Mindfulness... What's Going On Between My Ears
Mindfulness and self-care are essential skills that I do not practice nearly enough. In terms of a self-care routine, I try to focus on the foundational layers in what Leo Weidner refers to as the Relationship Pyramid for an ideal self in his book "The Slight Edge." The foundational layers include spiritual, emotional, and health which pertain to relationships with ones creator, self, and body, respectively.
Ideally for me this includes prayer, reflection, meditation, exercising, and eating & sleeping well. Meditation for me can be sitting in silence or following a guided session in an app like Calm. Usually, the emphasis is on just breathing and tuning in to the present moment. Connecting with nature is another vital part of my routine that I typically try to incorporate with exercising.
I think encouraging mindfulness and self-care in a classroom is so important with the amount of stress and trauma students experience. By building this in, we are taking more of a healing-centered approach like Shawn Ginwright discusses in his article here:
I like what the teacher does in the video below incorporating a "mindful minute" to start and end class. She talks about how hectic students lives are, running from class to class with little time in between to decompress. By spending the first few minutes of class completing this breathing and mindfulness activity, students are able to re-center, come back to the present, and be in a better position to learn. She also has quite a few visuals around the class that encourage mindfulness practice.
Starting class with a "mindful minute" and incorporating mindfulness visuals are some practices that I feel I can implement in my classroom.
For additional information on creating a mindful class, the website below (which is tied to the video) appears to have some valuable resources.