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Spartan News
Mindfulness
The title of the story caught my eye, “The Perils of Texting While Parenting.” After 40 years of a steady decline in child injuries, the numbers have begun to rise in the last three years. Some doctors and child safety experts believe that the culprit might be mobile devices. The Wall Street Journal article posed the question in bold print, “Are too many parents distracted by mobile devices when they should be watching their kids?” As I read the article I found the whole idea interesting. We’ve heard all kinds of arguments pro and con on multitasking. In terms of automobiles the research seems clear, digital devices and driving are a risky combination. But what really caught my attention in this WSJ article was a new term that I suspect we’ll be hearing a lot more about, i.e., “device distraction.” I won’t predict that it will become a neologism of our electronic culture just yet, but I suspect the WSJ article won’t be the last time I encounter the term “device distraction.”
In reality, the idea of device distraction might be a metaphor for the millions of things that lay claim to our attention every day. The mind is an amazing thing, but it can only pay attention to so many stimuli at one time. Enter the concept of mindfulness. It’s a simple concept really, i.e., to direct your attention as fully as possible to the present moment and whatever you are doing at that moment, e.g., studying chemistry, listening to a friend, even washing dishes. In practicing mindfulness, a person tries to take a non-evaluative and non-judgmental approach to this inner experience.
It should be easy, only having to think about one thing at a time. Ironically, however, our minds like to go off in a myriad of directions in the space of just a few seconds. Add the overlay of a culture beset with thousands of distractions above and beyond the digital, and practicing mindfulness becomes quite a challenge. Western psychology borrowed the practice of mindfulness from Eastern spiritual traditions, because of its positive impact on emotional wellbeing. Research has now demonstrated the many benefits of practicing mindfulness including stress reduction, greater happiness, improved memory, better immune system functioning, and greater empathy. Mindfulness has also been used to help people suffering from anxiety and depression.
It’s not surprising then that when one reads Miami Country Day’s newly developed Portrait of a Graduate, one of the characteristics that we are trying to develop in our students is mindfulness. Under our Guidance Department’s leadership, our counselors in each division have promoted a wide variety of initiatives including classes in Life Skills, peer counselor training, integrating mindfulness techniques in classes and individual counseling sessions. Mindfulness is often introduced along with breathing techniques and other relaxation practices. In recent years, our school has hosted some of the leading advocates and practitioners of mindfulness to work with our students and to train faculty and parents. Our Director of Guidance, Maggie Avalos, observes, “The power of teaching mindfulness to students in school has been that they can reap tremendous benefit from incorporating even the smallest practices into their daily lives. It has been rewarding to watch the students gain these new skills and apply them to everyday situations. At this time of the year, we have seen the positive effect it can have in helping students focus and prepare for midterm exams.”
The practice of mindfulness is a lifelong endeavor. It’s probably not realistic to expect every Miami Country Day student to master mindfulness by the time she graduates. However, as a school, we have decided that introducing, teaching and encouraging our students to practice mindfulness is one of the most important efforts we can make. While it’s certainly an antidote to device distraction, the practice is much more than that. Last year, we invited Soren Godhamer, the author of Wisdom 2.0 to speak to our students, teachers and parents. Gordhamer, a long time practitioner of mindfulness and a consultant, does lots of work with the social media gurus and titans of Silicon Valley. He writes about our tendency to get ahead of ourselves, spending more time thinking, planning and worrying about what’s going to happen in the future, while missing the present moment. Gandhi probably said it best when he observed, “There’s more to life than increasing its speed.” By encouraging our students to practice mindfulness, we invite them to hit the pause button on minds racing towards the next thing (often anxiously), and to try to be centered in the present moment. When you stop and think about it, it really is possible to change ourselves and the world one thought at a time.
Other mindfulness experts that have visited campus:
