Module 2: Teaching Skills and Managing the

Classroom Part 3
Contents
Module 2: Teaching Skills and Managing the Classroom Part 3 ............................................................................... 1
Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................. 2
What is Mindfulness? ................................................................................................................................................. 4
Why take a Mindfulness Course? .............................................................................................................................. 8
How the Course works?.............................................................................................................................................. 9
The Benefits of Mindfulness ....................................................................................................................................... 9
Neuroplastcity ........................................................................................................................................................... 10
Health ......................................................................................................................................................................... 11
Performance .............................................................................................................................................................. 13
Relationships ............................................................................................................................................................. 14
Suggested Reading .................................................................................................................................................... 15

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Introduction
Welcome to the Mindfulness Course for Individuals, and thank you for choosing us. We believe that by
the end of the course, you will really feel the benefit of practising Mindfulness in your daily life.

In order to teach Mindfulness to children you need to learn how to become mindful yourself. This will allow
you to model your behaviour.

We recommend that you start the Mindfulness Course after reading this chapter.

Mindfulness Meditation Creates Awareness:

Mindfulness is best learnt through practising meditation and understanding the science of the brain.

The course will start by teaching you how to focus your attention on breathing, using a sitting meditation,
which will train you to become more aware of inner and outer experiences.

Once a person has become more aware, it will give them a more responsive, compassionate, clearer and
wiser way to experience events. It will allow you to adapt to your changing environment.

Mindfulness Creates Balance, Compassion and Perspective:

Mindfulness helps smooth out the ups and downs of daily life. It can be used as an antidote to stress, and
also to improve focus. Many of us often feel overloaded, or as if we are on autopilot during the day. By
using Mindfulness, you will train yourself to focus your attention, using meditation techniques to create
awareness.

This awareness will give your mind space and allow you to make wiser, more rational choices instead of
emotionally reactive ones. This emotional regulation will give you a way to achieve balance, perspective
and equanimity.

By using Mindfulness, you will appreciate the present moment more and reduce distractions and thoughts
about the past or what's going to happen in the future, to create clarity. This will give you a sense of
contentment and help you relax.

You will learn to deal with life experiences and challenges in a different way and
improve health, performance and relationships.

Enjoy those wonderful little moments you sometimes miss:

The aim of the course is to introduce you to the practice of Mindfulness and give you an understanding of
what Mindfulness means and what it can do. This is because a person who is aware of her mind and her
body will find it easier to respond to any given set of circumstances, on any given day.

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We also believe that over time, with practice, you can begin to use these skills naturally throughout the day.
This will allow you to be in the present more often, which will give you more positive interactions with the
world, and allow you to enjoy those wonderful little moments you sometimes miss.

The Science:

Mindfulness is a meditative, scientific and philosophical way of interacting with our world.

There is scientific evidence which states that Mindfulness can help change the neuroplasticity of the brain in
very positive ways; we will discuss this in more detail later in the course.

These positive changes result in the improved performance of the brain's Executive Function, the higher
level of the brain, which looks after perspective taking, decision making, long term planning and learning.

Research also suggests that, by using Mindfulness, the brain's emotionally reactive centre, the amygdala,
which triggers the 'fight, flight, freeze' stress response, can be overridden by the conscious part of the brain.
This can activate the 'relaxation response' and restore balance.

Mindfulness can also improve relationships at work and home by increasing emotional intelligence, which
results in more compassion, kindness and empathy.

Therefore, Mindfulness promotes health, performance and relationships.

Harvard and Stanford University Research:

A 2011 study from Harvard University showed that participants in an 8-week Mindfulness Based Stress
Reduction course exhibited measurable changes in the grey matter of their brains.

'The results suggest that participation in the course is associated with changes in grey matter concentration
in the brain regions involved in learning and memory processes, emotional regulation, self-referential
processing and perspective taking.' (1)

Another study from Stanford University showed that Mindfulness could reduce the reactive effects of the
amygdala and strengthen the connections to the higher areas of the brain, which can override emotions. (2)

Health, Performance and Relationship Benefits:

Research shows that Mindfulness practice can improve Health, Performance and Relationships. We will
discuss the positive benefits of Mindfulness throughout the course, and also give you some of the scientific
research behind Mindfulness, which we believe will deepen your knowledge and understanding of the
subject.

