Weaving Mindfulness and Visualization into Your Practice

Tere: Hello everybody. You may be surprised today that you have probably already practiced mindfulness and did not even know it. I find the visualization piece to be fascinating in terms of allowing the mind's eye to help one self-regulate. If you want more information when we are done, mindfulschools.org has a wealth of resources. I took 12 weeks of classes with them last summer, and I found it to be a wonderful way to apply this to my practice.

Introduction

This is a funny sign that is in Milwaukee Airport in Wisconsin, right after you get out of TSA (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Sign in Milwaukee airport.

I thought it was classic. Most people feel discombobulated when they leave TSA unless you have some kind of a special access pass. The recombobulation area cracked me up because I thought it summed it up. You need to put on you shoes, your watch, your belt, and pull yourself back together. Many of us do not take time to recombobulate in our lives, especially itinerant therapists who are zooming from school to school, or kids who are zooming from one curriculum initiative to another in today's core curriculum. We all need to recombobulate.

Let's consider our everyday schedules. The 21st century has made many changes in our work approach. I think it has affected not only the adults and their work schedules, but also our kids. Many adults appear to be more anxious, stressed, and overloaded and it can affect the child. Today, I am going to discuss ways of helping with self-regulation. We often consult on sensory or executive function issues in the classroom. We might use information on executive functioning in the classroom to help kids work better without multitasking. Multitasking is a misnomer as you cannot get better at it. Within this environment, I think that there is a place for mindfulness and visualization. I always think, "What is our superpower?" I believe that today's therapists continue to know how to connect to kids no matter what their age.

Figure 2. Examples of therapist/child interaction.

We use these moments of connection to empower our children. When we start to make these connections, we can teach them strategies to help self-soothe and calm, and we can accept them for where they are in the present moment. This is what mindfulness is all about. It is not about the future or what you are going to do next, it is truly being in the moment.

The faces, in Figure 3, look familiar to me.

Figure 3. Faces we may see in school.

Many teachers are wondering what is going on. Why are kids so unhappy?

What is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is a way of unraveling the different threads of thought by taking time to be in the moment. When we experience it on our own, we can then pass it to our students to help them reduce agitation, anxiety, and attitude. In fact, some of the current research shows that using mindfulness can actually improve executive functioning. It helps with organizational skills, emotional regulation, et cetera. We have to create new habits to be present to find calmer approaches towards our students, and in turn, this may open them up to want to engage with us more regularly.

Here is the study that was done in 2010 with elementary school kids (see Figure 4).

Figure 4. Study on mindfulness and executive function.

They did a control study of 64 2nd and 3rd grade kids. The program was delivered for 30 minutes, twice a week, for 8 weeks. The kids showed improvement in executive function as compared with controls. They gained behavioral regulation, metacognition, and global executive control. This is something to really keep in mind. Having executive skills goals on your IEPs, like being better organized, having lower frustration levels, and handling the demands, are another strategy for your tool kit.

This study looked at training for parents and kids with ADHD (see Figure 5). 

Figure 5. Study on parent/child mindfulness training for the diagnosis of ADHD.

What I thought was very interesting is that they did it for both the parent and the child for eight weeks. The kids were eight to 12 years old. There was a significant increase in mindful awareness and a reduction of parental stress and overreactivity. However, the teacher ratings showed no significant effects. Often these kids cannot generalize from one area to another. The idea of using mindfulness in the school setting may have never occurred to them. Dr. Russell Barkley, who in my opinion one of the best gurus for ADHD and has some great videos on YouTube, says that you cannot put a child with this diagnosis in a social training group because they do not have input problems, they have output problems. In other words they can tell you what needs to be done, but they cannot behave that way. This makes me wonder if whether or not it would be a good thing for the teachers now to take on the mindfulness and allow it within that setting, if it made such a huge difference in a household.

Here is a study that included sensory motor activities, one of the areas that OTs shine. 

Figure 6. Study on mindfulness that included sensory motor activities.

They evaluated whether or not participation in the mindful program affected 1st through 3rd grade students. They designed a program to help students focus and pay attention. Where else do we in our education system teach kids how to focus and pay attention? Yet, this is one of the many demands of the curriculum, even during their play. They taught them series of exercises including breath work, body scan, movement, and sensory motor awareness. They found significant differences between those that did not participate and those that did.

I am just priming your pump with these studies so that you get an idea that mindfulness is research-based.

