In my life, I have been able to immerse myself in a lot of new learning and personal growth. One of the areas has been mindfulness.
Last year, I had the privilege to share mindfulness with the entire fourth grade as I taught 12 lessons on the topic as we all immersed ourselves in understanding what it is to be more mindful, why we would want to be more mindful, and how to be more mindful.
Additionally, I work for an incredible independent school that supports new initiatives like this and also runs an in-house Professional Development over the summer for employees. As such, I ran a day-long workshop on Mindfulness in the Classroom. The day, although designed for teachers, was really about helping individuals to create greater presence in their own lives… to be a model for what its like to be in the moment. Truly, ‘this moment,’ is all we really have. There is no guarantee of the future, and the past is, well, gone–so what we have is ‘right now.’ When we understand that our minds can be trained to really fully ‘be’ right here, in this moment, then we can access greater happiness, joy, and peace. We can learn to be with ALL of our emotions. We can fully appreciate the little things in our lives, like the food we are eating, the clothes we are wearing, the teeth we are brushing. Our relationships will improve because we are attending to and listening deeply with the ones we love. Our concentration and ability to focus will be honed.
Here are the top three things I shared with my class of adult educators that may help you as well as you cultivate greater awareness of the present moment:
1) We, as teachers/adults, model what it is to be more mindful. How we ‘show up’ with our students/others is important. We must Walk the Walk, not just Talk the Talk. There is no faking this way of being. You must cultivate this in your own life in order to impart it to others.
2) It’s important to give kids (and ourselves) permission to explore their/our ‘Inner World.’ We teach about mind and body in schools, but do we teach about what it means to go inward? We can. And I believe we must. One’s inner world is as essential as the external world one lives in. Let us be the guides to helping kids understand this part of themselves and how to take care of it.
3) What do you really want in life? Many would say: to be more aware, accepting, less judgmental, and less reactive. To cultivate these qualities requires practice. Just as playing the piano over and over again leads to becoming a better piano player, mindfulness (over time) can make us better in living our own lives more fully.
In closing, to quote the movie Kung Fu Panda and also Eleanor Roosevelt (the actual originator of this quote):
“This moment is a Gift…that is why it is called The Present.”