Anyone can learn Mindfulness:

Before we start the course, we would like to state that anyone has the ability to learn Mindfulness. Some
people might take longer to discover the potential of Mindfulness than others but it doesn't matter.

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Mindfulness is an individual, step-by-step, process because we all have different motivations for starting
Mindfulness. Mindfulness is a skill that needs practice, like any other skill you will learn in your life.

One thing is certain: by doing regular practice, you will break down those unhelpful mental habits and
impulses and become more aware and mindful. You will start making more rational decisions and feel more
compassion for yourself and others.

Your day will go more smoothly:

By using Mindfulness practice, your day will go much more smoothly: it will be calm and you won't feel
like you're in the middle of an ocean storm. It will feel like you are 50,000 feet above the storm, and looking
down at the waves, from the window of your plane.

Those waves will be just gentle ripples on the surface of a big pond. You will be seeing through mindful
eyes.

Our hope is to offer you a way to deal with life's ups and downs in a mindful way, using a combination of
regular formal and informal activities to gain an authentic and natural way of living.

What is Mindfulness?
Watch the Animation 'The Storm'

The Science and Practice:

Mindfulness can be best understood by looking at the mechanisms of the brain and by doing a regular
Mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness needs to be experienced, in the same way as learning to surf or playing
a sport. It's difficult to learn how to do it from a book and the more Mindfulness practice you do, the more
mindful and aware you will become.

An Individual Process:

There are 7 billion people on the planet and 7 billion minds, so Mindfulness is very much an individual
process and the motivation for starting, and the experiences that you bring, are unique to each person.

Each individual will develop and see benefits at different time intervals. Some will see changes quickly and
others might take longer. It's crucial that you see the process as gradual and observe incremental benefits.

The Mindfulness journey is yours; it's the most personalised tool for helping you understand yourself.

Let's have a look at some keywords before we consider a definition and discuss Mindfulness further.

Keywords:

 Open-Minded: This is a willingness to consider new ideas in an unprejudiced way.

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  Non-Judgemental: This is where a person tries to avoid judgement based on their personal standards.

 Mindful: A calm, responsive and open-minded way.

 Mindless: A distractive, pre-conditioned habit, unconscious and reactive way.

 Feeling: An emotional state, like happy or sad.

 Thought: An idea or opinion produced by thinking.

 Rumination: Thoughts stuck on repeat mode.

 Internal Stressors: Thoughts and feelings affecting sense of self, which might not correspond to
reality.

 External Stressors: Physical, social, emotional, economic, societal and environmental factors which
cause stress.

 Past: The time before the moment of speaking.

 Future: The time still to come

 Present: Existing or occurring now.

Definition:

Mindfulness is a way of changing your relationship with the natural world by purposefully focusing
attention on the present moment in a non-judgemental way.

Clarity, Calmness and Compassion:

Mindfulness will allow you to see things, with more clarity, be calmer and understand yourself and others
more compassionately.

By living in the moment, a person can enjoy the basic experience of life, in a happier and richer way, by
being more aware and responding to positive and negative events by being more adaptive to these
experiences.

Past problems can be observed in new ways and with regular practice your power of Mindfulness will
become stronger, which means the thinking, 'chatter', and the feelings that go with that, will be reduced.

In a recent study, by the BBC and the University of Liverpool in 'Rumination: the danger of dwelling', they
found that self-blame and rumination was one of the biggest causes of stress. (3)

Mindless, Unaware and How to Decelerate the Mind:

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In order to understand Mindfulness, it's important to grasp the meaning of being 'mindless', the opposite of
Mindfulness. People, whose actions are unmindful, have habitual reactions to thoughts and feelings which
are based on past experiences and emotional schemas.

