Wellbeing

Mindfulness this Term

Last week our teaching staff reflected on our Mindfulness practise here at St Anne's. We watched clips of Dr Craig Hassed talking about Mindfulness in education. 

Dr Hassed talks about Mindfulness as training our mind in attention, to be more present and aware. He says that children benefit from being able to engage their mind in what they are learning. Dr Craig sees Mindfulness as a life skill, not an add on to education. He believes it give us an ability to pay attention to the things we need to pay attention to, not be distracted by things we shouldn't be and to be self aware for our social and emotional intelligence. 

This term we are focusing on different forms of Mindfulness. As a school we are exploring Mindful Movements, Mindful Activities and Sensory Activities. 

This is why your children might tell you they walked on the grass in their bare feet, they sat and listened for sounds of nature or that they used a feather to focus on the sensation of this on their body. These are all Mindful actions that we can practise in order to help us teach our brain how to focus on what we need to pay attention to. 

Practising Mindfulness is about acknowledging that it takes time to grow this skill, that it is ok when our mind wanders as this is normal so we don't form a belief that we are 'no good at mindfulness' or 'can't do it'.

Below is one of the scripts we are using from Georgina Manning's Peaceful Kids program for Mindfulness this term: