Mindfulness in the Christian Classroom
One area that is greatly supported by research in multiple fields of study is mindfulness. Unfortunately, I have experienced serious pushback from Christians who are fearful of mindfulness practices, consider them evil and certainly do not believe it belongs in the classroom. This is likely because the most popular forms of mindfulness encountered in our culture stem from non Christian sources such as secular humanism or Zen Buddhism. In fact those are the two sources frequently cited in articles from Christian authors who often state that mindfulness is “dangerous” and “idolatrous”. Sadly, they completely misrepresent the topic, in my opinion. They don’t acknowledge the Christian forms of mindfulness and the fact remains that it is more needed now than ever.
Simply put, mindfulness is the act of focused attention. Unfortunately, studies show that the youngest two generations have a much higher incidence of attention issues such as ADHD. These generations are accustomed to quickly moving from screen to screen and sustained attention averages in seconds rather than minutes. Additionally, pediatric mental illness is at epidemic levels with 49% of kids experiencing anxiety, depression, oppositional defiant disorder or other mental illness that can interfere with academic and functional behaviors by the time they reach young adulthood. Other issues that are more prevalent in these youngest two generations include poor conflict resolution, decreased ability to regulate emotional responses and decreased overall social and critical thinking skills.
There are many factors that have contributed to these issues such as increased screen time, lack of physical activity, and play deprivation to name a few. Because of these factors, skills that members of previous generations developed naturally, usually through free play, need to be intentionally addressed with current students. Introducing mindfulness activities into our curriculum is only one of multiple strategies I would implement in school. Other strategies include increased play, social emotional learning, increased concept based curriculum and multimodality activities and assessments in most subjects and grade levels. Mindfulness can be used to help the students focus on whatever subject matter is being taught at the time and is a tool that is used to reach our goals. It doesn’t replace subjects like Bible, but improves our students’ abilities to fully attend and integrate information. Meditating on a scripture verse provides deeper learning than memorization.
I mentioned earlier that most Christian critics of mindfulness cite the Zen or secular humanism practices taught to most psychology students and that have become popular in the American culture. All major world religions, however, have reference to practices that would qualify as mindful and my contention would be the oldest form is that of the Judeo-Christian tradition as the concept of Sabbath began at the very creation of the universe. One might think of mindfulness activities as mini sabbaticals to help our students increase their ability to focus, comprehend, process and retain whatever subject matter is being studied. This is particularly important for Bible studies as sustained focus on scripture allows for both a deeper understanding of the text and room for the Holy Spirit to work in the silence.
Because our students are needing to develop their ability to practice more focused attention from scratch, so to speak, we often teach them to begin with focusing on the breath. The breath is something that is always with us, is kinesthetic (which most of our students need) and can be part of the Christian experience as it reminds us of our very creation and the acknowledgment that there was no human life without the breath and that breath was given to us by God.
Where I work, we teach mindful breathing as part of our whole wellness program that includes The Four Pillars of Wellbeing curriculum from The Contentment Foundation. During this practice we ask the students to focus on their breath and when they get distracted simply to return to their breath without judgment. I want to be clear that what we are asking students to do is to be aware of their distraction whether it is a sound, thought, emotion, etc. and table it for later. The “without judgment” piece is so the students will not think critically of themselves for not maintaining their attention. It is purely to encourage students to avoid self condemnation and to assure them that we all get distracted so that is ok. Students may always reflect on the tabled experiences at a later time. Again, this practice does not replace the Bible or the principles from Philippians 4 which Scripture tells us to focus on, but prepares us to better be able to attend to them.
A few additional points about Christian mindfulness
Christianity has a long tradition of mindfulness or contemplative prayer throughout the ages. Practitioners include the early desert fathers of the third century, St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, Meister Eckhart and a slew of others across the centuries to more modern practitioners such as Thomas Keating and Thomas Merton.
The most common formal practices include Lectio Divina, Centering Prayer, the Cloud of Unknowing, and the Jesus prayer.
Traditionally practitioners understand that both kataphatic knowledge of God (head knowledge) and apophatic knowledge of God (heart knowledge) are important for the deepest spiritual formation/sanctification.
According to neuro theological studies, Christian based contemplative activities have the same health benefits as other forms of mindfulness such as stress/anxiety relief, decreased blood pressure, improved emotional regulation, increased endurance, and improved success with anger management. Some studies show meditations involving God to be even more effective than the secular humanistic versions.
Long term practitioners of contemplative pursuits even show an increased thickness to the frontal lobe of their brain which assists in problem solving/reasoning, concentration, and other critical thinking skills as well as the ability to respond calmly rather than emotionally react to stimuli. Mindfulness helps us to heed the biblical admonition to “be not afraid”.
I realize the wellness program that our school is implementing is also used in secular environments but we can do so and still affirm our identity as a Christian institution. Unfortunately we have no choice as Christian publishers have yet to enter this aspect of brain friendly education. Our pastor has spent a great deal of time tying scripture to the lessons and The Contentment Foundation is eager for us to adapt the lessons further to increase specific Christian content. I personally find it sad that the Church has not taken the lead in such practices as wellness, contemplation and social emotional curriculum. As a Christian I find it to be very exciting to know that non Christian researchers are proving what are essentially Biblical tenets. Rather than fearing these practices, we should all be slowing down our busy lives, eliminating our distractions, and just spending some quiet time focusing on simply being in God’s presence.
