I attended the first annual Renew & Refuel Mental
Wellness Conference at San Diego State University on Monday. Renew and Refuel is one of the SDSU programs
funded by the Student Success Fee, and was held at the Prebys Student Center at
SDSU. It consisted of a keynote speaker
and two hour-long breakout sessions. I
attended the Mindfulness and Reflection breakout session led by Dr. Erik
Conklin.
Dr. Conklin is a certified Compassion Cultivation
Facilitator coming from Stanford’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research
and Education. He gave us an overview of
mindfulness meditation and its neurological, psychological and physical
benefits as well as an introduction to the philosophy of mindfulness. In his terms, it is “paying attention to the present
moment with a non-judgmental openness, curiosity and a willingness to ‘be with
what is.’” He described that
non-judgmental openness as being like a flashlight. Sometimes practice of mindfulness meditation
will illuminate unpleasant things within ourselves, which he likened to that
flashlight illuminating a “present” a new puppy leaves on the floor. If we are adopting the mindfulness philosophy,
we can both recognize the truth and hold back from judging it- we can say “yep
that’s dog crap alright” without scolding ourselves for being bad dog owners or
getting angry at the dog for not knowing how expensive the carpet is.
During the session, Dr. Conklin led us in a few
mini-exercises in mindful meditation that would be easily applicable in school
settings. The first was a mental
exercise he called “STOP,” which stands for Stop, Take a breath, Observe and
Proceed with intention in mind. He
encouraged us to employ this whenever we get upset (in traffic, with our significant
others, in class, etc.). Observing and
proceeding with intention mean taking stock of our emotions at the time, maybe
realizing how angry we are with our significant other, and then taking some
time to figure out what our intentions are in that discussion. For example, we may intend to hurt someone’s
feelings (in which case we should likely change our behavior) or we may intend
to make someone understand something that was hurtful. Either way, using the STOP exercise can help
clarify our emotions and our intentions in heated moments.
After rehearsing STOP we practiced something known as
mindful eating. Dr. Conklin distributed
small cups of raisins and chocolate chips and instructed us to hold each one in
our mouths for 30 seconds just observing how our bodies respond to the food and
then to chew each raisin or chocolate 30 times before swallowing. The point of this exercise was to slow down
our minds and bodies and to restrain our impulses long enough to savor our
food. Dr. Conklin recommended this
practice with people with unhealthy relationships to food, from overweight or
obese people to people with anorexia or bulimia.
In a handout Dr. Conklin provided research article citations
on the effectiveness of mindfulness.
Most of the articles focused on brain composition changes observed
through fMRI scans after sustained daily practice of meditation but one article
specifically discussed the efficacy of short-term meditation training like we
practiced in the breakout session. The
article, by twelve researchers at Dalian University of Technology in China led
by Yi-Yuan Tang, found improvements in attention and self-regulation among
students who received 5 20-minute meditation training sessions. Although the article did not specifically test
the meditation exercises employed in the breakout session, it supports the use
of such sessions for students in schools.
Overall I found the interventions useful and simple and I
could see myself using them with students, particularly at the elementary
level. The mindful eating exercise would
be great to do with older elementary students because it could hold their
attention and seems easier for restless students to engage with than quietly
practicing restful breathing. The STOP
exercise seems like it would only work with students with good enough emotion
regulation and executive function to stop themselves in the middle of a heated
moment. It would be interesting to see
if there is any research specifically on the STOP exercise and what age group
it was conducted on.
--AJ Newcombe
Documents from the session:
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