CHAPTER 4: THE MINDFUL LEARNER • 81I are not going to resist this happening, thing, feeling, experience, or person, we are also
not of acceptance with it. Allowing is the antidote to resistance, a feeling that our stu-
dents know well. It is resistance that adds suffering to pain (Kabat-Zinn, 2013; Shapiro &
Carlson, 2009). That which is already painful can become seemingly unbearable when
resistance is added. We explore allowing in Chapter 5, in specific activities (e.g., soften,
soothe, allow).
CONCLUSION
Many of the students that I have worked with have spent years reacting to complicated
family experiences, difficult neighborhoods, achievement expectations, and other challeng-
ing risks (see Chapter 2). Without knowing or having other tools, these students have done
the best that they could to make it through the day (Cook-Cottone, 2015). With mindful-
ness practices, students have a chance to learn a healthy and effective set of ways of seeing
themselves, their environments, and the world. Mindfulness practices promote well-being,
neurological integration, as well as connection, attunement, and community with others
(Cook-Cottone, 2015). These mindful conceptualizations have been refined, practiced, and
passed down for thousands of years and then adapted for students in today’s schools. They
offer a secular set of healthy techniques for understanding and coping (Cook-Cottone, 2015;
Weare, 2013; Zenner et al., 2014). Referring back to the quote at the start of this chapter,
mindfulness offers practice in learning to listen to and see ourselves as a way of learning to
love ourselves.
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