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When I started out as a PE teacher many years ago, mindfulness was a relatively new concept in schools. When you mentioned it to students, they got wide-eyed, their interest piqued by this concept that seemed accessible, yet esoteric. Telling a group of students you were going to practice mindfulness was like telling them you were going spelunking. It sounded exploratory, mysterious, and enticingly unfamiliar.
However, that ship has long sailed. Mindfulness is no longer a novelty, and unfortunately these days many students associate it with boredom and sitting still. As a PE teacher and Mindfulness Director at a PK-8 school, I’ve been tasked with bringing this beneficial grounding practice to my students. One of the ways I do that? Let’s start by not calling it mindfulness.
Call it “breathwork,” call it an “attention hack,” call it “ancient energy practice,” but whatever you do, don’t call it mindfulness. Leading with the joy of breath and movement and being in sync with one another is far more powerful than leading with a term that has developed some challenging preconceived notions.
To be fair, there are moments where I am explicit about using the term mindfulness. After all, I’ve been a Zen practitioner for over twenty years, I majored in Buddhism in college, and I got my MA in Mindfulness Studies. I feel fortunate to be a proponent of the practice and to offer it to others. But I increasingly avoid using the term mindfulness until I’ve developed buy-in around the ideas of presence, awareness, and wonder.
Mindfulness doesn’t have to be seated and still. It is a practice for being as alive as possible to what is occurring right now. Plenty of research has revealed that we are happiest when we are doing just that. I often lead with playfulness, utilizing games that draw us in, stoke our powers of perception, and make us curious about the receptive powers of the bodymind. Using a term that will make students’ eyes glaze over is not the best way to start that process.
Instead, try to be unexpected. Do tongue twisters. Play games that require students to focus on a single sense. Have everyone stand up and sit down when they think one minute has passed. Put on calming music and hand out crayons and coloring sheets. Have students invent and name their own yoga poses. Provide a context in which they will be mindful, their attention tuned into the synced energy of body, breath, mind, and community.
Maybe later you can tell them that this was mindfulness, and maybe much later you can teach them how seated practice can help them find presence more consistently, so that they can do it anytime, anywhere. But for now, let them be joyful and engaged. It’s kind of what kids do best, after all.