Being 'mindless' is like being on autopilot, where a person is unaware and sometimes reacts without
thinking. Often we can drive a car but can't remember the journey or eat something but can't remember what
it tasted like or judge an event, and react, with a pre-conditioned behaviour.

This partial consciousness might have been happening for a number of years and the habits might have
become quite damaging. Maladaptive coping mechanisms, such as overworking or substance dependency,
might have become commonplace.

Often being 'mindless' is interpreted as being thoughtless or impulsive or reactive and often actions are pre-
emptive and judgement is made before the experience actually takes place.

Mindfulness will slow all this down, it will decelerate the mind. It will give the mind space.

The 'mindless' experience can often mean a person is unaware of the world and his surroundings, and is
caught up in thoughts and feelings, like regrets from the past or worrying about the future, which take up a
lot of energy and are tiring.

These types of thoughts and feelings are often compared to 'wild horses' running around your head and can
often manifest themselves in the body, and cause health problems. Mindfulness will help you become more
aware of these thoughts and feelings and help you accept them, let go and slow down.

Un-Train

Mindfulness allows a person to un-train these old patterns by learning to focus awareness on the present
moment and achieve more balance.

As we experience moment by moment thoughts, feelings and sensations, we can train the mind to accept
them, or watch them, in an open-minded manner and return to the present moment, giving us more
awareness and a calmer, more responsive approach to experiencing life's ups and downs.

This is extremely useful when an individual is trying to find ways to cope with stress,
anxiety, relationships, health, work and addiction. Until you are actually aware of the thoughts and feelings,
you can't understand how to cope with them. Once you are aware, you can consider problems in a new light,
without judgement, and make a choice on how to respond to them.

We can be aware of the present moment more often with Mindfulness practice, which will reduce stress,
anxiety and, for many, the feeling of being overwhelmed by our changing world.

Letting yourself just 'be' will provide you with the antidote to those daily hassles all of us sometimes
experience. Mindfulness will help you build emotional resilience to stress, worry and rumination.

The Process:

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Mindfulness is a process and at the beginning it's wonderful just to be aware of thoughts and feelings and of
the present moment.

Be kind and not too hard on yourself at first if you still experience unmindful reactions and behaviours; this
is part of the process. You will have made the first step of being aware and you will start to notice all kinds
of new things and will want to view them with curiosity.

More Practices:

With more practice you will start to be more present and notice more and more. That's not to say that your
problems will disappear. Mindfulness will help you bring awareness to them and you will find better ways to
find solutions.

Over time, Mindfulness practice will allow you to deal with events in a responsive, mindful way, instead of
a reactive or mindless way. This will give you a chance to explore life as it unfolds, moment to moment, and
give you the opportunity to be more curious, compassionate and adaptable, and recover faster from negative
experiences.

The Science:

Brain science or neuroscience has made huge advances in the last 30 years, helping us to understand the
functions of the brain more clearly.

Mindfulness can be truly appreciated by understanding the science of the brain alongside regular practice.
Research tells us that Mindfulness has health, performance and relationship benefits.

With practice, Mindfulness will allow you to focus on the present more and more and not be tied up in the
past or worrying about the future, leading to a healthier mind and body.

The Start:

When you start the course, it will help to reflect on events and experiences in a journal, but over time and
with further practice, Mindfulness will start to become a more natural way to approach life.

You will become more adaptable, find new ways of seeing things, and improve your decision-making when
you are in the present more of the time.

The course will focus on the science of the brain, combined with regular formal and informal practices, and
some other excellent activities to help you achieve the health, performance and relationships benefits which
Mindfulness offers.

It won't take long before Mindfulness starts to filter into your daily life.

Good Luck:

Don't tie yourself up in knots if you feel nothing is happening. It's a personal and gradual experience, and
always go back to your core practice, the awareness of breath, if you are finding the going tough.

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Breathing is our most natural asset, our core cycle in life. It's our essence.

Why take a Mindfulness Course?

More Focus and Calmer:

Mindfulness creates a more focussed and calmer individual who will be able to deal with life events, good or
bad, in a more mindful way. Acceptance of thoughts and feelings in a non-judgemental way and staying in
the present encourages a person to stay mentally clear and have a sustainable way of dealing with everyday
experiences.

