What is mindfulness?

Mindfulness is paying attention to what’s happening in this moment, without judgment.

Or, we might say that mindfulness is a particular way of paying attention. It is the ability to purposefully bring empathic awareness to one’s experience. Mindfulness can be applied to sensory experience (eating, listening, walking, etc), thoughts, and emotions. We do this by maintaining attention and noticing our experience without reacting but instead with kindness and curiosity.

How does it benefit teachers and students?

As Mindful Schools state, “Thirty years of research in the field has shown us that when students and teachers practice mindfulness skills, they improve academic achievement, mental health, and inter-and intra-personal relationships. Many schools are using it as part of their health and wellness, or social-emotional programs, while other institutions focus on teacher/staff self-care and the potential to renew teachers, transforming their patterns into a more reflective teaching practice.”

Some benefits of mindfulness, include:

• Better focus and concentration

• Increased sense of calm

• Decreased stress and anxiety

• Enhanced health

• Improved impulse control

• Increased self-awareness

• Skillful responses to difficult emotions

• Increased “toolbox” of coping techniques

• Increased empathy and understanding of others

• Development of natural conflict resolution skills

What are the benefits of yoga for children?

As a Yoga Educator, my role is to guide and support children through this time of growth, helping them plant the seeds for a lifetime of health and wellness. My understanding of child development allows me to relate to my students and design yoga classes that are relevant to their lives. The purpose of yoga education during childhood is to build a solid foundation for practical life skills. Through play and experiential learning, yoga provides a safe environment for students to learn yoga tools that will allow them to effectively navigate their lives.

As a certified Yoga Educator and graduate of the YogaEd. Program, these are the benefits you can expect from my yoga classes:

Creativity

A highly desirable skill, creativity is a marker of success in the modern workforce. Creativity is a natural part of learning that is directly related to innovation. Yoga postures and stories engage children’s imaginations while challenging students to creatively participate in the story.

Play

Play contributes to greater social, emotional, and academic success. Yoga for this age group is designed to facilitate their natural desire to play.

Motor Skill Development

Children explore body movements and build spatial awareness through yoga. Yoga develops motor skills by giving students ample opportunities to practice movement, balance, and hand-eye coordination.

Sense of Identity

Yoga connects students with their inner experiences and allows students to discover their own sense of self.

Body Image

Yoga encourages students to develop a positive, healthy relationship to their bodies. Yoga also teaches students tools how to care for themselves and make wholesome food choices and develop healthy physical habits.

Personal Safety

Yoga brings awareness to emotions and helps students respond effectively. Students often experience greater self-respect through their yoga practice, which helps them set safe emotional and physical boundaries.

Acceptance

Non-judgment, self-compassion, and self-respect are core principles of the Yoga Ed. approach. Through yoga activities and role modeling, Yoga Educators teach students the power of self-acceptance. Yoga class gives students a supportive community where they fit in and feel good.

Emotions

Yoga teaches self-awareness, self-regulation, and stress reduction. Students learn how to respond reflectively rather than reactively to life’s challenges. Yoga also nurtures emotional intelligence as students learn to consult their intuition when faced with complex life situations.

Stress

Yoga relaxation gives students the opportunity to unwind and release their stress. Students learn many stress management techniques and choose the ones that work best for them.

Relationships

Yoga teaches children to successfully navigate their emotional selves in order to build and maintain relationships.

Success

Yoga empowers students to access their inner resources to discover what success and fulfillment mean to them.

What is Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)?

CASEL’s Definition of SEL (2020 Update):

“Social and emotional learning (SEL) is an integral part of education and human development. SEL is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.

SEL advances educational equity and excellence through authentic school-family-community partnerships to establish learning environments and experiences that feature trusting and collaborative relationships, rigorous and meaningful curriculum and instruction, and ongoing evaluation. SEL can help address various forms of inequity and empower young people and adults to co-create thriving schools and contribute to safe, healthy, and just communities.”

What are the 5 core competencies addressed in SEL?

Self-management: The ability to manage one’s emotions, thoughts, and behaviors effectively in different situations and to achieve goals and aspirations. This includes the capacity to delay gratification, manage stress, and feel motivation and agency to accomplish personal and collective goals.

Self-awareness: The ability to understand one’s own emotions, thoughts, and values and how they influence behavior across contexts. This includes capacities to recognize one’s strengths and limitations with a well-grounded sense of confidence and purpose.

Responsible decision-making: The ability to make caring and constructive choices about personal behavior and social interactions across diverse situations. This includes the capacity to consider ethical standards and safety concerns and to evaluate the benefits and consequences of various actions for personal, social, and collective well-being.

Relationship skills: The ability to establish and maintain healthy and supportive relationships and to effectively navigate settings with diverse individuals and groups. This includes the capacities to communicate clearly, listen actively, cooperate, work collaboratively to problem solve and negotiate conflict constructively, navigate settings with differing social and cultural demands and opportunities, provide leadership, and seek or offer help when needed.

Social awareness: The ability to understand the perspectives of and empathize with others, including those from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and contexts. This includes the capacity to feel compassion for others, understand broader historical and social norms for behavior in different settings, and recognize family, school, and community resources and supports.

The Benefits of SEL:

SEL leads to improved academic outcomes and behaviors

When students have supportive relationships and opportunities to develop and practice social, emotional, and cognitive skills across many different contexts, academic learning accelerates. Hundreds of studies offer consistent evidence that SEL bolsters academic performance.

Results from a landmark meta-analysis that looked across 213 studies involving more than 270,000 students found that:

• SEL interventions that address the five core competencies increased students’ academic performance by 11 percentile points, compared to students who did not participate.

• Students participating in SEL programs showed improved classroom behavior, an increased ability to manage stress and depression, and better attitudes about themselves, others, and school.

• Additional meta-analyses echoed these findings. Consistency across independent research teams offers strong support that well-implemented SEL programs are beneficial.

What might this mean for the practical benefits of SEL? About 27% more students would improve their academic performance at the end of the program and 24% more would have improved social behaviors and lower levels of distress.

Read the 2011 meta-analysis. (Durlak et al., 2011)

Read a summary of the four major meta-analyses on SEL.

More recently, a 2021 systematic review found that universal SEL interventions enhance young people’s social and emotional skills and reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety in the short term. In comparison, other approaches have produced inconsistent results (mindfulness interventions) or limited evidence of impact (positive youth development interventions).

Read the 2021 report from the Early Intervention Foundation.

SEL benefits are long-term and global

Subsequent analyses spoke to the long-term effects of SEL implementation as well as SEL’s effectiveness in diverse cultural contexts.

Long-term effects:

• Measured a positive correlation between strong social emotional assets (measured at the end of intervention) and higher levels of well-being up to 18 years later. (Taylor et al., 2017)

Effectiveness across cultural contexts:

• An SEL approach was consistently effective with all demographic groups both inside and outside the United States. This supports the idea that social and emotional assets promoted in SEL can support the positive development of students from diverse family backgrounds and geographic contexts. (Taylor et al., 2017)

• SEL interventions show the largest effect size when the intervention is designed with a specific context or culture in mind. This supports the idea that SEL is not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ intervention. (Wiglesworth et al., 2016)

Read the 2017 meta-analysis of 82 research studies involving 100,000 students worldwide.