Schools | mindful Lives

Recent studies of mindfulness interventions with school aged children have been published in scientific journals. These interventions involved all age ranges, both volunteers and ‘conscripts’, a mixture of children without problems and with a range of mental and physical health problems, and took place in school, clinical and community contexts. Here is a snippet of the review:

Well conducted mindfulness interventions can improve the mental, emotional, social and physical health and wellbeing of young people who take part. It has been shown to reduce stress, anxiety, reactivity and bad behaviour, improve sleep and self-esteem, and bring about greater calmness, relaxation, the ability to manage behaviour and emotions, self‐awareness and empathy.

The studies also show that adolescents who are mindful, either through their character or through learning, tend to experience greater well‐being, and that being more mindful tends to accompany more positive emotion, greater popularity and having more friends, and less negative emotion and anxiety.

Mindfulness can contribute directly to the development of cognitive and performance skills and executive function. It can help young people pay greater attention, be more focused, think in more innovative ways, use existing knowledge more effectively, improve working memory, and enhance planning, problem solving, and reasoning skills.

Mindfulness has also been shown to contribute directly to the development of cognitive and performance skills in the young. When young people learn to be more ‘present’ and less anxious, they often find they can pay attention better and improve the quality of their performance, in the classroom, on the sports field, and in the performing arts for example. They often become more focused, more able to approach situations with fresh perspective, use existing knowledge more effectively, and pay attention.