Happy Pumpkin month. It’s a month when students settle into the rhythm of school and learning starts to build up positive momentum. Fall is in the air, with golden leaves, falling acorns, and squirrels busily burying their stores for the winter. Here at Inner Strength we’ve had a wonderful beginning of the season.
The highlights, which you can see in the photos, were three light-hearted and deep-thinking days on retreat with 200 Freshmen from Carver High School of Engineering and Science. Students practiced stillness and body awareness. They mindfully walked the wooded path and saw a fox, a bamboo grove, and black walnuts falling from their heights. They watched the big bullfrogs catching sun on the rocks, they grew still in front of the fishpond as the golden and orange fish flickered in and out of sight. They closed their eyes in reflection on kindness towards self and towards all their classmates. For these students, spending a day off campus to meet their new classmates and learn how to approach thoughts of stress, worry, or self-criticism more constructively was an invaluable start to the year. And it was fun.
In polls at the beginning of the retreat day, fewer than 10% of the students had ever practiced mindfulness or knew what the term referred to. A few had practiced in middle school, or had found a video on YouTube, one just tried to teach himself without any instruction. But when it came to the relaxed-alert focus of “being in the zone” almost all the kids had an experience to share. Mindfulness, they learned, was cultivating that same quality of easy attention, where, as one teen put it, “you feel like you are invincible, and you do better than your best.” Learning how to let distracting thoughts, negative thoughts, unkind thoughts fall to the background, students realized they could practice and strengthen their muscles of calm-attention so when they are challenged by a chemistry test they can do their best. Everyone agreed that learning how to be able to draw on that sense of flow rather than the panic or dread that sometimes arises during high pressure times would be very valuable during their high school and college years.
“Mindfulness helps you take a different perspective on issues you are thinking about,” concluded one teen. “That helps you get around things that seem like obstacles. It also helps you come up with creative ideas. That’s what I’m interested in!”
That’s what we’re interested in too. Giving teens a fun and open opportunity to explore their experience and to experiment with a new quality of attention, one that gives them a better sense of themselves and insight into how the world around them works.
In other news this past month, Inner Strength launched this year’s Reducing Secondary Stress for Teachers, providing professional development workshops for 150 teachers. We deconstructed culturally conditioned barriers to self-care, laughed as we practiced mindful listening on positive experiences colleagues shared, and practiced simple yet powerful tools that teachers could use to diffuse occupational stress and fatigue and that would work in the classroom to help everyone Take Five when they need to. We are thrilled that this year we have been able to expand the number of Staff Sessions we are able to run and share Inner Strength tools and support the teachers who pour so much into the students they work with, often at great personal cost. It was especially heartwarming to see their loads lighten and their shoulders drop as the workshop progressed.
If you would like to find out how to bring a Reducing Secondary Stress program to your school, contact Alyson Showell-LaPorta.
Wishing you a wonderful fall, keep me posted about your activities and contemplations this month. We all inspire each other!
Happy from the Inside
Inner Strength Mobile Application Campaign
We are already 2/3 of the way to our goal to build our mobile application that will allow students to converse with each other and support each other after their Inner Strength 12-week program is over. Help us launch the app this year.
Our goal?
$5,000 before the end of the year. Then all 1900 students this year will be able to stay in touch with tools and with other teen mindfulness practitioners all through their school years . . . and beyond!
Join me in NYC at Teacher's College. I will be conducting a hands-on session, alongside a presentation of the research on the Inner Strength Program with Dr. Rachel Razza November 3-4. If you are interested in the field of Mindful Education, join other practitioners and let's all help push the exploration of the field forward.
CULTIVATING AWARENESS
October 17 | 2 PM US ET
Awareness is the foundation of personal stability, good relationships with others, and creative learning. Mindfulness techniques help teens cultivate self-knowledge – the awareness of their habits of thought and behavior, their likes and dislikes, and the way they feel happiness and sadness. This has significant implications for your classroom. Join me for this month's webinar. RSVP to receive the audio.
