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meditation

Education

A school replaced detention with meditation. The results are stunning.

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Imagine you're working at a school and one of the kids is starting to act up. What do you do?

Traditionally, the answer would be to give the unruly kid detention or suspension.

But in my memory, detention tended to involve staring at walls, bored out of my mind, trying to either surreptitiously talk to the kids around me without getting caught or trying to read a book. If it was designed to make me think about my actions, it didn't really work. It just made everything feel stupid and unfair.

But Robert W. Coleman Elementary School has been doing something different when students act out: offering meditation.

Instead of punishing disruptive kids or sending them to the principal's office, the Baltimore school has something called the Mindful Moment Room instead.

The room looks nothing like your standard windowless detention room. Instead, it's filled with lamps, decorations, and plush purple pillows. Misbehaving kids are encouraged to sit in the room and go through practices like breathing or meditation, helping them calm down and re-center. They are also asked to talk through what happened.

Two young people meditating

Meditation can have profoundly positive effects on the mind and body

Photo from Holistic Life Foundation, used with permission.


Meditation and mindfulness are pretty interesting, scientifically.

children meditation

A child meditates

Photo from Holistic Life Foundation, used with permission.

Mindful meditation has been around in some form or another for thousands of years. Recently, though, science has started looking at its effects on our minds and bodies, and it's finding some interesting effects.

One study, for example, suggested that mindful meditation could give practicing soldiers a kind of mental armor against disruptive emotions, and it can improve memory too. Another suggested mindful meditation could improve a person's attention span and focus.

Individual studies should be taken with a grain of salt (results don't always carry in every single situation), but overall, science is starting to build up a really interesting picture of how awesome meditation can be. Mindfulness in particular has even become part of certain fairly successful psychotherapies.

children yoga

After-school yoga.

Photo from Holistic Life Foundation, used with permission.

Back at the school, the Mindful Moment Room isn't the only way Robert W. Coleman Elementary has been encouraging its kids.

The meditation room was created as a partnership with the Holistic Life Foundation, a local nonprofit that runs other programs as well. For more than 10 years the foundation has been offering the after-school program Holistic Me, where kids from pre-K through the fifth grade practice mindfulness exercises and yoga.

"It's amazing," said Kirk Philips, the Holistic Me coordinator at Robert W. Coleman. "You wouldn't think that little kids would meditate in silence. And they do."

kids meditating

A child meditates at the Holistic Life Foundation

Photo from Holistic Life Foundation, used with permission.

There was a Christmas party, for example, where the kids knew they were going to get presents but were still expected to do meditation first."As a little kid, that's got to be hard to sit down and meditate when you know you're about to get a bag of gifts, and they did it! It was beautiful, we were all smiling at each other watching them," said Philips.

The kids may even be bringing that mindfulness back home with them. In the August 2016 issue of Oprah Magazine, Holistic Life Foundation co-founder Andres Gonzalez said: "We've had parents tell us, 'I came home the other day stressed out, and my daughter said, "Hey, Mom, you need to sit down. I need to teach you how to breathe.'"

The program also helps mentor and tutor the kids, as well as teach them about the environment.

volunteer work

Building a vegetable garden.

Photo from Holistic Life Foundation, used with permission.

They help clean up local parks, build gardens, and visit nearby farms. Philips said they even teach kids to be co-teachers, letting them run the yoga sessions.

This isn't just happening at one school, either. Lots of schools are trying this kind of holistic thinking, and it's producing incredible results.

In the U.K., for example, the Mindfulness in Schools Project is teaching adults how to set up programs. Mindful Schools, another nonprofit, is helping to set up similar programs in the United States.

Oh, and by the way, the schools are seeing a tangible benefit from this program, too.

Philips said that at Robert W. Coleman Elementary, there have been exactly zero suspensions last year and so far this year. Meanwhile, nearby Patterson Park High School, which also uses the mindfulness programs, said suspension rates dropped and attendance increased as well.

Is that wholly from the mindfulness practices? It's impossible to say, but those are pretty remarkable numbers, all the same.


This article originally appeared on 09.22.16

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Health

Zen master Shōhaku Okumura explains why meditation is 'good for nothing'

An entirely different way of thinking about meditation.

Photo by Ian Stauffer on Unsplash

There is no cliff.

Most of us are at least somewhat aware of the vast benefits of meditation. It’s now fairly common knowledge that meditation can reduce stress and anxiety, improve focus and sleep quality, and even increase imagination. And with dozens of guided meditations accessible online, it’s easier than ever to incorporate the practice into our daily routine.

