The Case for Meditation in Schools
What is meditation?
For many, meditation might conjure up images of Buddhist monks in Tibet chanting. However meditation is happening all around us and is growing; rugby player Jonny Wilkinson uses meditation techniques to help his concentration when kicking for goal, Goldie Hawn meditates twice a day and Po, a lethargic panda transforms his attitude using meditation in the Dreamworks’ film Kung Fu Panda .
In Western culture meditation is not specifically connected with religion, instead it can be thought of as “a holistic discipline during which time the practitioner trains his or her mind in order to realize some benefit.”
A growing body of research supports the wider use meditation to address transient stress and deeper mental health problems, including recommendations from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) that it be offered on the NHS to patients suffering from depression.
Meditation in the classroom is relatively new in the UK, but is increasingly being adopted by forward thinking schools to combat the pressures of modern childhood. For those who work in school, there will be no need to explain the impact of poverty, family breakdown, exams, bullying and simply the pace of modern life, on children. Indeed in a recent report, Barnardo’s found that 1 in 10 primary school children have a diagnosable mental health issue.
For the UK schools that have adopted meditation techniques anecdotal evidence from teachers gush of; greater concentration, increased creativity, calmer children and better behaviour.
One of the UK leading providers in meditation techniques for primary school children is Rainbow. Rainbow was set up by Tracey Rix, an experienced teacher and specialist in PSHE, who started introducing meditation into her classrooms many years ago. She noticed that meditation had a marked difference in children’s confidence, self esteem, concentration, creativity, empathy, imagination and general well-being. Seeing the benefits of mediation first hand, on both children and teachers, inspired Tracey to design a meditation programme which can be easily integrated into the UK primary curriculum.
Why meditation?
The history of meditation has its roots in ancient times. Some researchers have speculated that our hunter – gatherer ancestors’ may have discovered meditation through camp fire rituals. Early evidence of meditation techniques are contained within Indian Scriptures which dates back to 1,500 BCE and in all the worlds religions, meditation, has in some form or another, been practised.
Perhaps the greatest influence on meditation as we understand it today comes from the Buddha, whose teachings in 500 B.C spread far and wide across the Asian continent. In the West, Buddhist meditation ideas started to become popular among intellectuals in 18th century. In 1904 at Harvard, Anagarika Dharmapala a leading figure in Buddhism, became the first person from the East to lecture in the West on meditation.
Research into meditation started as early as 1931 but it wasn’t until the 1960’s when meditation really captured the minds of the hippie movement, did science take a real interest.
The development of Western medicine in 19th and 20th century had focused entirely on external factors as a cure to health problems. As such there was little acceptance of the connection between the mind and body, which we now take for granted.
In 1967 Dr Herbert Benson, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School started experiments on 36 Transcendental meditators. He found that when they meditated they used less oxygen, lowered their heart rate and increased their theta brain waves (those known to provide insight and creativity). In his bestselling book, The Relaxation Response (1975) he argued that meditation ‘acts as an antidote to stress, enabling the participant to achieve a healthier, calmer and happier state’.
Following this research, articles appeared in the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology (1970) and meditation became the first mind-body intervention to be recognised for its health benefits.
With the recent strides this century in neuroscience, enabling greater understanding and measurement of the brain activity, leading universities have been analysing the effects of meditation on our brains.
The University of Wisconsin was the first to use fMRI, (function magnetic resonance imaging) to understand meditation better. The results showed when comparing regular meditators to non-meditators, there was significant activity among those with extensive experience of meditation, in the insula (which has a key role in generating compassion and bodily representations of emotion) and temporal parietal juncture (which is responsible for processing empathy). In a nutshell, the brain circuits used to detect emotions and feelings were dramatically improved in subjects who had regularly meditated.
Richard Davidson, professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine says “we all know that if an individual works out on a regular basis, then they can change their cardiovascular health. In the same way, the data suggests that through meditation certain basic mechanisms of the mind, like attention, can also be trained and improved through systematic practice.”
Sara Lazar, PhD, of Harvard Medical School compared the brains of 20 western-style meditators with 15 people who had no meditation or yoga experience. All study participants laid quietly in the MRI scanner while detailed images were taken of the structure of their brains. The research found that the outer layer brain regions, associated with attention, sensory processing and emotional cognition, were thicker in meditators than in the non-meditators. Added to this they found that in one of the regions the differences in thickness was more pronounced in older meditators suggesting that regular practice of meditation might reduce normal age-related thinning of the brain.