Brain Rules

This is a wonderful book by a man named John Medina. He talks about empowering kids to be self-aware. Here are two of his key points:

One thing that helps kids learn is triggering emotions. Emotional arousal helps the brain learn. I participated in a teacher seminar, and they discussed how writing has to have an emotional content for many kids to follow through on it. They then wanted us to write about something in our purse or on our body, like a ring or a bracelet, that meant something to us. One person talked about the need for their EpiPen, while another talked about a ring that was given to them by their mother. Then, we passed that object to the person next to us, and then they were asked to write about it with no personal attachment and with no prior knowledge of what we wrote. Our own personal emotional arousal about this item made our writing richer, in contrast to the writing of those without the personal attachment. Our writing was more focused because it aroused us so this is a good thing to keep in mind with children. Medina also says the brain's attentional spotlight can only focus on one thing at a time. Although we can do activities like empty the dishwasher and talk on the phone at the same time, we might not be as efficient in writing, answering questions, and carrying on with everything in a classroom while multitasking.

My Mindful Music

My Mindful Music is an example of a publication I did with Mary Ann Hartmann, who does a lot of preschool work. There are about six songs that are arousing and alerting, and there are about six songs that are about calming down or letting go. You can also look at some samples of it on YouTube, including Zigger Zagger Day.

Multiple Tiers of Support

The classroom needs multiple tiers of support, as Figure 7 shows.

Figure 7. Example of a classroom.

That term now is response to intervention. I think the educators are now realizing that they need to expand their focus from the few kids in a classroom, who may not be at the 25th percentile, but to all children as they need different levels of intervention to learn an activity. This is where the term universal design came from. With self-regulation, we are giving teachers ideas of how to deal with behaviors, frustration, tolerance, time on task, focus, and organization. Adding to this, mindfulness and visualization strategies may also help. One of the things that struck me when using visualization in a classroom is that there are many children that cannot put pictures in their brain. Teachers have explained to me that if a child does not see pictures in their brain when they are reading, their comprehension goes down. Visualization may be a great way for us to contribute. Some of you may be thinking of how impossible it is to expand your role anymore, but I want you to convince you today that we can weave all this in. In fact, it would be interesting for all of you to become more aware of how mindfulness affects you as a therapist. Can you be more in the moment and not feel so rushed? Early in my career when I was working at 10-12 schools, I was eating my lunch and doing my notes in the car. If you are currently in this type of situation, instituting mindfulness and visualization may help you as much as the children.

There is a handout on using mindfulness in a variety of moments with this course. I came up with this because many teachers and therapists have asked when they should use it. I think there are a variety of ways of using mindfulness. You can use it in small groups before beginning an activity, and in large groups. In large groups, I find this to be more ritualistic. When I was studying with mindfulschools.org, they had one example of a school where after the Pledge of Allegiance via the intercom, they all stopped for mindful breathing for two minutes, and then all started their day.

I am finding that transition times are mostly what teachers are complaining about. I think this happens when teachers are driven to get through a particular curriculum, and the transition time is not as fluid as it could be. I often suggest doing a movement activity during these times, but mindfulness may be another thing that you could fit in there. Individually, if you see a child that tends to run high in anxiety, you certainly could pull them aside and help them. You could give them a visual checklist to look at to help bring them to a level of being in the present moment and improve their self-awareness. I will let you read through this handout on your own, but at the end, there is an area of "spontaneous use". I use examples of students that might benefit from different techniques to complete on their own. They might be able to use them in different settings. Using mindfulness at something like an assembly might be crazy, but if you have a kid that sometimes gets antsy during an assembly, you can teach him/her mindful listening. He/she could close his/her eyes and just listen, getting rid of the visual sensation. Feel free to use these suggestions on the handout as you start to integrate some techniques. 

Experiencing Mindfulness and Visualization in Different Ways

To begin, let's untie some knots first. Wherever you are sitting, you might want to push your chair back or stand up. This activity is from Yoga Kids International, and I have tweaked it a bit to include mindful sensation as well as movement. One thing before I give you an example is to point out I always give people the option to avert their eyes if they do now want to close them. Many people, that have been abused or have high anxiety, will not close their eyes, and that is okay. When you give them the direction, always say you can close your eyes or you can avert your eyes by looking down toward the floor.

Body Scan

This is an example of a body scan. This could work really well with a child that is not very self-aware. You are asking them to exaggerate the tension, and then with mindfulness piece, you can connect that bodily sensation for when they are feeling tension in play, in the classroom, with a parent, or at a sports event. They are then able to recognize that, be in the moment, and notice what the body is doing. If they need extra help then they can say that they need to go untie a knot. I have found this to work very well.

Jon Kabat-Zin

Jon Kabat-Zinn is the person who defined mindfulness well.

Figure 8. Mindful vs. mind full.

If you want to do more exploration, YouTube has some of his lectures. There are also plenty of published articles by him. He says mindfulness is paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment without any judgment. I love this picture because so often when we are playing with a child, we are often thinking about other things. If you look at the child's brain, they are in the moment. We forget that as we work with them, we need to be just with them. We can connect with our superpower in that way, and you may find it to be less tension producing with more engagement from the child.