It also allows a person to clear the mind of negative past and future thoughts. It promotes wellbeing and we
are seeing more and more evidence of people having better health and relationships, and improving
their performance.

In business, it's critical for leadership and resonance and in schools we are seeing it is being used to improve
learning and mood. We are also seeing evidence in sport where athletes are using Mindfulness to
improve performance.

Neuroplasticity:

Tests which have been carried out in MRI scanners have shown significant changes in the neuroplasticity of
the brain, and these changes have promoted significant increases in wellbeing and health.

Richard Davidson's work with the Dalai Lama in 'Buddha's Brain and Neuroplasticity'(4) has shown that
repeated meditation has caused positive changes in the neuroplasticity of the brain. Mindfulness improves
the bi-directional connectivity, through neuroplasticity, between the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex.

Just the start of the Journey:

Mindfulness currently has a great deal of interest and we are seeing much evidence of its emergence into
mainstream society. It's wonderful that you have found this course, which shows you have the motivation to
find out more about it. This is just the start of the journey.

Your Journey:

Throughout the course, it's very important to remember how you found this course and reflect on those
circumstances. If you decide to teach Mindfulness, it's crucial you add you own journey, to add context.

Take your time:

Again, it's hard to learn Mindfulness in a set period of time and it's best to use your personal experiences
along the way, remembering that the very nature of being human is learning and not being perfect.

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For anyone wanting to effectively teach Mindfulness, it helps if you learn how to be mindful as an
individual first. To teach you must first practise. This course will guide you on how to start becoming
mindful.

Who can do it?

Anyone, and bring your experiences with you.

How the Course works?

9 weeks is just the beginning:

The Mindfulness Course has been designed to last for 9 weeks but we recommend that you continue with
your daily meditation after you have completed the course.

Our hope is that you will bring Mindfulness into your daily life more and more after you have completed the
course. This is the real Mindfulness, where you can become aware of moment-to-moment experiences
throughout your day.

More Practice, More Mindfulness:

Although the course is 9 weeks long, it's just the start, and after you have completed the course we hope you
will continue to use the practices you have learnt as part of your daily routine.

The Practice Section consists of a regular practice, an informal practice and the Reflection Section. This is
where you will record your day in a journal.

After you have completed the Introductory Week, the course will cover the following areas each week:

 The Science: In this Section you will learn about how Mindfulness Practice can affect the brain and
body. It will include a short animation for you to watch about how the brain works.

 The Practice: The practice part of the course will involve a daily formal meditation practice and
some informal meditation practices, to help you bring Mindfulness into your daily life.

 Reflection: The reflection part of the course has been designed to get you into the habit of writing
down what kind of thoughts and feelings came up for you on a particular day. Building up a record
of 'what happened' will help you to find better ways to cope with unmindful events. You will write
a daily journal for each week of the course.

 Reading: We have included some really interesting articles and writing on Mindfulness for you to
read and help you gain more knowledge.

The Benefits of Mindfulness

Health, Performance and Relationship Benefits:

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Mindfulness is a way to:

 Improve Wellbeing

 Increase Focus

 Improve Sleep

 Improve Relationships

 Feel Good

 Feel Happy

 Decrease Stress

 Decrease Worry

 Become more Creative

 Increase Awareness

 Improve Resilience

 Reduce Anxiety

 Improve Leadership skills

 Decrease Rumination

Research has shown that Mindfulness can promote improvements in:

Neuroplastcity
Mindfulness Changes the Brain:

Neuroplasticity has been one of the most interesting scientific discoveries in recent times, showing us that
the brain is plastic and its function and structure can be changed.

Regular Mindfulness practice, and the experience that comes with it, re-wires and strengthens the
connections in the brain. By doing a daily practice, a person can strengthen the neural pathways to the
prefrontal cortex, get past the emotionally reactive centre, the amygdala, and increase awareness and
executive function.

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These changes in the neuroplasticity of the brain allows a person to see old habits in a new light, creates
more adaptive responses and enables faster recovery from negative situations.

More Neuroplasticity:

We will be discussing Neuroplasticity further, later in the Mindfulness Courses.

Health
Mindfulness can:

 Reduce Stress

 Reduce Anxiety

 Reduce Rumination

 Increase Happiness

 Improve Sleep

Daily Stress is not good for your Health:

Stress is a major factor contributing to poor health around the world. Whether an individual suffers from
acute stress or chronic stress, the effects on the immune system can be extremely damaging.

The USA:

A 'Stress in America' survey, recently conducted by the American Psychological Association in 2012,
concluded that 20% of Americans were experiencing extreme stress, ranking their stress with an 8, 9 and 10
on a 10-point scale. 80% of the respondents from the survey stated that stress had increased or remained the
same.

'Only 37% of Americans feel they are doing an excellent job of managing their stress.'(5) The same survey
also stated that worries about money, jobs, the economy, relationships and personal health were the top
causes of stress.

The UK:

In the UK, the Labour Force Survey (LFS) of 2014 stated that 'the total number of cases of work related
stress in 2013/14 was 487,000 (39%) out of all work-related illness'. (6)

Mindfulness reduces Stress:

There is no doubt that stress can have a negative effect on an individual. Mindfulness meditation can reduce
stress and anxiety, which can improve sleep, sex, and appetite and give a person a more positive outlook on
life.
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Research carried out in 2010 by Hoffman et al concluded that Mindfulness based therapy improved anxiety
and stress amongst the participants of their study (7) and Dr Herbert Benson found that focusing attention on
breathing created a 'relaxation response' in the body, which counteracts stress. (8)

Mindfulness trains the brain to create present moment awareness by focusing attention on breathing. Once
the brain wiring has been given a more efficient way to activate the relaxation system, it can be used as an
excellent stress management tool to create homeostasis.

Mindfulness will give you that essential mind space to help you respond and not react in stressful
situations.

How does it work?

Each time you meditate it will create a personalised way of recognising your thoughts and feelings.

These thoughts and feelings could be uncomfortable or emotional but becoming aware of them during your
meditation, accepting them, letting go of them and returning to your breathing will give you practice in
dealing with them.

As they come up, your day-to-day life you will deal with them with clarity and creativity and find new ways
to adapt to each event.

Mindfulness Improves Sleep:

Mindfulness Meditation can improve your sleep. As you begin to practise Mindfulness, focusing your
attention onto your breathing and bringing awareness to the present moment more and more will make you
feel more relaxed over time. This process will improve your sleep.

Research says:

Often, sleep disturbances are caused by 'trying' to fall asleep instead of just 'relaxing' into sleep.

Mindfulness can give you a way to improve your sleep, by focusing your attention onto breathing, instead of
putting more and more effort into falling asleep.

Often worries and thoughts can cause too much 'chatter' in your mind and, as you put more and more effort
into trying to sleep, the opposite happens.

The Body Scan at Bedtime:

Mindfulness creates stable homeostasis or balance. Overtime, this balance should mean that sleep starts
taking care of itself. Thoughts and feelings, and the worries related to these, should subside as your
Mindfulness strengthens.

The Body Scan Meditation can be very useful at sleep time because it relaxes the body so well. However,
using the body scan to help you sleep creates a paradox. Normally, we would like you to be awake and alert
while you practise.

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However, it's ok to use the body scan at bedtime, as long as you use it or another one of the techniques at
another time during the day.

During this meditation we suggest you remain awake and as alert as possible. Therefore, if you are having
sleep problems, do the body scan in bed but make time for another practice during the day as well.

Over time, with both your regular daytime practice and by using the body scan in bed, you will find that
sleep will start to happen more and more naturally.

Mindfulness Practice:

Over the next few weeks we will teach you a number of methods to help you bring Mindfulness into your
day-to-day life.

As you practise more, the neuroplasticity in your brain will change and strengthen, and you will have new
skills for managing many health problems from stress, sleep disorders, anxiety and pain. You will also find
improvements in performance and work.