With such potential for creating positive transformation in our lives, we might find ourselves placing lofty goals on what exactly our meditation should provide: whether that's some sort of enlightenment or to simply come out of it feeling better. This belief that meditation should give us something profound could even feel intimidating, keeping someone from trying at all.

Take it from a Buddhist monk himself—perhaps the very best thing that meditation is good for is … nothing.

In a video provided by Intellectual Wave, Zen master Shōhaku Okumura discusses the concept of Zazen, which refers to a sitting meditation in Buddhist tradition. To practice Zazen is to sit without paying any attention or expectation to gain anything. That’s it. No more, no less. No visualizing, no listening to the wind, nada.

Okumura’s teachers called this type of meditation “good for nothing.”

Zazen is often easier said than done. Okumura concedes that when everybody practices meditation, including himself, there is at least some expectation, whether that’s to solve a problem or answer a question. Even something as pure as seeking enlightenment still contains “desire,” Okumura explains.

Buddhists even have a word for this sort of philosophical paradox called koan, which Okumura describes in the video as “conflict.” But he argues that once a person can sit without seeking, they can experience “total function,” where they can experience themselves as an integrated part of the universe, rather than a separate observer of it.

In our modern-day, results-oriented world, the concept of simply doing nothing might seem unproductive. Unattainable, even. But as counterintuitive as it sounds, making things meaningless might make our lives more meaningful. Okumura shared his own experience, saying, “One day I found myself sitting alone…not as a priest…in a kind of social occupation. I sat by myself and I found deep peace…I became free of my desire to be a good Buddhist. For the first time I found the real meaning of Zazen.”

I think it’s safe to say that humans will never evolve past the need for serenity. The world could definitely use a little more peace these days. Good ol’ good for nothing Zazen sounds like a lovely way to get there.

You can watch the full video below:

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Well Being

Yoga has been banned in Alabama public schools since 1993. How is this real?

Image by Paulo Sérgio de Oliveira Rosa from Pixabay

The health benefits of yoga are understood so far and wide in modern society that the exercise is utilized by everyone from suburban soccer moms to professional football players. We also have a wealth of research about the emotional and mental benefits of meditation—so much, in fact, that some schools have successfully implemented meditation as a way to improve student behavior.

But apparently, in Alabama, some folks are afraid that letting kids do yoga or meditation in school might lead them to do something terrifying...like becoming a Hindu, or being attracted to Hinduism, or looking into Hinduism, or something.

Since 1993, Alabama has banned yoga and guided meditation from public schools, as it got wrapped up in a blanket ban on "the use of hypnosis and dissociative mental states."

"School personnel shall be prohibited from using any techniques that involve the induction of hypnotic states, guided imagery, meditation or yoga," the State Board of Education's regulations state.

A new bill has been introduced—and passed in the Alabama House of Representatives in a 73-25 vote—that would allow schools to authorize yoga. However, for the bill to become law it has to pass through the Senate, where it is has stalled due to pushback from conservative groups who are concerned about the Hindu origins of the exercise.

Becky Gerritson, director of the conservative group Eagle Forum of Alabama, spoke out against the bill during the public hearing.

"Yoga is a very big part of the Hindu religion," she said, according to the AP. "If this bill passes, then instructors will be able to come into classrooms as young as kindergarten and bring these children through guided imagery, which is a spiritual exercise, and it's outside their parents' view. And we just believe that this is not appropriate."

The Eagle Forum website also states their official position:

"Many people see Yoga as harmless. Even many Christians churches offer Yoga. However, Yoga is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines which originated in ancient India. Yoga is one of the six Āstika (orthodox) schools of Hindu philosophical traditions. In the Education Committee the sponsor made it very clear that Yoga was needed in schools to help with mental clarity which confirms that it is not intended to be just a physical exercise. We hold the position that if parents want their children to engage in the practice of yoga that they do it on their own time and not in public schools with tax payer money."

Ah yes. Mental clarity = a problematic religious influence of some sort. Makes perfect sense.

Considering the fact that the Eagle Forum has complained about school prayer being banned and the Ten Commandments statue being removed from a government building, that they and really, really wanted "under God" to remain in the Pledge of Allegiance kids say each day, their stance seems a smidge hypocritical. And banning an exercise that isn't overtly religious just because it originated from an Eastern spiritual tradition and not Christianity seems silly.

The fact of the matter is yoga has gone mainstream. In the U.S. especially, it's far removed from any religious connotations. That's not necessarily a good thing—there are ongoing discussions about cultural appropriation in Western yoga practices—but the idea that yoga turns you Hindu is illogical on its face.

