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Mindfulness for Educators
“The Present”
(borrowed from my favorite Chinese restaurant
lobby)
Yesterday
is history
Tomorrow is a mystery
Today is a gift
That’s why we call it “The Present”
Why should we all take the time to
learn the skill/practice of being mindful?
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:
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Can be learned by anyone and taught
as a daily contemplative practice
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Can be cultivated and deepened over a
lifetime
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Can be shared with anyone with a
willingness to learn it
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Must be experienced and not just
“read about”
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Can be integrated into our daily
lives as both a formal and informal practice.
© 2008 by Dr. Anthony Pantaleno
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