Performance
Mindfulness can:

 Improve Learning

 Improve Attention

 Improve Focus

 Boost Memory

 Increase Cognitive Flexibility

 Improve Self-Management

 Improve Creativity

Mindfulness Works:

Research tells us that by using regular Mindfulness practice, a person can improve attention and focus and
boost memory, creativity and learning.

A study carried out by Levy et al (2012) (9) stated that, 'only those trained in meditation stayed on tasks
longer and made fewer task switches', which means that individuals who meditated could remain more
focussed. It has also been shown that Mindfulness can improve creativity by generating new ideas, improved
communication and improved decision making (10).

Be more creative:
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A study in 2012 from the University of North Dakota and the University of Groningen in the Netherlands
states, 'Mindfulness may facilitate insight problem solving' (11).

There is also research to suggest that Mindfulness practice improves cognitive flexibly, which means that
present moment input can be interpreted in new and different ways.

A study by Jha et al in 2010 showed that individuals taking part in meditation practice could boost working
memory capacity.

In conclusion, the research conducted over the last few years states that Mindfulness can strengthen the
neural pathways to the higher functioning parts of brain, and allow more focussed and creative decisions to
be made.

Be a more Resonant Leader:

Mindfulness is an important factor leading to better leadership. Leaders must constantly renew themselves
and address stress to sustain resonant leadership.

Mindfulness allows leaders to become present and more aware of themselves and others by remaining calm
and being able to empathise with those around them.

Being in the present helps leaders make better decisions in highly stressful situations while at the same time
it helps them build better relationships with colleagues.

Relationships
Mindfulness can:

 Improve Self-Awareness

 Improve Self-Control

 Increase Compassion

 Improve Social Awareness

 Increase Relationship Satisfaction

Learn to Listen More:

Mindfulness can promote improvements in relationships by allowing an individual to take non-judgemental

and compassionate points of view and be more socially aware of experiences.

By becoming more aware of the present, an individual can improve self-control and be able to communicate
with individuals by listening more.

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In summary, by acting in a kind and compassionate way and being able to consider different perspectives,
you will improve relationships with others.

Improve Relationship Conflict:

Research states that Mindfulness can help with relationship conflict, (12) (13) social awareness and social
interactions. (14)

Increase Relationship Satisfaction:

Several studies find that a person's ability to be mindful can help predict relationship satisfaction - the ability
to respond well to relationship stress and the skill in communicating one's emotions to a partner.

Empirical evidence suggests that Mindfulness protects against the emotionally stressful effects of
relationship conflict (Barnes at al 2007), is positively associated with the ability to express oneself in various
social situations (Dekeyser at al 2008) and predicts relationship satisfaction (Barnes at al 2007; Wachs &
Cordova, 2007) (14)

Improve Compassion:

Research has shown that Mindfulness can enhance empathy and promote self-compassion (15). This
research has shown that therapists and trainees on Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) courses
experienced increased compassion towards others.

The core beliefs of Mindfulness, of non-judgement and social awareness, built through awareness of
breathing and the body, allowed therapists to view other individuals' lives through their perspective.

Suggested Reading
Effects of Mindfulness

Brain and Immune System

Mindfulness and Well-Being

Positive Benefits of Mindfulness

Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity

1. Grey Matter

2. Emotional Regulation

3. Rumination

4. Neuroplasticity and Meditation

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5. Impact of Stress

6. Stress in the UK

7. Nature Coach

8. Harvard Medical School

9. Multitasking

10. APA.ORG

11. Insight Problem Solving

12. Dekeyser, M., Raes, F., Leijssen,M., Leysen, S. & Dewulf, D,. (2008). Mindfulness skills and
interpersonal behaviour. Personality and Individual Differences.

13. Relationships

14. Barnes, S et al (2007). The Role of Mindfulness in romantic relationship satisfaction and
responses to relationship stress. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy.

15. APA.ORG

16. ASCA.ORG.AU

17. Childhood Trauma

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