Sara Lazar summed the results “our findings suggest that meditation practice can promote cortical changes in adults in areas important for cognitive and emotional processing and well-being.”
So what does this all mean for children in schools?
In Toluca Lake elementary school in Los Angeles, the teachers lead the children through 45 minutes of exercises focused on breathing, listening, movement, and reflection. At different points, the children are asked to gauge their feelings; calm, neutral, or restless. There are no right or wrong answers, just observation. The session ends with the children lying quietly on their backs, stuffed animals rising and falling on their stomachs, as they contemplate peace within themselves and in their community. Later, seven year old Emily sums up her experience. “I like the class because it makes me calm and soft inside. It makes me feel good.”
Since the turn of this century, schools across the US have been turning to meditation for very practical reasons. With an increase in child stress and poor behaviour, meditation is being seen as a useful technique in helping children manage their emotions and connect with others. Science appears to be agreeing, with a mounting number of school-based studies, which show that meditation is an effective tool.
In 2004 a survey of in-school meditation programs by the Garrison Institute in New York, showed that many schools are adopting the techniques because they are easy to learn and can help children become “more responsive and less reactive, more focused and less distracted, more calm and less stressed.” The Garrison report also found that meditation can create a more positive learning environment, where kids are primed to pay attention.
In Connecticut a study of primary school children of low socio economic status, found that ‘overall improvements in attention were evident’. Indeed it concluded that ‘the children who needed the most help at the onset of the program showed the greatest improvement by the end’.
Students from the University of Michigan studied 160 middle school pupils who meditated twice a day and found ‘students were happier, had higher self-esteem, handled stress better and got along better with other students’.
Over the border in Canada at the University of British Columbia, psychologist Kimberly Schonert Reichl found that positive responses to the meditation pilot was almost
immediate. Her results also showed that the ‘children were less aggressive, less oppositional toward teachers, and more attentive in class. Those who received the training also reported feeling more positive emotions and optimism, and seemed more introspective than children who were on a waitlist for the train¬ing.’
So what of about the role of meditation in UK schools?
Phillip Hodson, fellow of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, believes that regular meditation could boost children’s wellbeing. “Anything that encourages a child’s emotional intelligence would be a positive antidote to our goal orientated education system. It could also be very useful to give children techniques that they can use in moments of stress.”
Professor of Education at Brunel University Robert Fisher, in his paper Still Thinking; The Case for Meditation with Children states that meditation provides a ’good starting point for learning and creativity’. He argues that there are strong pedagogical reasons for including meditation as part of the daily experience of pupils of all ages and abilities.
John Lloyd, the governments Lead Adviser PSHE and Citizenship Education, endorses meditation in schools believing that ‘simple meditation techniques taught to children will make for calmer classrooms in the future.’
In the UK, meditation within schools is a small but growing trend. In schools which practise meditation, pupils and teachers highly endorse its benefits.
‘I have noticed my children beginning to take charge of their learning,
both emotionally and mentally’
(Teacher, London Borough of Redbridge, At Gatherings Conference, Autumn, 2003).
Evidence for the positive effects of meditation in UK primary schools has been highlighted by various academic studies.
Polly Mclean undertook research at Cheddar First School, a state run Primary with 250 pupils. Meditation takes place as a pre-cursor to creative writing lessons, in the classroom, sometimes at assembly and in the ‘Peace and Quiet’ club which is an optional yet oversubscribed lunch time session.
All of the teachers who were qualitatively interviewed for the research said ‘that they thought meditation had aided pupil’s concentration and enabled them to focus on their work.’ Teachers also said that guided meditations done before creative exercises had increased the quality of pupils creative output.
An inspection by Ofsted reported;
“meditation… makes a significant contribution to the quality of education and pupils’ personal social development… the pupils’ attainment is above average and they make good progress particularly in the development of descriptive writing. “
Ofsted also commented on the physical calmness of the pupils at the school.
McLean findings commented on the calmness of teachers and indicated that meditation enabled the adults in school manage stress better.
Kevin Hogston, Deputy Head at Latchmere Primary in Kingston introduced meditation to the school several years ago. All classes learn meditation and most start the day with a session. He states that “everyone agrees that children are calmer and more relaxed. The school is a happier place for teachers as well. There seems to be more time for everyone and attendance has improved. We are regularly visited by people wanting to find out about what we are doing.”
Qualitative feedback from pupils at Latchmere supports the benefits of meditation;
“I feel a lot calmer after each session and I’ve learnt how to breathe properly. Also I can see pictures clearly in my mind. The visualisations have helped my imagination and writing.” (Year 5)
“At bedtime I used to feel stressed and hassled, always thinking of the negative nerve-racking things, not those that made me feel calm and proud of myself.”
