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MINDFUL KIDS


Inner Awareness Brings Calm and Well-Being


by Daniel Rechtschaffen


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hen I walk outside, students run to me from the school playground, but they don’t yell out my last name as they circle around and grab onto my legs, as it can be a bit much to remember and pronounce correctly. Instead, I usually hear “Hey, Mr. Mindful- ness,” or even, “The Mindfulness Dude!” My job is to help to bring the art and science of mindfulness to students and teach- ers in schools, juvenile detention centers and


“You feel... more connected to everything. It felt sort of like flying.”


Excerpt from a fourth-grader’s Mindfulness Journal


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sports teams, as well as to clients in my private psychotherapy practice. Hap- pily, research is beginning to show that applying mindfulness can decrease stress, attention deficit issues, depres- sion, anxiety and hostility in children, while benefiting their health, well- being, social relations and academic performance. Children can easily learn the techniques, and when learned young, they become lifelong tools.


Mindful Benefits


Mindfulness means intentionally and compassionately opening our awareness to what is here and now. Mindfulness, in the forms of medical and psychological modalities such


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as Mindfulness Based Stress Reduc- tion and Mindfulness Based Cogni- tive Therapy, is gaining attention as research suggests that it can improve mood, decrease stress and boost im- mune function. Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., and others have been studying the medical effects of mindfulness for 30 years with im- pressive results. Brought into


schools, it can be a powerful antidote to many struggles facing our youth. In


the California Bay Area, for example, the Mindful Schools program has used mindfulness to teach concentration, at- tention, conflict resolution and empa- thy to 10,000 children in 38 schools; 66 percent of these schools serve low-income children. Inside Oakland’s juvenile detention centers, the Mind Body Awareness Project offers day- long, silent retreats for teens; although they presently live behind bars, they are learning to access greater inner freedom.


In sports, a season invested in training the Alameda High School’s boys’ basketball team in mindfulness techniques helped us reach the North- ern California playoffs, an unprecedent-


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