Mindfulness is the state of being fully aware and focused, which helps alleviate stress, encourage proficiency and enhance wellbeing. Mindfulness can be incorporated as a philosophy behind many curricula in schools, which benefits students as well as teachers.
- WHAT DOES MINDFULNESS DO?
By teaching mindfulness, students develop increased self-discipline, self-regulation and self-responsibility, which allows them to be more diligent and conscientious in their studies. This promotes success, which in turn improves confidence, resilience and respectful behaviours. Through self-awareness and confidence, young people develop stronger interpersonal communication skills which sets them up for further success in their academic life and career choices. Mindfulness and its lessons allow young people to build sound emotional responses to physical changes and peers, which helps in teen years, and through this awareness, will find they have an increased sense of empathy and understanding of others. Of course, there are physical benefits of mindfulness as well. Balance, posture and flexibility are often improved through focus and awareness.
- MINDFULNESS HELPS TO ALLEVIATE STRESS IN TEACHERS
Life Skills Group offers training in Mindfulness, which teachers can use with their students, but also to help them alleviate the stress in their day to day teaching practice. With teaching often being listed as in the top three most stressful vocations, it is crucial for teachers to find ways of managing the pressure, and mindfulness training can certainly help. By learning skills in mindfulness, teachers can better prioritise and focus while they contend with the many things on their plates.
- MINDFULNESS IN ACTION
In a series of interactive and progressive lessons, Life Skills Group show students how to develop their self-awareness and increase impulse control, focus and empathy. These life skills are crucial for students to learn, particularly in an age of maximum distraction. In a world of screens, streams and machines, Mindfulness and focus has never been more important to learn. The Life Skills Group Mindfulness in Action for primary and secondary students and their teachers utilises scientifically proven mindfulness techniques, effective pedagogical practices, and cross-sectional research in cognitive affective neuroscience to teach students to pay attention to their experiences in a non-reactive way. A kinesthetic program, the training combines visual and auditory stimuli with physical movement exercises and outcomes.
- WHY LEARN MINDFULNESS?
Learning how to better focus, concentrate and be more aware of your surroundings, and of those who co-habitate in them is beneficial to everyone. Teachers are constantly under pressure with marking deadlines, parent interaction, meetings, planning, reports, extra curricula commitments, yard duties, and the list goes on. Primary students are learning every day about how things work, where they fit into the world and how they learn. Secondary students are developing study habits, dealing with physical changes and planning their future. All three categories of people require a vast amount of focus, determination and awareness to deal with all that is going on in their world. Through Mindfulness skills, children, teenagers and adults are able to develop ways of better dealing with the hand they are dealt and build better communication skills and goal setting to achieve success and positive wellbeing.