The resistance seems particularly overreactive when you see that the bill includes strict rules for schools to teach yoga, such as limiting it "exclusively to poses, exercises and stretching techniques," using "exclusively English descriptive names" for the poses, and expressly prohibiting "chanting, mantras, mudras, use of mandalas, and 11 namaste greetings."

Stripping any and all Indian or Hindu elements from school yoga practices, what do they fear happening? Do they think kids putting their bodies into a specific position will somehow summon Hindu spirits that will somehow convince the children to be Hindu?

"This whole notion that if you do yoga, you'll become Hindu — I've been doing yoga for 10 years and I go to church and I'm very much a Christian," said Democratic Rep. Jeremy Gray, who introduced the bill, according to the AP. Gray was introduced to yoga when he played college football at North Carolina State University and enjoyed it so much he became a yoga instructor himself.

Rajan Zed, who is president of Universal Society of Hinduism, pointed out that the overwhelming majority of yoga teachers and practitioners aren't Hindu and that anyone of any faith can utilize yoga.

"Traditionally Hinduism was not into proselytism. So, Alabamans should not to be scared of yoga at all," Zed wrote in a statement after the committee meeting.

The same goes for meditation, guided or otherwise. Yoga and meditation are ancient practices that people around the world from various cultures and traditions have benefited from without some big conversion to the faith of their origins. Every guided meditation I've ever done just walks you through peaceful mental imagery. We're not talking about holding seances or ritual sacrifices here, for the love.

When we have bullying and mental health crises and mass shootings happening in schools, kids doing a tree pose or imagining they're floating on a beautiful lake are the last things adults should be worrying about. Seriously.

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Jerry Seinfeld said daily meditation and lifting weights have completely changed his life

via Jon Bauer / Flickr

Jerry Seinfeld has been one of the keenest observers of the human condition for over five decades. Albeit most of his observations have been brilliant dissections of the mundane, most famously socks, chips 'n dip, and sports jerseys.

However, earlier this month the comedian got serious on Tim Ferriss' podcast, revealing the two routines that help him stay sane and creative in the mentally and physically draining world of comedy.

Ferriss is best known for his book, "The 4-Hour Work Week."

"Weight training, and Transcendental Meditation. I think I could solve just about anyone's life, and I don't care what you do" Seinfeld said.

"I think your body needs that stress, that stressor," he added. "And I think it builds the resilience of the nervous system, and I think Transcendental Meditation is the absolutely ultimate work tool."

Seinfeld says that Transcendental Meditation (TM) helps him stay mentally sharp.

"As a standup comic, I can tell you, my entire life is concentration fatigue," he said. "Whether it's writing or performing, my brain and my body, which is the same thing, are constantly hitting the wall. And if you have [TM] in your hip pocket, you're Columbus with a compass."

The comedian practices TM twice a day or "any time I feel like I'm dipping," he said. For example, if he isn't feeling inspired during a writing session, he will meditate. "If I sit down and the pen doesn't move for like 20 minutes, I know I'm out of gas," he said.

In 2018, Seinfeld told Page Six that he and his wife, Jessica, have practiced TM for over two decades. "My wife and I have been meditating for 25 years. We're happier, healthier, we look better," he said. "I was ­5-foot-4 before I meditated."

Seinfeld isn't the only A-list celebrity who endorses the practice. Howard Stern, Oprah Winfrey, Paul McCartney, Clint Eastwood, Mick Jagger, Russell Brand, Katy Perry, and "Twin Peaks" creator David Lynch are all enthusiastic practitioners.

Numerous studies have proven that practicing T.M. can help with stress, anxiety, PTSD, and hypertension. It's also associated with an overall increase in life satisfaction.

However, the Maharishi Foundation USA, teachers of the trademarked technique, is often criticized for charging people to learn the practice. Some say it's basically a traditional mantra meditation that can be learned elsewhere for free.

Seinfeld's second daily habit is weight training.

"So it's three times a week of weights, and three times a week, the interval cardio training," he told Ferriss. "And there are a lot of days where I want to cry instead of do it because it really physically hurts. But I just think it's very balancing to the forces inside humanity that I think are just, they overwhelm us."

In the end, Seinfeld believes these two practices help him maintain his mental and physical health while improving his writing, which he calls "the most difficult thing in the world."

"A lot of my life is — I don't like getting depressed," he admits. "I get depressed a lot. I hate the feeling, and these routines, these very difficult routines, whether it's exercise or writing, and both of them are things where it's brutal. "

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