgment, you are no longer being
mindful. This is true even for your mindful awareness of your own mindfulness. That is,
as you notice yourself losing focus and moving to judgment, “My breathing is horribly
uneven,” or “I struggle so much to pay attention,” you do not judge yourself for judging.
You simply notice, “I see I am judging,” and shift your focus back to your object of attention,
your breath, or your simple awareness.
Mindfulness may also include a focus of attention. Lutz et al. (2015) identified common
dimensions of the mindfulness construct that exist across many styles of mindfulness as
related to object orientation. This is the “phenomenal sense that an experience or mental
state is oriented toward some object or class of objects” (Lutz et al., 2015, p. 639). That is, the
person practicing mindfulness is aware of some particular thing via perception, memory,
or imagination. Further, the critical phenomenological feature is that there is a focus on
an object, no matter how strongly or weakly, intellectually or unintentionally, the mind is
focused on an object (Lutz et al., 2015).
The Practice of Mindfulness
Mindfulness is also a set of practices (Weare, 2013; Zenner et al., 2014). Typically, in mind-
ful practice, students are instructed to focus attention; if the mind drifts away, the focus is
gently brought back to the present moment experience. There are various ways to practice
mindfulness in terms of the object of focused attention. These are represented well among
the various styles of meditation described in Chapter 5. In some cases, the practitioner is
actively practicing focused attention. In other cases, the practitioner is engaging in an open
monitoring of the mind (Lutz et al., 2015). Specifically, in focused attention, there is an inten-
tion to focus on an object. The person practicing works to be in bare awareness of the object
with good intensity. He or she may notice that attention of focus has waned and then bring
awareness and attention back to the object. Distinctly, in open monitoring practice, the indi-
vidual may deliberately reduce any intentional focus on objects. In this case, he or she sim-
ply observes the mind and the mental processes of awareness (Lutz et al., 2015). There are
more how-tos to come. Chapters 5 to 7 focus on the practical application of mindfulness in
schools.
HISTORICAL ROOTS OF MINDFULNESS TO MINDFULNESS IN SCHOOLS
According to Brown et al. (2007) and Zenner et al. (2014), mindfulness has its origins in
Buddhist psychology. These models of the mind are thought to have developed in north-
ern India in the fifth through third centuries BCE (Olendzki, 2012). Buddhist psychology,
in its essence, is focused on the subjective perception of experience (Olendzki, 2012). The
focus on the attentional and awareness aspects of consciousness is conceptually simi-
lar to ideas advanced by several other philosophical and psychological traditions. These
include: ancient Greek philosophy, phenomenology, existentialism, transcendentalism