Mindfulness: Learning to live in the moment

Elementary children will be engaged in a 6 session workshop on "mindfulness" and learning to focus in the moment. Children will be led through this session by Dr. Karen Bulmer and will practice material from the sessions with teachers in between Dr. Bulmer's visits. As children practice this material and become more proficient with mindfulness as a program, they will involve their "buddy learning" friends from younger grades and share their understanding of mindfulness strategies. Children will build relationships with their buddies through this program, while learning to manage stress and anxiety in their personal lives.

Update (June 22, 2017)

This project worked well for about half the class. Many reported using mindfulness to get to sleep or in times of stress. Some children were less comfortable with the concept and struggled to maintain focus. I believe that with a voluntary group there might be more traction, since those that "weren't into it" distracted those that were to a certain degree.

All children like the tinksha (bell) and found the project interesting in concept, but as mentioned before, it was difficult to do a roll-out with the younger grades because we did not have buy-in from all students.

We did discover that Mindfulness was a useful component for students in the primary-elementary school during instruction, since Karen was on site and leading sessions when fire alarms, lockdowns and announcement interruptions occurred. All these situations were easily managed by the very calm D. Bulmer and we went on with the sessions with very quick and relaxed recovery.

In years to come, I believe this project, coupled with a yoga CLUB, would be an ideal means of helping children manage stress and intensify focus.