Mindfulness for Educators

Why should all educators take the time to learn the skill/practice of mindfulness?

1. Being mindful helps lower our overall stress level and more effectively manage our troublesome emotions. We learn how to live more in the gift of the present moment and not just dwell “asleep” in our memories of the past or the worries of the future. All we truly do have is the present moment.
2. Being mindful teaches us to separate our constant 24/7 tendency to judge all of the experiences in our waking day, and to separate this reality as seen through our lenses of thought and memory from reality as it really is -- undistorted by these lenses. Mindfulness practice teaches us to accept reality by coming to our senses.
3. Being mindful helps to keep us out of emotion mind and allows us to enter the mind state of wise mind (Marsha Linehan, Ph.D.)...knowing what is true from our heads and our hearts.
4. Mindfulness is the “mothership” of all Social Emotional Learning (SEL) skills that:
   • Can be learned by anyone and taught as a daily contemplative practice
   • Can be cultivated and deepened over a lifetime
   • Can be shared with anyone with a willingness to learn it
   • Must be experienced and not just “read about”
   • Can be integrated into our daily lives as both a formal and informal practice.

I offer a variety of mindfulness workshops for educators – from a three-hour orientation for administrative, mental health, or teaching staff, to a full-day, more intensive immersion experience. Please contact me for details.

© 2008 by Dr. Anthony Pantaleno