Mind Over Matter: Science, Meditation and Learning
Even as I sit writing this, my mind is wandering. I open this document and then another tab to research the history of a book I’m teaching, remember an email I forgot to respond to, think of the laundry I need to do, the essays I need to grade and that long tedious phone call I need to make to the insurance company, and yada, yada, yada, ad nauseum.
Suffice it to say that, like most adults I know, I have a lot of balls in the air, a lot of moving parts in my life and at any given moment, a lot to get done. And even longer than the to-do list written neatly in my old-school calendar is the menagerie of intersecting and overlapping thoughts in my brain. Yes, my mind is a busy place—Grand Central busy—and the choice not to be in a constant state of thinking and doing is often a radical act of resistance. Be here now. I remind myself often. My daily meditation practice helps, as does my commitment to starting each of my senior English classes with a short silent meditation. In the 10+ years that I’ve used meditation in my classroom, I have noticed a dramatic change in the atmosphere, mood and productivity of my classes and just as importantly, in my own ability to be present and attentive to my students and to my work.
But still, it is not always easy to be mindful—not always easy to be here now.
So, in this season of uncertainty and change and at a time when I have been feeling particularly overwhelmed, I was pretty delighted to run across a short TikTok video that an old friend from high school created and posted to her Facebook page. The video seems to be aimed at educators and parents and explains, with startling clarity, some very complicated neuroscience in a simple and compelling way. The basic premise is that the brain operates on a continuum (from brainstem to to limbic system to Prefrontal Cortex) and that you can’t get to the place where thinking and learning happens best—the Prefrontal Cortex (PFC)—if you are in a state of dysregulation in the other parts of your brain.
In the video, my friend, Dr. Paige Wescott explains how the physical brain functions from bottom to top with our most basic instincts residing in the bottom part of our brain (brainstem) and then getting increasingly sophisticated as we go north to our Prefrontal Cortex—the place where the best thinking and learning happens. She uses neuroscience pioneer Dr. Bruce Perry’s hierarchy of brain function, and his paradigm of the three R’s—Regulate, Relate and Reason—to make a strong case for how important it is to help our students, our children, and yes, ourselves, to regulate before we do anything else—especially learn.
After I watched the video, I did a deep dive into Dr. Perry’s work and I realized, almost instantly, how useful his model is, not only to inform my own work in the high school classroom, but also to share with my colleagues and my students as compelling evidence that this meditation work that I have been so excited about for over a decade has real science behind it.
As part of the ongoing conversation about our classroom meditation practice, I routinely ask my students to identify the benefits of meditation and to share examples of how it has been helpful in their own lives. After only a few weeks of meditating in class, my students are quick to articulate that meditation helps them to relax and focus better. They also believe that it can assuage stress and help them to regulate their emotions more effectively. They understand emotional regulation to be their ability to respond more productively to strong emotions like fear and anxiety. They are also beginning to understand how all these benefits can lead to the fuzzier outcomes of increased empathy and kindness.
As we continue our meditation practice throughout the year, I will continue to share meaningful information with my students about the benefits of meditation and it is in this context that I will share Dr. Perry’s simple Regulate-Relate-Reason paradigm. My hope is that our classroom practices will mirror the model by starting with a short meditation, capitalizing on the positive relationships I have built with my students throughout the year and end with a little lesson in neuroeducation, featuring Dr. Perry’s work—and maybe even my friend’s very compelling TikTok video.
Resources:
https://www.tiktok.com/@neuraleducation/video/7010824035747630342
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/9d/16/b4/9d16b4d01c0b181da53fb1835b665f21.jpg
file:///C:/Users/cainessuz/Desktop/Intro%20to%20Mindfulness-For%20Students.pdf