(Year 6)
“I don’t get ill as much and I have more friends since I started meditation.” (Year 4)
Julie Leoni conducted PHD in ‘Supporting Personal Growth with Meditating and Listening within Schools’. The study took place in a co-educational comprehensive Secondary school. She found that ‘meditation and therapeutic listening offered pupils a break from dealing with external information and demands and gives them the time to reflect on how they feel.’
Her study also noted that ‘because the process of meditation is internal, boys who might usually be reluctant to get in touch with their feelings had permission to do so without losing face’. Meditation was found to be calming and useful as a technique for diffusing intense emotion. It was found to encourage mental, emotional and physical well being. The research concluded that ‘meditation and therapeutic listening could and should be brought into the educational setting and that focusing on affective learning created positive conditions for effective learning.’
Its not only state schools who are finding meditation useful, four leading private secondary schools (Charterhouse, Hampton, Wellington College, Tonbridge) have made meditation part of the curriculum after a pilot study last year designed with psychologists from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The “mindfulness” course for Year 10 pupils is designed to develop skills in concentration and to combat anxiety, showing teenagers the benefits of silence and helping them to identify and escape mindsets that could lead to mental health problems such as depression, eating disorders and addiction.
Results from the pilot at Tonbridge stated that ‘the pupils said that they hoped to use the techniques in the future to help to battle anxieties and to put things in perspective’. They also said that they found it helpful for getting to sleep and becoming less nervous about exams and sporting competitions.
What next?
With the evidence of the benefits of meditation, Cherry Lane Primary School in West Drayton, St Bartholomew’s in Haslemere, Davignor Infant School in Hove anongst many others have begun to incorporate meditation, through Rainbow, as part of the curriculum.
“The children really enjoyed it and we’ve been carrying on with the techniques you showed us and using them in class!” Vicky Heath, P.H.S.E Co-ordinator, Davignor Infant School, Hove
Rainbow offers a range of services to suit schools; meditation and relaxation workshops for children, either working with whole classes, smaller groups or individuals as well as INSET training for trachers which includes a detailed scheme of work and all the resources required to get started with meditation in the classroom. The programmes are designed by an experienced teacher and based on the practicalities of the classroom setting.
Rainbow also provides; ongoing support service to help ensure that the school gets the best results from the techniques. Through Rainbow, your school, your class could be calmer, happier and more creative.
References
Cambridge Archaeological Journal. 2007. Did Meditating Make Us Human? 17:47-8. Cambridge University Press.
Doerr, E. Jan 1975. Transcendental Meditation Goes to School. Education Digest; Vol. 40 Issue 5, p44-45, 2p
Ettenger, J. 1999. The Benefits of Meditation for Outdoor Education.
Association for Experiential Education International Conference (27th, Rochester, NY, October 1999); see RC 022 262.
Fisher, R. 2006. Still Thinking: The Case for Meditation with Children,
Thinking Skills and Creativity v1 n2 p146-151 Nov 2006. 6 pp.
Fontana, D. Slack, I. ed. 2007. Teaching Meditation to Children. Watkins publishing.
Hogston, K. March 2008. Meditation Can Help Create Calmer And More Relaxed Classes As Well As Help A School Achieve Great SAT Scores, Teaching Expertise.
Horan, R. 2009. The Neuropsychological Connection Between
Creativity and Meditation The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Creativity Research Journal, 21(2–3), 199–222.
Jen¬nings, P. 2004, report on meditation within Schools, Gar¬ri¬son Insti¬tute in New York.
Leconi, J. Aug 2006. Communicating Quietly: Supporting Personal Growth with Meditation and Listening in Schools’, Support for Learning, , Vol. 21 Issue 3, p121-128, 8p.
Lloyd, J. Feb 2003. Commenting on Meditation in Schools: Calmer Classrooms ed. by Clive Erricker & Jane Erricker, Educational Review; Vol. 55 Issue 1, p83, 2p.
McLean, P. 1999 ed 2001. Perceptions of the Impact of Meditation on Learning. Pastoral Care.
Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/meditating
Seldom, A and Morris. 2006. Should schools be teaching happiness? Educational review.
Stein, J. 2003. Just say Om. Time Magazine.
Suttie, J. Aug 2007. Mindful Kids, Peaceful Schools, Greater Good.
Rajan, A. Oct 2007, Bring peace to schools by meditation, say Lynch and Donovan. Independent Newspaper.